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Message: [QUOTE="JeepCSC, post: 2792876, member: 3214"] The intensity from Tobacco Road rivalries is as much cultural as it is anything that takes place in Cameron or the Smith Center. Basketball is the field of combat, but the war is larger. I don’t know enough about the inner workings of the state of Alabama or the state of Florida or wherever to say whether that truth carries over there. But my guess would be that football is likely just a stand-in for rural/urban, farmer/doctor, whatever else divide that happens to tribalize us, with the added wrinkle of Duke who brings the whole Yankee/Southern thing into the mix. Also, whereas most SEC states only have the two programs to divvy up football talent, NC is stretched thin with 4 major conference teams plus ECU. For that and other reasons, basketball is more firmly entrenched here but the rivalries are working off the same blueprints whether the ball is round or oblong. Which then brings us to UConn. Much of the animus that drives college sports rivalries elsewhere in the country simply don’t exist in the Northeast. Pro sports filled the cultural vacuum there, and the top colleges there deemphasized sports in the 50s and I think other regional colleges followed their lead. College talent went elsewhere, and with them went the tv audience and money. So UConn was stuck trying to recreate a rivalry along the lines seen in the South or Midwest but without any of the underpinnings that made the rivalries feel tangible. It’s simply a near impossible task. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach