Why is Duke so bad on defense?

There’s an article that gets written this time of year, right during the heart of conference play. Duke’s defense could be a problem–the header in an article from two days ago. Duke’s defense needs to improve by March–published the last week of January 2016. Defense continues to plague Duke after a devastating home loss in mid-January 2015. (Last year, the discussion was mostly about Grayson Allen’s incessant horseplay, but the Blue Devils did get torched badly enough by NCSU and Dennis Smith Jr.–again at home in late January–that Coach K ceremoniously banned the team from the locker room.)

So this is a pattern. More importantly, it didn’t always used to be this way. I’m too young to be nostalgic about ’80s and ’90s Duke–the hey-day of “pesky gym rat” defenders like Steve Wojciechowski–but I recall watching Shane Battier and Shelden Williams patrol the paint with authority in the early-aughts. I remember Battier covering so much ground during a 2001 Final Four game, his name called so crisply by Jim Nantz (“re-JECTED by Battier!), that I imagined myself as the M.O.P. during the next day’s dodgeball game. It didn’t make sense, but hey, at least it was an ethos.

Nevertheless, that’s anecdotal. Fortunately, KenPom.com has data going back nearly two decades, data which includes the adjusted offense and adjusted defense ratings (which factor in pace and opponent quality) for every team in the NCAA. Here’s Duke’s rank (with 1 being the best in the country) for each of the past seventeen years. Keep an eye on the year 2008, and see if you can figure out why it’s interesting.

Year	Offense Rank	Defensive Rank
2002	1	1
2003	13	15
2004	2	3
2005	13	2
2006	1	16
2007	44	6
2008	13	7
2009	7	28
2010	1	5
2011	5	9
2012	8	79
2013	4	26
2014	1	86
2015	3	11
2016	4	86
2017	6	47
2018 (through 2/8)	2	78

Did you get it? 2008–an entire decade ago–is the last year during which Duke had a better defense than offense. Every year since, including its championship runs in 2010 and 2015, the offense has led the way. The offense has never disappeared from the top-ten nationally, but the defense–especially in the last seven years or so, starting with the 2012 team that bowed out to Lehigh–has fallen off a cliff.

So why–and how–have things changed? There are a few culprits. Perhaps the most commonly-invoked explanation is Coach K’s adoption–or gravitation–toward recruiting “one-and-dones,” or top prospects who may only stick around for one year before jumping to the NBA. Duke’s first one-and-done was Kyrie Irving in 2011, so let’s split the data into two sets–2002-2010, and 2011 onward–and see how the numbers stack up.

Years	Avg. Offensive Rank	Avg. Defensive Rank	Avg. # “One-and-dones”
2002-2010	10.6	9.2	0.0
2011-2018	4.1	52.8	1.4*

*Doesn’t assume any one-and-dones for 2018, although there will almost certainly be multiple.

From the year after Duke’s 2001 championship run up through its fourth championship in 2010, the Blue Devils were fairly balanced–the offense and defense were around tenth-best. Since then, they’ve become bipolar: The offense is typically top-five, but the defense is tiers below what it used to be.

It’s worth noting that this doesn’t mean the glory days are over, by any means. Duke has flamed out in the tournament a few times in recent memory, but their overall degree of success hasn’t been far from its previous level. As the below table shows, their win percentage is identical; they’ve slightly underperformed in the tournament while also being less consistent there.

Years	Overall Win %	Avg. # of Tournament Wins	Variance in # of NCAA Wins
2002-2010	80.0	2.4	3.0
2011-2018	80.0	2.0	4.3

But back to the matter at hand: defense. I had a few ideas for the decline. A roster full of one-and-dones has some tell-tale characteristics: First, they likely have a number of superstars who are deserving of playing big minutes. Second, their depth is savaged each year as players jump to the NBA or, as has happened recently, they transfer to a program that can give them more playing time. (Since 2011, six top recruits have transferred from Duke; another, Rasheed Sulaimon, was dismissed from the program.) My first hypothesis–triggered by the Duke-UVA game this year in which the Blue Devil starters played all but six minutes–is that Duke’s starting five gets overused in games and tires, leading to decreased effectiveness on the defensive end.

