Requirements for Retired Duke Jerseys
Duke has thirteen retired jerseys while UNC has seven. According to http://www.wral.com/sports/story/2556582/, Hansbrough will be the eighth. The article includes UNC's requirements for retiring a jersey. Does anyone know what Duke's requirements are?
"Sporting News Honor Means UNC Will Retire Hansbrough's Number"
The 'announcement' that TH's #11 will go to the rafters seems a bit unusual, since TH still has eligibility remaining after the year. Upon reading the WRAL article, it seems that TH has reached a milestone required for consideration of jersey retirement at UNC (e.g., Sporting News NPOY), but no official UNC announcement of impending jersey retirement.
It does bring up an interesting question - is NPOY recognition, in itself, sufficient for jersey retirement, either at UNC or Duke? I suspect not.
It seems that graduation (at least at Duke) would be requisite - case in point: Elton Brand. Is NPOY and graduation sufficient? Are there other factors that play into this decision, such as good citizenship, off-the-court reputation, etc.
Any chance that qualifying for jersey retirement will affect TH's early entry decision? Can TH still screw this up?
UNC honors jerseys for AA status
I bet they have 30 guys "honored" including Mccants, Felton and May from 2005 and Wallace, Stackhouse, Lynch, Reid etc.
So to get you jersey up there, you can be the third best player on your team (Mccants) or get run out of school by the coach (Reid). Or you can just have a huge reputation even though you never deliver (Vince Carter). The one that I though should have been up there over Carter was Shammond Williams who was 5x better than Carter.
I guess if Duke did this same "honor" thing, the rafters would be loaded: Cherokee Parks, Mark Alarie, Billy King, Tommy Amaker, Roshown McLeod etc.
Curiously, UNC does not have its 2004 NIT banner up there (but they do have a fake national championship that noone else recognizes). I went to a few games in the Dean Dome the past few years and stared up when I got bored so I've seen all that unseemly blue way too often.
Retirement Requirements and NPOYs
There are no official requirements for number retirement except for graduation. Additionally, one must have "national honors" though no one ever defines clearly what national honors are. Generally, the requirements is to have won a recognized major NPOY award, but there is wiggle room. The "requirements" used to be less stringent than now, however, Shelden was only 2-time NDPOY and they used this wiggle room to retire his number. You will recall that this was 1) somewhat controversial and 2) they didn't retire #4 and #23 until a year after they graduated, because they didn't know if #23 should be retired and wanted to see his whole body of work (that and the whole issue of never have retired numbers of two classmates).
The interesting thing is what is defined as a recognized "major" NPOY winner. Tyler is getting his number retired because he won the TSN award. However, Grant won the TSN award in 1994 and Duke doesn't recognize him as NPOY, but only a consensus first-team A-A. In today's press release, UNC said it recognizes the 6-major NPOY awards as: 1)Naismith, 2) Wooden, 3)USBWA, 4) AP, 5) NABC (Oscar Robertson) and 6) TSN.
Duke recognizes the 6 major NPOY awards as: 1) Naismith, 2) Wooden 3) USBWA, 4) AP, 5) NABC and 6) Rupp. This, JJ is a 2-time NPOY and they erected the NPOY "shrine" for JJ in the Hall of Honor after the 2005 season when he won the Rupp.