Being an avowed mid-major snob makes it difficult to watch a championship game that almost always consists of two teams from the power conferences that you couldn’t, well, give a shit about. As with any sporting event, having someone to cheer for makes watching more fun. In my case, choosing one side to root on is the only way I can stomach sitting through two hours of Billy Packer.
While it’s always hard to decide which of the corporate conference machines to cheer for, the past few seasons certain things have made my decision a bit easier. Two seasons ago, it was the ‘Cuse and their frosh sensation, Carmelo Anthony, who always seemed to have a smile on his face that season, that I cheered on to victory. Last year, Georgia Tech’s cardiac kid act captured my allegiance for one night.
At first glance, the competitors in the 2005 championship game, Illinois and UNC, the top two power conference automatons for most of the season seem to have little to distinguish them and make them worthy of one night’s cheer. Sure, there’s the emerging story line that this is contest between talent (UNC) and team (Illinois) but that’s a distinction that’s complete horseshit and is more a product of lazy reporting by the MSM and the resulting pack mentality.
Dig deeper and there are a slew of reasons to cheer for — Illinois — to win the championship. The most obvious of which is that Illinois is a solidly Blue state while UNC is as Bible Belt Red as you can get north of Alabama.
Which state’s flagship public university would you rather see win? The one that unleashed the bigoted, know-nothing, xenophobic Jesse Helms, the worst United States senator in history, on the world or the state that gave us Abe Lincoln? Pretty clear choice, huh?
If the Illini win, that means a celebration in one of our nation’s greatest cities, Chicago, the city of broad shoulders. A Tar Heel victory means a party in … ummm … Charlotte, a soulless sprawl of a “city.”
Illinois is where those lovable losers, the Chicago Cubs play. North Carolina is home of that unlovable winner, Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski. And when it comes to hoops, Duke and coach K get to the real heart of why I’ll be cheering for Illinois tonight:
I fucking hate the ACC, the most craven and greed-driven of all the BCS conferences.
The Big 10 may not be much better than the ACC when it comes to chasing the almighty buck but it’s better. And they don’t count Duke as a member, which is good enough for me.
Go Illini!
Kick some ACC ass tonight!
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on Mar 24th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
You turd. Jesse Helms refuses to set foot on the campus of UNC, let alone the town of Chapel Hill, so antithetical is it to his views.