I looked at the minutes played for each of Duke’s top five most-used players over the season–would the lineups stacked with top recruits be more imbalanced?

Not really. Duke’s recent lineups are fairly top-heavy–their five go-to players take up roughly three-quarters of all available minutes–but that’s not a departure from how Coach K has typically deployed his lineups. Moreover, the correlation between defensive rank and this measure of player overuse is practically zero (-0.014).

Years	% Minutes from Top Five Players*
2002-2010	74.3%
2011-2018	74.9%

*Straight average, not weighted.

I also explored how regular seasons have expanded since 2006–with a change in how multi-game tournaments are counted, teams now play 2-4 more games over the regular season. Perhaps this is another added cause for fatigue, but the change predates the drop-off in quality by a few years, so it doesn’t hold up as an explanation.

The second argument is that all freshmen simply don’t know how to play defense, the logic being that one-and-dones roundly take the place of grizzled upperclassmen who–while lacking a silky smooth offensive game–know how to scrap and claw on defense. I’ve always found this argument a bit weak: Anthony Davis, as a freshman at Kentucky, was a monster; Justise Winslow, while at Duke, had no problem shutting down opposing wings.

But perhaps these were the exceptions, I figured. I ran the same analysis as before, but this time looking at the percentage of minutes allotted to Duke freshmen each season.

Years	% Minutes from Top Five Players*
2002-2010	23.3%
2011-2018	35.5%

*Straight average, not weighted.

This is what we’d expect: In the new one-and-done era, more freshmen are earning playing time year-after-year, and fewer upperclassmen are seeing the court. But what does it mean for the effect on defense?

It’s not a perfect relationship, but there is a trend: The more minutes freshmen play, the worse the defensive rating. (The correlation is .395.) This is a start, although it certainly doesn’t seem to be a silver bullet.*

*Let’s note that the one “good” defensive year in recent memory is 2015, Duke’s last national championship season. While their final defensive ranking was 11th, they entered the NCAA tournament ranked 62nd in that category before playing a solid (and somewhat lucky) six games against teams they were well-suited to stop (e.g., Utah, Gonzaga, and Wisconsin).

What I haven’t figured out, though, is why freshmen are worse defenders. My initial guess was that they foul more–and put the opposing team on the foul line more frequently–but in the eight full seasons for which we have this data, no trend shows up. (In fact, the correlation between freshmen minutes and opposing FT attempts is slightly negative.) We do see a clear relationship between freshmen minutes and opposing field goal percentage: The more freshmen play for Duke, the better the opposition shoots. (Correlation: .462.) But this is just a way of restating what we already know: The defense is worse when freshmen play because the defense is worse. 

There’s also the delicate question of whether Coach K has lost his fastball. If we zoom in on the 2002-2010 period, before Duke added its first one-and-dones, the defensive rating was trending in the wrong direction…:

…while it was actually playing freshmen a little less frequently:

There are many questions remaining: Why are freshmen bad defenders? Have rule changes–particularly a recent de-emphasis on charge whistles that Duke notoriously has tried to earn, combined with an increase in overall fouls–played a role? And why, with the extended preseason that the NCAA approved starting in 2013, hasn’t Coach K been able to crack this code? Does he not know how to *gasp* communicate with millennials?

I’m interested in another question, though: Seeing this trend, what would Coach K think of it? I’m struck by that two-year offensive dip in 2007 and 2008 which, really, is the only blemish on that side of the ball in the past two decades. I wonder if K simply grew weary of coaching players like Greg Paulus and DeMarcus Nelson–players who couldn’t get enough buckets to down a not-good VCU squad in the NCAA first round–and decided he needed more offensive ammunition. Although his roster for the next few years was laden with upperclassmen, he soon snagged Kyrie Irving and then Austin Rivers, two unbelievable talents. The defense suffered more, but the offense was fantastic, and Duke has never looked back.

If you have the same job for years on end, even hard-ass disciplinarians get to a point where they say, “Screw it, let’s have some fun.” Is that where we are now with Coach K? Given how frustrated he looks on the sideline when his team can’t grab a single defensive rebound, probably not.

But the trend is clear: This is the new normal. Duke isn’t a top defensive team–and hasn’t been for a while. Fans and commentators would do well to stop acting so surprised.

You Always Have One Job

My favorite kind of critic, typically a sports fan, is the guy yelling–at the TV, his wife, or the cab driver–”You had one job!” It’s such a reductive attitude to have, to minimize someone’s livelihood to a simple failure at a given task, be it not fumbling a punt, not burning a dinner, not driving off a bridge, etc. It’s wonderfully dismissive and belittling. It’s one of the rare ignorant comments that, in a tortured, tertiary vein, actually reveals a sad truth about our world.

That truth: We all, at any given point, are that person who only had one job. This isn’t some meta-statement about how we could be, if enough things broke against us in life, in such a disastrous position. No, we–the unspectacular underclass of society, myself included– perpetually are in that position. We all lack the security, the long-term benefit of the doubt, that will remove the possibility (or even the likelihood!) of some asshole yelling at us for the most inoffensive screw-up. Anyone who hasn’t felt that pressure of a looming “YHOJ” lobbed in their direction has never worked a nine-to-five or entered a relationship in which the slightest onus falls or could fall on them. “YHOJ” is brilliant for its universality: It is brusque, and yet, it carts a not-inconsequential ladle of sympathy. The man–it’s almost always a man–imparting the “YHOJ” is seconds away from being, too, victimized by the “YHOJ.” The first rule of “YHOJ” is that the “YHOJ” spares no one.

“YHOJ” is best deployed at the poles of importance–in situations of tremendous flippancy or severe gravity. Your friend’s computer dies when he’s trying to show you a “kinda funny” Jimmy Fallon sketch? You had one job! Your subordinate officer’s key witness in a triple homicide goes missing during the only ten-minute period he needed protection? Lieutenant–you had one job!

By and large, though, “YHOJ” gets abused as a way of release, a plaintive wail that has no hope of inculcating doubt or despair in its target. Mostly, “YHOJ” gets delivered indirectly, through some intermediary–a car radio, perhaps, or a flat-screen. The deliverer is dissatisfied with the individual who, clearly, had just the sole job in front of them; the messages makes that much evident. But the deliverer inevitably has a greater gripe: Himself.

You see, the deliverer isn’t happy with his lot in life. He is powerless; he deludes himself with the notion that he–even though the man certainly can’t do that job himself–can make sure that this other individual can successfully complete their task. If he focuses enough, like the one-job-having fellow should be doing with regards to their one job, then nothing can go awry. In fact, all the deliverer can hope for is nothing (nothing more, at least, in his ceaseless hellscape of a life) to go wrong. And when it does, well, he has no recourse but to tell the other–who briefly matches the deliverer in the size if not quantity of his failings–”YHOJ!”

Perhaps that’s the funniest part about it: The “YHOJ!” seems on its face to be befitting an alpha male, a declarative, full-throated dismissal of another. But it’s just a whine. The “YHOJ”–or its cousin, “Do Your Job”–only has significance when coming from a peer or superior. If my editor told me that on a mid-Monday, I’d be typing away like Hunter Thompson at 5 AM; if Bill Belichick (whose Patriots’ team motto of “Do Your Job” is literally trademarked) told a special teamer such a thing, he’d start sprinting faster than Boston ran away from busing.

The cry of “YHOJ” overwhelmingly falls flat not due to its content but because of the power imbalance, while simultaneously underscoring the power imbalance in play. The complaint tries to level the playing field–it puts the fan’s sole task of not getting piss-drunk at his in-laws on par with swatting a hail mary or dunking a basketball–and in doing so, unwittingly heightens the slope.

What makes the expression timeless, though, is that while the neutral observer can enjoy the one-directional exchange in this bemused context, the deliverer gets what he wants out of it. He airs a grievance. He shares his pain. The cry is raw and necessary. Therapeutic, even. In turn, its effect proves the recursive truth, that even “YHOJ” has but one job to do.

