dean_mockThis is the classiest thing I’ve heard out of Duke possibly ever.  Tomorrow night, at the UNC – Duke game, it won’t be just a sea of dark blue “DUKE” shirts at Hansbrough Indoor Stadium (I mean Cameron Indoor Stadium).  Look carefully:  a lot of those t-shirts will actually say “DEAN.”  Have I misjudged you all along?  Please forgive me.

To order a shirt:  https://www.thrillcitync.com/shop/the-dukedean-memorial-tee.

 

For more information on how this happened:  https://www.newsobserver.com/2015/02/16/4560510/decock-collaboration-among-rivals.html.

We’ll see how long my good feelings last.  Will Blythe spent a whole book talking about the joys of this particular rivalry:  To Hate Like This is to be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry.  Reviewer and husband Gus Puryear says, “For anyone wishing to explore the Carolina/Duke rivalry in more detail, the authoritative work is To Hate Like This is to be Happy Forever, written by Chapel Hill native and UNC alumnus Will Blythe, himself the son of a late UNC professor.  Although the book occasionally tries to be fair and balanced, you can rest assured that an author of such a pedigree would not sell his soul in such an effort.”  Reviewer Sara Nelson says, “To call To Hate Like This a sports book is to be only about one-third right.  An elegy to place and time and generation, it is also a story of fathers and sons and an elegant testament to the way pastimes are far more than ways to pass the time” (From Publishers Weekly via Amazon).

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Thank you to Jack Barnwell, my former history teacher and fellow UNC Law alum, for letting me know about the t-shirts.  He made American history really interesting in high school, which is probably the reason I majored in history and lit in college, which then led me to law school.  I’m not sure whether to thank him for that or not.

 

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