It is remarkable how often people easily hold others to a higher standard that they are willing to adhere to themselves.
Over the years, N.C. State has often been the source of ridicule and scorn – with much of it deriving from those affiliated with or who merely choose to support UNC-Chapel Hill.
The day after this past Christmas, Tar Heel Monthly publisher Adam Lucas was kind enough to tweet, unsolicited, about how N.C. State being ranked higher than Carolina nationally had only occurred 7.7 percent of the time since basketball head coach Roy Williams took the job.
The tweet from Lucas came days after the Martin Report was released, detailing how UNC-Chapel Hill athletes were taking bogus classes since 1997, six full years before Williams accepted the job – which means Williams’ teams have had an unfair advantage over State during his entire tenure.
To be fair, a single tweet on Twitter must consist of no more than 140 characters, but it is stark and telling which facts Tar Heel administrators and supporters, or enablers, typically choose to omit.
That was not the first time someone affiliated with the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill has in some fashion made statements or issued tweets belittling others while having delusions of grandeur as to the greatness of their school. It has even involved people with a much greater rank within the Tar Heel community than Lucas.
Outgoing Chancellor Holden Thorp famously needled students at Duke who were camping out for the Carolina game by saying they were in tents while the students in Chapel Hill were busy studying. Thorp presiding over the greatest academic scandal in over 50 years at North Carolina while choosing to chastise the academics of others is haughty indeed. When the head of a university permeates arrogance towards his neighbor rivals, the aura of superiority is only going to flow down to his underlings.
N.C State is probably oversensitive to mockery it receives from Chapel Hill, but State has bore the brunt of academic-related putdowns from Carolina for many years.
When the men’s basketball team was placed on probation in 1990, it basically was a death penalty to the proud program. But it was largely a self-administered punishment.
At that point, the basketball programs in Raleigh and Chapel Hill were essentially equal. N.C. State had actually won the last national championship between the two schools. Both teams had an ACC regular season and ACC Tournament title in the previous three seasons.
For many years, N.C. State made mistakes. As bad as things had gotten at the end of Jim Valvano’s tenure as head coach and athletic director, the perception of N.C. State athletes among the community and the nation was even worse. Changes were needed and State was willing to make them, even forsaking future athletic glory to do so.
It has been frustrating for Wolfpack Nation to see its basketball team stuck in the mud over the last 23 years, while the Tar Heel basketball program has been to great heights.
The solace for people who love State must then come with the juxtaposition of State’s self-administered punishment versus North Carolina’s lack of scruples and self-awareness. If glory on the basketball court is worth devaluing the education received from a university and belittling a rival is more important than acknowledging the unfair practices that gave the school an unfair advantage, then Carolina has made its bed. And it is a bed that N.C. State itself chose not to lay in 23 years ago.
When N.C. State travels to Chapel Hill Saturday, there will likely be many stats used to relate the recent success of the Tar Heels over the Wolfpack. However, the gulf between the two schools in basketball since 1990 is not a failure for State – it’s their salvation.