The wisdom of Roger Federer

A boring but useful way to think of tennis is as a two-sided risk assessment. My optimal strategy comes not so much from questioning how much risk I, a player, am willing to take on this shot, but by calculating the most pressure I can put my opponent under while not really gambling myself. Said another way, the smart player wants to find the easiest, safest way to ensure their opponent’s discomfort and eventual failure–and, thus, their own success.

Often, this easiest way coincides with boring tennis. In the Roger Federer – Rafael Nadal rivalry, a righty vs. lefty matchup, the natural strategic devolution culminated with Nadal rolling high forehands to Federer’s backhand, time and again, until Federer made an error or left a short enough ball that Nadal could then punish. For the majority of their careers, up until last year’s Australian Open Final, Nadal’s tactic was undeniably effective. And yet, aesthetically, it paled in comparison to Federer’s aggressive and innovative ball-striking.

One of the larger issues with modern tennis is that smart play does not coincide with engaging play. The ability to loop groundstrokes with heavy topspin, to pin the opponent behind the baseline with safe, parabolic forehands, makes defensive play optimal. The proverbial savvy players, by and large, are those like Nadal and Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, capable of chasing down most anything and content to pick their spots on the attack. The sagely defenders are generally fine with allowing their opponent to spray imprecise attacking shots that lose them the point or leave them vulnerable to a counterattack. In the long-run, the numbers are in their favor.

In contrast, the offensively-minded gamblers–Federer, Nick Kyrgios, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, etc.–can be impudent and reckless. But their style, because of its quasi-nearsightedness and disregard for optimality, comes across as endearing. Even more so than his twenty grand slam championships, I’d argue that Federer’s style defines him as the best to ever play. Nadal or Djokovic could surpass his haul of majors; what’s indisputable is that neither will do so with his on-court grace.

But in the 2018 Australian Open Final, Federer demonstrated something that’s in his toolkit, even if he prefers not to always use it: The percentage play. He was facing Marin Cilic, who belongs to a small cohort of players, along with Juan Martin del Potro, Kyrgios, and maybe Tomas Berdych, with a consistently bigger forehand than the Swiss Maestro’s. Indeed, an in-match graphic showed Cilic hitting his forehand 10% or so faster than Federer, while their backhands were coming off the strings at roughly the same clip. (I can’t find the exact numbers, but I’m pretty sure I saw this, even if my recall in the foggy haze of 5:30 AM.)

In the past, this velocity deficit hasn’t deterred Federer–even though it has been to his detriment. He lost to del Potro at the 2017 U.S. Open in part because he didn’t shy away from the big Argentine’s stronger wing, repeating the same mistake he had made in the 2009 U.S. Open against the same opponent. Federer is prideful, and he thinks his forehand–his best stroke–can hang with anyone’s.

Sunday, though, he changed it up. He routinely sought out Cilic’s backhand, taking his chances in patient, crosscourt backhand-to-backhand rallies. And in doing so, he hurt the Croatian. Cilic finished the match with 64 unforced errors. For whatever reason the detailed stats don’t directly track backhand UEs, but once we account for those on the forehand and double faults, we see that Cilic finished with 35 backhand unforced errors, and Federer had 24. It’s the same difference as they had on the forehand side (23 to 12), but Cilic did much less damage there: He hit twelve winners to Federer’s seven on the forehand wing–but just five to Fed’s three on the backhand side.

To put that in perspective: Federer’s forehand was minus-five; his backhand was minus-twenty-one. Cilic’s forehand was minus-eleven, and his backhand was minus-thirty. For the majority of the match, Cilic couldn’t make solid contact with his weaker groundstroke, and his second-best was worse than Federer’s second-best.

It wasn’t Federer’s prettiest championship–one could make the argument that he could’ve won in three sets and almost certainly should’ve won in four. But ultimately, the percentages tipped in his favor. It’s rare to see Federer’s opponent end the match with more winners (45-41); in fact, Cilic was the only combatant of the fortnight to pull off the feat. However, he did so in an error-ridden manner that lacked the precision necessary for ultimate success. The style he was playing was simply too risky.

