The following letter appeared in today's Charlotte Observer from a woman in Overland Park, Kansas:
"I was appalled to hear of the harassment my daughter received at the hands of drunken Tar Heel fans on her flight to San Antonio -- all for daring to wear her Kansas Jayhawk sweatshirt. Both my daughters live in Charlotte, so I knew UNC fans were rabid, but I'd never have expected such trashy behavior toward a woman traveling alone. The insults -- from men and women alike -- were so intense a flight attendant had to step in and threaten to land the plane to eject the guilty parties. Badly done, UNC faithful. This was no way to represent your university.
My then nine-year-old (from Georgia) attended a summer day camp in Mebane. After being asked whom she supported, she was then harrassed all weeklong by the 99% Carolina campmates, and the camp teacher/leader did nothing to stop it.
My daughter now loathes Carolina in every which way.
Jason: Shameful yes, but unfortunately, it's now just a part of the culture.
Unfortunately, I saw the title of the thread and thought: yeah, what else is new?
No cheers,
Lavabe
My nine year old niece loves to wear her Duke shirt to school, but really gets harrassed. My 5 year old niece doesn't understand yet why people are so mean when she wears hers. They are both proud to be Duke fans. It is very upsetting to hear about such low class people harrassing anyone like that. Save it for the games, Geez.
I've worn Duke gear all over the place in the Triangle, including all over Chapel Hill. I've never been harrassed. I've received some good-natured ribbing, and dished some out, too, but I've never felt threatened in the least.
My kids wear Duke stuff all the time to school. One of my boys regularly talks trash with his PE teacher, a Carolina fan. The teacher has never made him feel uneasy about this exchange. My oldest claims that about 90% of his school is made up of Carolina fans. Again, I don't think he's ever been hassled about this.
I don't deny that this has happened to others; obviously it happens, otherwise we wouldn't hear about it so much. But for whatever reason, it hasn't happened to me.
It's definitely shameful but, really, where's the surprise? About 2 weeks ago I'm walking around here (work) and some guy I've never see before in my life is working in an area and see's me wearing one of my many Duke hats. . .which inspires him to yell out "woooooooo!!! carolina--how 'bout them heels?!?!?" I kept walking and didn't say a word as this guy who's about 50 feet away kept yelling the same thing for no reason. I think there's something in their genes. . .a year ago something similar happened when someone on another floor above me looked down and saw the hat I had on and yelled the same thing (but a different person). My witty retort then was "I don't know--they still suck?"
The moral of this story is who got the last laugh. When Kansas embarrassed UNC in the actual game, it made all those obnoxious Carolina fans look like idiots. I'll gladly take abuse from Tar Heels if it means we're beating them.
It doesn't even have to be in Chapel Hell; my favorite personal story...
Back in the early '90's I had a dark blue Trans AM. For Duke's Final Four appearances '90-'92, I'd take one of those bottles of white shoe polish (with the angled sponge applicator) and write Duke-related slogans all over my car. Well, after one of the Championship victories (I forget which one) I was driving IN DURHAM one day and stopped at a light next to South Square mall.
The windows were down and the T-tops were off as it was such a nice day, and as I looked around I happened to look at the car stopped at the opposite turn lane as the very angry driver shouted at me to "wash that s*** off your car!" I heard him clearly across that fairly wide open intersection, and man was he PO'd. I only gave a little smile because I thought that, if I dared to laugh openly at him, he might floor it through the red light and ram me.
True story.
A few years ago at our university, we had this obnoxious little brat writing for the sports section who *hated* Duke. He wasn't actually a Heels fan and he lived in California, so I'm not quite sure what his issue was. However to give you some idea of his attainment in critical thinking skills, he wrote an entire column ranting on about how it was unfair that Duke got the #1 seed because Duke always gets the #1 seed because that stupid ol' Coach K gets more respect than he should! Yeah, I guess it didn't have anything at all to do with the fact that Duke was ranked #2 or 3 in the nation at the time.
In any case, the day before the Carolina game, I printed out a sign that said, "Go Duke! Beat UNC!" because if it had said, "go to hell, Carolina" I would have gotten in trouble. Everybody laughed, wished me luck, all's cool.
Well, that game was the infamous one (it may even have been JJ's senior night... can't remember now) where our guys went to pieces and Carolina came away with a resounding victory in Cameron. So the next day I come in kinda bummed, and what should I see but clever slogans written all over my poster! Things like, "JJ sucks" and "Duke wears panties."
Let's just say that it sure was a shame the next week when the sports kid's paycheck had this weird error in it and it took 4-5 weeks to fix.
reference my post :
http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/...168#post127168
the arrogance shown by Tar Heels is only approached by the clemson kitty-kats.
my son and i wear our duke gear often....we take the harrassment often.
bring it.
Blublood - YOU ARE MY HERO!!!
A few years ago - can't remember exactly how long ago, but it was early Roy era at UNC - one of the guys I worked with covered my desk with bad pics of Coach K prior to a Duke/UNC game. Ticked me off! But we won the game and I smiled all day the next day, did not mention one little word to him about his teams collapse.
Yeah, I've never been harrassed for wearing Duke gear either. I wonder if physical size has anything to do with it? I am 6'2", 190lbs., which is not huge, but I am bigger than 90% of the people I meet. I've definitely gotten looks from people, but noone ever says anything.
I've definitely dished some trash talk out to people wearing UNC gear, but it's pretty much only during the week or so leading up to the Duke-UNC game, something along the lines of "Who's gonna guard Henderson, you guys can't even handle Maryland," or "Is Coda gonna lose a few pounds before the game, because I don't know how he's gonna keep up with Avery". I try to make it somewhat witty, and I never just hoot and yell and make animal noises at people. I certainly never say anything that could be interpritted as threatening.
Yeah, I fail to see any new development or surprise here. It is pretty pathetic that they did it on a plane where the poor girl had nowhere to go, but alas, look at who were talking about here.
Duke fans aren't perfect and we all know that. But I have a hard time believing that would ever happen on a plane full of Duke fans. It just wouldn't.
I really don't have a problem with UNC's players or coaches. Shoot, the programs are mirrors of each other in a lot ways. But the fans, yeah, I have a big problem with UNC's fans. I have met maybe one UNC fan EVER who was not obnoxious about their team and Duke.
My daughter has been given a hard time all year in one of her high school classes by an anti-Duke, UNC-loving teacher. No problem - her average is 99. And she is having ABC driven into her bones.