donbosco
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‘Four Corners: How UNC, NC State, Duke, and Wake Forest Made North Carolina the Crossroads of the Basketball Universe’ was published in 1999. The author, Joe Menzer was a sports writer at ‘The Winston Salem Journal’ (he works for ESPN now) and was ‘involved’ with The Big Four in those days. I loved the title and the book was a good history read. We often work our way through sports books more for the memories than the analysis after all.
Today, engaged in what passes for the ACC Tournament here in 2025, I return to the sentiment evoked by that title. The schools listed by Menzer were once known as The Big Four - and they were. Two Public North Carolina System Universities and two Private, originally religiously-affiliated Universities, the four of which covered a lot of what mattered in the state in some key ways.
In the days when connections could be less acute there was great potential for a person in The Old North State to affix themself to UNC, State, Duke, or Wake Forest. Of course long ago Wake was for the Baptists and Duke stood for the Methodists - those were fairly easy calls. And whereas most of North Carolina was rural and agricultural in those days, State was big in the backcountry. Seems there was almost always a Carolina Pharmacy in small town centers (before the strip-malling of everything) thus UNC pulled from medicine and then there were the lawyers, teachers, and government types also overwhelmingly tied to Chapel Hill.
Of course sometimes a player or a coach or even just a color could pull in a fan and of course links were made through actual attendance at a school, that might include family and friends - no doubt enmities could just as easily be sparked that way. People had other identifications too - Guilford and Elon, East Carolina, and Appalachian State and Davidson focused strong loyalties for regional or theological reasons.
In the slowly integrating past, Tar Heel African Americans pledged their devotion to CIAA schools like NC A&T, Shaw, Winston Salem State, and NC Central, all of which have fielded knock-down, drag-out great, but mainly media unheralded teams over the decades. Of course all of those schools still count on their partisans and multiple rivalries spice up our lives and loves season after season.
But rather than rivalries, my primary focus here is the Truly Beautiful Game of Basketball. Football has had some Moments of Glory in North Carolina to be sure and for that matter we’ve long played baseball with great passion - but we are, I argue, along with Indiana and Kentucky - A Hoops Heartland. In that I mean, places where basketball has overshadowed other sports and insinuated itself at the most fundamental levels.
One of my traveling pastimes is counting basketball goals. My eyes are now trained to pick them out of the camouflage of the countryside or urban jumble. I even scan for courts when landing in a city airport. From driveways to parks I’ve always been gladdened by the number of backboards I’ve come to expect driving across The Tar Heel State.
I’m afraid though, that I must report that I am seeing less and less evidence of our previous dedication (hysteria?).
I taught a course that I called “Southern Culture on The Skids? Sports, Food, and Music in North Carolina.” I discovered at that time that the strongest sports identification among that small, generational sampling was to the NFL Carolina Panthers. This, as they say, “Like to broke my heart.” Football is fine as something to do until basketball season starts up - a diversion at best - but definitely NOT a passion. And for a professional to surpass a collegiate association? Wrong, just wrong.
A couple-three years back Basketball in North Carolina got a boost to be sure when Carolina and dook met in the Final Four. Governor Cooper, a Tar Heel born and bred, declared the state ‘the center of the college basketball universe’ at the time and despite the incredible dread and elation we all felt over that apocalyptic meeting all turned out for the best as the true blue waylaid the darkness and retired the Rat. Despite that huge positive I admit that I’m worried. And of course N.C. State’s miracle run to the Final Four last year focused the eyes of the world on Raleighwood and echoes of 1983 and The Cardiac Pack danced in our heads (not to mention that 1974 team of “wolpfack” champions led by Burleson and Thompson - both native North Carolinians).
Changes in the very structure of college sport have worked to strip away much of the way we identified - players now often stay but a year at the school that ‘signed’ them, denying fans the happiness engendered by the love, or the hate, of their individual style and comportment. The kind of attachments that sustained our fervor are much harder to cultivate now because of the literal ‘fly-by-night’ nature of team rosters and coaching careers. In a nod to the Free Market the Portal and Paid Players ‘innovation’ gives student-athletes the same type of freedom to pursue top dollars or transfer without penalty as their non-athlete classmates. It is fairer I suppose, but it plays hell with traditional sentiments and rivalries.
Don’t get me wrong, I hurt, really hurt, when Carolina, my Alma Mater loses, so much the more so when that happens at the hands of another Big Four school. My zeal for Carolina Blue is not diminished - but I’m not sure about some of the folks coming along a couple of generations behind me. I am thankful, for example, that Coach Hubert Davis declared that Carolina was not a “pit stop university” though maintaining that standard and being competitive will certainly prove difficult in a world of “one-and-dones” and now-legal player pay-offs.
Alarmingly despite all of the dollars and freedom of movement infusing the game at present, as I drive North Carolina these days I’m also seeing a steady decline in driveway backboards. Obviously we’re not going to run short of boys and girls developing their skills to a high-level but I think I’m most worried about the neighborhood 3-on-3 and the city park half-court contests where mid-level hoopsters play mainly earthbound games.
Those are the places where the dribble, the pass, and the shot are learned, personal and team strategies devised, and the capacity to both Love and Hate so Happily are mastered. After all, it isn’t the big games on CBS and ESPN that made us “The Crossroads of the College Basketball Universe” it’s the ones played in dusty little dim-lit gyms and blacktop courts with our dook, or Wake, or State-loving friends that did that. For those who still care we’ve got an old school ACC Tournament Big Four Battle up today between “The University of The People” and “The Baptists.” Go Carolina, Beat Those Deacs!!
