I wouldn't be too surprised at anything Negative Nancy Feinstein has to say about Duke. Remember, he was right up there with Nancy Grace and Wahneema Lubiano in crucifying Duke lacrosse players.
He was on NPR this AM and "lamented" the demise of the ACC, calling it a "one-team conference in basketball". Listen and be enraged:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...oryId=96805504
Why's he gotta be a hater?
I wouldn't be too surprised at anything Negative Nancy Feinstein has to say about Duke. Remember, he was right up there with Nancy Grace and Wahneema Lubiano in crucifying Duke lacrosse players.
Maybe he's just giving the team some bulletin board material.
Seriously, though, if the pattern post-expansion holds up and years go by with no one other than Carolina advancing to the FF, then the ACC will become, for NCAA purposes, a one-team conference. The problem with the argument is that, there aren't that many datapoints - expansion was in 2005, for crying out loud. We just gotta go out and show him the error of his ways.
I'm sorry JF has gone so anti-Duke in recent years, though.
I am surprised he is this lame. Calling the ACC a one-team conference in basketball is just plain silly when everyone has Duke in the top ten and most folks think Miami and Wake are serious Sweet 16 contenders too. C'mon, John. You can do better than this.
--Jason "the Sagarin and other rankings will again have the ACC as easily the top rated conference this year... just like every year" Evans
Well, if by "one team conference," he means that there is a heavy favorite, then he is probably correct. UNC is the first team to be unanimously voted #1 in the pre-season coaches' poll. I guess that we could then call the NCAA Division 1, a "one team division."
I didn't find his statements off that much - he was focusing on tournament success since 2005 and let's face it - we haven't had much success since then.
Of course, I just finished listening to Bomani Jones on local radio refer to Duke as "a sorry school". So in comparison, John is not much of a hater.
There is a significant body of evidence that the guy is actually mutiple personalities. He hangs with the big people, Bobby, the guys on the tour, etc, and then writes books undermining at least some of them.
He oh so loves the littles, the purity of sport that they represent, and well, son of a gun, sells a lot of books extolling their virtue, except that he drops an F bomb when a Navy guy makes an amateurish misstake.
The thing is, I figured that there were only two of them in there, but now it seems like, as in the movie "The Three Faces of Eve," we belatedly find a third.
Here we have a Duke team that is all about the purity of the game. Hell, even Junior's hero, Red, would have had to love how Duke plays the game--it takes the way that the game was played when Red was in his prime as a coach to new levels, with superior athletes and skills. So, Feinstein had to create yet another persona to deal with this Devil: he had to find a way to not only screw the school that bore him (Freud or Oedipus you take your pick), but also in doing so besmearch the tradition and game he purports to love.
Man, I thought I had problems.
Last edited by JBDuke; 11-11-2008 at 01:05 AM. Reason: corrected classic movie reference
JF is irrated at Duke, with or without reason.
One or two diplomatic loyal Duke fans need to take him out for a long lunch at a very nice restaurant and let him get it ALL off his chest, satisfy his ego, and reel him back in.
Probably a good idea if someone from the Administration or the AD did that as well.
Why am I not shocked?
John Feinstein was attacking the ACC and the decision to expand to 12 teams by pointing out that the ACC was no longer the best conference. To do that, he mentioned that only UNC had been to the final 8 in the NCAA-T since 2005, when the conference expanded.
Seems like a non sequitur to me. Why does the expansion of the conference immediately drag down the performance of teams like Duke and MD?
Oh well. One can reasonably expect the author of Season on the Brink to throw a Molotov cocktail at anything that displeases him.
When he goes after Duke, it has invariably been the choice of football coach and the performance of the AD. Since Joe Speedboat is gone and Coach Cut is doing great, I expect he will now pick on the men's basketball program. This NPR reference to Duke was pretty subtle (for John), and I doubt that his heart was in it.
sagegrouse
Last edited by sagegrouse; 11-10-2008 at 03:42 PM. Reason: Typo
People who are ready to crown the 08/08 UNC team as NCAA super champions needs to look up 1991 UNLV and (as much as I hate to say it) 1999 Duke. Each expected to stomp the competition into a sticky paste-like substance in the tournament and each went home championship-less.
Any wonder that JF is known by some as "Fredo"?
As in:
"Fredo, you're nothing to me now. You're not a brother, you're not a friend"
Poor John-boy. Always had to work so hard, typing away at his little stories and books. Never could crack the big TV money, now could he?
To think this guy used to be interesting to hear and read.