Now that could be tricky. To properly honor Patrick Davidson, we would have to retire the number 41. Not the jersey, the number. No one would ever be able to use the number 41 again, for any reason.
In case you haven't memorized where all of the banners are in Cameron, you may not be aware that there are now ONE HUNDRED banners hanging in the rafters.
You get bonus points if you can a) identify the banner that is a falsehood and should not be hanging and
b) identify the banner that is missing and never has been hung.
I know one of you knows the answer.
And if any of you have an in with the athletic department, it would be nice if we could get this fixed.
___________________
Mike Stein
Trinity '97, Tent #1 '97
Tampa
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
Quick question. I know they hang a final four banner regardless. Do they hang 'national runner-up' banner if we were to win Saturday and lose Monday in place of the Ff banner? Or just the ff banner ...unless we win the title?? In other words, does winning Saturday change the banner? Or do have to win it all to change the ff banner?
There is no national runner up banner
I see a lot of people criticizing UNC for retiring so many jerseys. I think many of you fail to realize that UNC has only retired 8 jerseys (while Duke has retired 13). The vast majority of the jerseys in the dome's rafters are for "honored" players, guys like we're talking about above who have done great things but not quite making the very high standards of retirement. I hate defending them, but there's quite a bit of reasonableness to their approach. We in fact do something similar, but the guys who get honored don't go in the rafters, but in the hall of fame.
While this may technically be true, 1) 99% of observers think of any jersey hanging in a stadium as "retired," because that is nearly always how it's done and 2) UNC loves to point up to the high volume of jerseys hanging in their rafters as an indication of their program's greatness. They can call them what they want, but hanging jerseys for the likes of Brendan Haywood, Wayne Ellington, and Harrison Barnes is a joke and absolutely cheapens the meaning of what's up there, including the value of the "retired jerseys." Just as hanging fake national championship banners also cheapens real accomplishments, just as hanging jerseys and ill-gotten banners achieved through decades of cheating...could kind of go on and on with them.
It mystifies me when people try to say that making UNC take down banners as punishment won't serve any purpose or do any good. They look at the volume of crap they put up there as the defining image of their program, and have shown that they will cut any corner, whether it's the lame "honored" criteria or cheating to win, to justify putting more up.
If you're looking for the main reason why many Duke fans are so protective of having very high criteria for hanging a jersey up, even when a player has meant a ton to the program and led his team to great accomplishments, this is probably it. Have some standards for goodness sake. Bob Verga should still probably be up there though.