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View Full Version : What if Duke had a fake 1924 title?



brevity
10-13-2008, 05:23 PM
I've been thinking a little bit about UNC's occasional claim to a 5th men's basketball title, awarded to the 1924 team by the Helms Foundation. (DBR has a thread on it here (http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5112).)

It's become kind of a running joke against both Carolina fans and Heel-friendly media outlets, but I was wondering how we would behave had Duke been the beneficiary instead. (So, to be clear: UNC has 4 legit titles and no Helms award, while Duke has 3 legit titles and the 1924 Helms award.)

To me, a dubious title only has present-day meaning if the people of today allow it. And while I'd like to think that we'd limit our title count to the ones awarded by our play, it would be tempting to pull that asterisk out just to say we had as many titles as UNC does.

What's your take on this? Had it happened to Duke instead, would you count 4 titles? 3 titles? Three and a half? Would you ever bring up the Helms award, or would it be a sore point of discussion?

DevilCastDownfromDurham
10-13-2008, 05:32 PM
I'm sure our resident historians can provide much more detail, but my understanding is that many other schools have Helms "titles" (they awarded one every year) and no one except for UNC tries to pawn theirs off as a legit championship. In fact, IIRC, the Helms Foundation continued to give out "titles" even after the NCAA tournament began, and in some years awarded a "title" to teams other than the NCAA champion. UNC's policy was a direct result of us catching up with them in 2001 and I know of no one that does not recognize that it was a transparent attempt to bolster their title count and push them ahead of us.

With that in mind, I can understand being proud of the achievement and honoring it in some small way. Perhaps as a note in a display in the Hall of Honor about the coach from that era or even a banner near the ACC titles.

jimsumner
10-13-2008, 06:39 PM
I'm pretty sure our friends in Lawrence make occasional claims for their Helms titles.

DevilCastDownfromDurham
10-13-2008, 07:06 PM
Could be. I'll certainly defer to your knowledge. Do they display them beside their genuine championship banners in an an effort to equate the two? If so, shame on Kansas (a program that, like UNC and Duke, needs no cheesy inflation given their actual impressive accomplishments).

msdukie
10-13-2008, 08:37 PM
Could be. I'll certainly defer to your knowledge. Do they display them beside their genuine championship banners in an an effort to equate the two? If so, shame on Kansas (a program that, like UNC and Duke, needs no cheesy inflation given their actual impressive accomplishments).

They now hang banners. They have 4 "National Championship" banners in Phog and will put up #5 in the fall. They only started legitimizing the Helms titles in the last 2-3 years. Carolina always talked about theirs, but they didn't really start pushing them and the media didn't talk about them until after April 2001.

RelativeWays
10-13-2008, 08:42 PM
The easiest way to avoid the issue altogether is just refer to a team's NCAA championships. UNC only has 4 NCAA championships.

wilko
10-13-2008, 08:50 PM
Im all for UNC claiming the 1924 title as long as they correctly attribute it not to the Tarheels, but rather "The White Phantoms" as was their mascot at the time. (and yes it means what you think it does)

I think that little bit of truth in advertising on that note would just about end the discussion... oh, say forever.

RelativeWays
10-13-2008, 08:53 PM
Im all for UNC claiming the 1924 title as long as they correctly attribute it not to the Tarheels, but rather "The White Phantoms" as was their mascot at the time. (and yes it means what you think it does)

I think that little bit of truth in advertising on that note would just about end the discussion... oh, say forever.


So we can call it the Kontorversial Karolina Klassic championship?

mgtr
10-13-2008, 09:01 PM
So we can call it the Kontorversial Karolina Klassic championship?

Klever!

brevity
10-13-2008, 09:32 PM
Past threads, including the one I linked to above, cover a lot of this subject matter. I'm not asking about UNC or Kansas. I'm asking how we would react if we had the benign stigma of a fake championship. Obviously we wouldn't feel unanimously against it, as some fans would cite it just to say we had as many titles as UNC. Would the rest of us feel embarrassed by that sentiment?

(DevilCast: thank you for your input in addressing the question.)

Carlos
10-13-2008, 09:34 PM
Im all for UNC claiming the 1924 title as long as they correctly attribute it not to the Tarheels, but rather "The White Phantoms" as was their mascot at the time. (and yes it means what you think it does)

I've never heard the tie between "The White Phantoms" and the klan before. Do you have anything more on that?

