Northwestern Site Talking Smack Before This Weekend’s Trip To Duke

Our friends at InsideNU, getting geeked up for this weekend’s football game, have some trash talk for Duke. In the good-natured spirit of their article, we thought we’d have a bit of fun ourselves and make a couple of corrections.

First, unlike Northwestern, Duke is not a suburban school. It’s got an extensive campus and its own forest, but it’s in town. Living next to Lake Michigan must rock but Duke Gardens aren’t bad either. They’re more attractive than the Lakefill tire tracks.

Second, the Illinois state income tax is in fact lower. In the Land of Lincoln you pay 7% corporate and 4.95% individuals.

In North Carolina, you pay 5.75% personal and corporate tax is 3%.

However, as Grant Hill said, it’s not what you make, it’s what you save. Illinois is about $127 billion in the hole and is having trouble just funding the lottery.

And in the Old North State?

Half a billion surplus, which might be of interest to, say, Amazon, which is so not going to Chicago by the way.

Basketball taunts from Northwestern? Really? Okay that’s bold since all of your basketball tradition (read: last year) is because you hired our ace assistant Chris Collins only one in a line of Chicagoans who realized that the basketball was better down here (Collins, Jabari Parker, Jahlil Okafor, Jon Scheyer, Coach K, Sean Dockery and the immortal Tony Barone, among others). The tradition prior to last year was never making the tournament. Last player drafted? 1999.

Better leave basketball out of it.

As for the slogan “Keep Durham Dirty?” We’d like to suggest that, uh, maybe you misunderstood it. We’re all for working hard but we like to play hard too. Get out of the library for a change! Breathe some fresh air - oh, wait, never mind.

We’ll give you the Chicago style pizza, seeing as how you live near Chicago and only have to dodge the random bullet to get to Lou Malnati’s, and the Bahá'í House of Worship looks amazing!

So is Duke Chapel. If you ever get down here, maybe you can go to the top and see another way Duke looks down on Chapel Hill.

While you’re here we’ll take you on a trip to the mountains or the Atlantic - your pick. It’s the same distance either way! Hills. You’ll like hills.

Trash talk is fun and we enjoyed your article. However, you may be underestimating this Duke team. NCCU is not a great measuring stick but nonetheless, there were some eye-opening aspects to that game.

In all seriousness you have an impressive program and we admire it. Other than the occasional point shaving scandal, you really do things the right way and we always pull for the Wildcats assuming we’re not playing you guys ourselves.

We’ll see you Saturday. If you were here, we’d hang out with you during the game and buy you guys a drink afterwards and keep the trash talk rolling. Northwestern people are a fun bunch.