Do you get the sense that the New York Times doesn't always like Duke? If not, you might read this article on K-ville by Bill Morris, who clearly is not impressed, attributing Duke's general love of basketball to the national obsession with college sports, privilege and, well, insanity more or less.
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There is a wonderful bit of unintentional humor in here: a chancellor of a major state university said "[w]eâve reached the point where big-time intercollegiate athletics is undermining the integrity of our institutions, diverting presidents and institutions from their main purpose."
The chancellor and system in question? Why, William E. Kirwan of Maryland, which recently moved to the Big Ten, specifically for the money. As a matter of fact, he said this: "There's no question that outside of the Ivy League, the Big Ten is the most prestigious conference in terms of the academic reputation of its institutions. There's probably not an institution outside the Big Ten that plays big-time sports that wouldn't want to be in the Big Ten."
Not exactly swearing off "big-time intercollegiate athletics," is he?
He also initially said that the regents met in secret and that there was no violation of Maryland's open-meetings law, words he was later forced to eat.
Just as long as you understand that the problem is at Duke, you see.
Not that anyone bothers, but if you look at a crowd shot in Cameron, while you will see some children of privilege, you will also see a hell of a lot of children of immigrants or who are first or second generation Americans. A lot of those kids busted their ass to get into Duke and didn't have any particular advantages other than hard work. Somehow, that always gets left out of the conversation when people talk about privileged Duke.