Newton_14
10-13-2008, 10:28 PM
I would be 100% against it. It is embarrassing and low class to try to claim something like that as a National Championship. Earn real ones or talk about something else. Just my opinion.

wilko
10-14-2008, 07:48 AM
I've never heard the tie between "The White Phantoms" and the klan before. Do you have anything more on that?

Here are a few links that associate that name to UNC..

http://www.ramfanatic.com/Basketball/white_phantoms.htm
http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6454
http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/forums/showthread.php?t=372
http://books.google.com/books?id=6jzQtq7nLeMC&pg=PR22&lpg=PR22&dq=unc+white+phantoms&source=web&ots=F05-fvjmR8&sig=M6XeLGyrhvwuAyv7nNNJAJCgtcQ&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result

As a native Southerner you'll just have to just me that its an invective. It seems rather straightforward and obvious to me. Look at at any robed Klan figure and you can see the association; especially if you consider the context of the 20's

I really dont feel like searching around on hate sites to find a more concrete association.

Carlos
10-14-2008, 08:57 AM
wilko - I wa aware of the fact that the Heels used to be known as the White Phantoms and agree that there's certainly the potential for some sort of Klan link there. But I was just hoping to find something more than speculation to tie the two together.

hurleyfor3
10-14-2008, 12:13 PM
Yeah, we were due for our quarterly UNC 1924 thread.

I think UNC fans are as a group indifferent as to whether 1924 "counts". More importantly to them, they derive immense pleasure from other fanbases' visceral reactions to it.

And whenever there's a thread such as this one, they win.

brevity
10-14-2008, 08:20 PM
Yeah, we were due for our quarterly UNC 1924 thread.

I think UNC fans are as a group indifferent as to whether 1924 "counts". More importantly to them, they derive immense pleasure from other fanbases' visceral reactions to it.

And whenever there's a thread such as this one, they win.

Don't blame me. I tried a different approach, but my interests are rarely shared.

wilko
10-14-2008, 09:03 PM
I tried a different approach, but my interests are rarely shared.

I apologize if you think I ignored the question and hijacked your thread.
The way you posed it was abstract. I just dont think you can get a true feeling of a collective "we" on this.

Its kinda like counting the rain drops before they hit the ground. Its an exercise in futility; and this is even more difficult because its a hypothetical.

So I chose to make it a question I could answer.
And Im never going to miss an opportunity to kick UNC in the head whenever I can. (metaphorically of course) It just makes me happy.

Our reaction to "bad things" as a general rule...
Looks at the boards whenever we dont get a recruit
OR a loss or lacross, or any number of things.

I guess if we had some cloud we'd deal with it about the same as we do everything else.

As far as I know the whole Magette took money before he enrolled is hiding under some dustbin waiting to rear its ugly head. So what. We took and documented every reasonable step we could..

hurleyfor3
10-15-2008, 11:11 AM
Don't blame me. I tried a different approach, but my interests are rarely shared.

You certainly did. But the thread quickly drifted into "does 1924 count" territory.

To answer your original question, I think we'd look even more pathetic than unc does. This is because we didn't win any championship at all until 1991, so if we had counted a Helms award before then we would not have had the benefit of a real title to back it up.

The amalgam is Pitt, which counts a couple of Helms awards (or some sort of "championship" from that era -- I forget what exactly but they have banners up) but of course has no NCAA titles or even Final Fours. The impression is they are desparate to hang *some* kind of banner.

rasputin
10-15-2008, 12:41 PM
You certainly did. But the thread quickly drifted into "does 1924 count" territory.

To answer your original question, I think we'd look even more pathetic than unc does. This is because we didn't win any championship at all until 1991, so if we had counted a Helms award before then we would not have had the benefit of a real title to back it up.

The amalgam is Pitt, which counts a couple of Helms awards (or some sort of "championship" from that era -- I forget what exactly but they have banners up) but of course has no NCAA titles or even Final Fours. The impression is they are desparate to hang *some* kind of banner.

Kinda like upstart MLB teams retiring numbers of players who didn't play much for the team. Didn't the (then) Devil Rays retire Wade Boggs' number? And the Padres, Steve Garvey? They are desperate to hang something, anything.

footballfan2
10-16-2008, 09:20 AM
i'm sure Duke could also ring up some National College Football titles as well. If you look at programs like Alabama, Notre Dame, Michigan, etc... all their claimed titles before the 1950's are pretty much bogus.... yet represent 20-33% of their "titles"