Reduked to nothing

You hate Duke.

And if you're thinking, "No I don't", then you're lying. Or at least part of you is lying. All of us have held a deeply embedded hatred for the Bluedevils at one time or another. Why? To us, they are the real-life equivalent of the Socs, the silver-spooned rivals of the Greasers. Remember how much you hated that preppy team from the Sandlot? The one that even Scotty Smalls took deep? Yeah yeah, I thought you did--that's Duke. When we think of Duke, players like Shane Battier, J.J. Redick, Grant Hill, and Bobby Hurley come to mind. Piano playing trust fund babies who just happened to be ballers; hence, they went to Duke instead of Harvard.

See? You hate Duke.

The question is, should you and I even care that Duke is fading faster than Kevin Costner's English accent in Robin Hood? The answer is, Yes. College basketball is obviously a cut-throat business mired with slithering agents, ankle-dangling sponsors, and two-faced coaches. Natural selection has brought with it the end of many successful programs--do you really think Indiana fired Bob Knight because of his temper?

So why should we care? One simple word: Krzyzewski.

See, while you and I hate Duke, we love Coach K. We love his quiet, humble nature; we love that his players gradaute (even though we despise them personally); we love that he is the antithesis of his mentor, Bobby Knight; we love that he resurrected TEAM USA; we love that he went to West Point.

He's the very symbol of college basketball. And for all he's done for the game, Coach K is losing his corner of the market as the smart-player's choice for the college game. Younger, hotter coaches like Jay Wright, Jamie Dixon, and Sean Miller are showing that not only can they recruit the Mike Dunleavy Jr.s of the world, they can also get ballers with first-name-prefixes like "La"or "Tre". Outside of Corey Maggette, Coach K hasn't been interested in or able to land top-flight recruits like Tyreke Evans or Hasheem Thabeet. Coach K's bench looks more like a BYU college ward's starting five than what a top 5 program's bench should look like. This didn't matter until the last few years, when every major D-1 school became frantically worried about winning every single year. This Wall Street-esque frenzy brought with it young coaches like Wright, Dixon, and Miller. Suddenly the recruits that Coach K had on lock were presented with multiple options from upstart programs willing to do anything to become perennial winners (outside of the last five years, when was the last time Pitt and Xavier were both good in the same year?).

Now, will Duke come back? Sure. D-1 college hoops is cyclical, so while these newer, hotter programs are on top now, look for the Bluedevils to make a comeback soon. And as sour as that makes me feel, at least it means that Coach K will be on top again too.