ACC Basketball is a safe conversation under just about any circumstances anywhere in North Carolina. This is the state that produced Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time. This is the state that, more likely than not, has sent at least one team to the Final Four of the NCAA tournament every year. This is the state where the usual cultural disapproval of gambling is conveniently forgotten every March, when the Brackets are published and photocopied and office pools abound. This is a state where wearing red, or yellow, or the wrong shade of blue in the wrong place can lead to argument.
People take their basketball seriously here.
Located just miles apart, these two schools have dominated the sport for decades, producing top NBA drafted players and masterful coaches that any professional team would pay dearly to have. Innovations in the game pioneered here have been so successful that the NCAA was forced to change the rules of the game, instituting the shot clock to counter Dean Smith's famous Four Corners play. Duke University's fans, known as the Cameron Crazies, have been written up in Time magazine for their psych-out antics, and the village of tents that springs up around the stadium at Duke as students wait in line for tickets has become known as Krzyzewskiville. These games are such passionate affairs that they set brother against brother, husband against wife, and parents against children. Not since the Civil War has there been a more divisive issue in North Carolina than the Duke-Carolina games.