Cilic can take solace, though, in posing enough of a threat that he forced the greatest player of all time to do something he considers anathema: Be boring. Or, to paint Federer in a more charitable light, he simply played smart.

An Appreciation for the Australian Open

The tennis season’s first major is its worst. The Australian Open has no real defining characteristics: It lacks the history of Wimbledon and the acerbic patterns, color and play, of the French Open; its hardcourt twin, the U.S. Open, has a monopoly on the glamour branding of tennis as showcase. Really, the Australian Open is the Other Major–both the youngest major and the one players have, throughout its existence, most commonly skipped. And for the American viewer, it’s the most inconvenient: The finals for both men’s and women’s singles will start, for East Coast fans, at the nightmarish hour of 3:30 A.M.

However, recently I’ve somewhat come around on the major for two reasons. First, the timing. For the finals it is, admittedly, awful: The European majors have it designed perfectly, where I can roll out of bed at 9:30 on both weekend mornings, flip on the telly (British for television), and pour myself coffee as warm-ups are just getting underway. Trying to wake at 3:30 A.M., of course, simply spells trouble for the rest of your day, while also hindering your ability to do anything remotely fun the previous night. I don’t need to belabor that point–you guys get me.

But the schedule during the rest of the tournament–especially the first week–works great. In the past, say, 28 hours, I woke up at 6:15 or so to watch the end of Nick Kyrgios edging out Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, went to work, watched the marathon Simona Halep-Lauren Davis showdown, went to bed, and then woke up at 6:00 again to watch the final set of Roger Federer’s win over Richard Gasquet. It requires planning, but it’s fairly manageable; plus, there’s something to be said for not wasting an entire day watching tennis–especially when, if you’re like me, that means frantically checking the score tracker at your office desk every thirty seconds. In fact, you’re being productive by sleeping, AND, by needing to wake up early, you’re transforming the rest of your morning. The hardest part of rising early is having a reason to do so; the Australian Open more than justifies the pre-dawn alarm.

More importantly, the major has perhaps the greatest element of the unknown. It effectively represents the start of the tennis season–since we last saw them, players have rehabbed injuries, developed new shots, committed to new workout regimens. Superstars from the previous year may have lost their form completely, or they need to scramble to regain their technique in the early rounds. The barometers used to seed and predict the tournament depend upon results from many months prior; they are notoriously inaccurate. This year, six-time champion Novak Djokovic comes in as the 14-seed. Last year, Federer topped Rafael Nadal in a heavyweight battle, but in the context of the tournament, it was the 17-seed besting the 9-seed. The seeding helps to create intriguing matchups early on, too: Federer and Tomas Berdych met in the semifinals at Wimbledon, but they faced off in the third round of the Australian Open.

Combine the weird matchups with the uneven forms that players find themselves in, add the oppressive midsummer southern-hemisphere heat, and wild things happen. In Australia, second-tier players–like Tsonga, Fernando González, and Marcos Baghdatis–make unprecedented and since-unmatched runs to major finals. Other stars, such as Federer and Nadal last year and Angelique Kerber in 2016, make statements about their form for the rest of the year. Sometimes players like Djokovic–in 2008, and more emphatically in 2011–announce their arrival for good.

The point, which I’m realizing more as I try to present old results in an forcedly thematic manner, is the Australian major, more so than its three peers, carries a sense of rebirth. The event ticks off another year, and it allows fans to indulge an eye to the future. It works, broadly, as an unveiling of both new talent and refurbished oldie-but-goodies. In all facets of life, there is no time to be more positive–and less negative–than the start. Good things are signs, and bad things haven’t had time yet to develop into patterns. That the Australian Open gives you, the fan, what you want to believe in–while simultaneously not foisting the bounds of reality and time upon your vision–is something. It may be pure naiveté, but that’s still something.

Five or six things I wrote in 2017

For Duke Magazine:

• About the lives of international students
• About the struggles of Ph.D. students

For Crooked Scoreboard:

• About Uber and “The Process”

For this blog:

• About Susan Collins (from February!!)
• And finally, perhaps most importantly, some warnings about soup consumption and state fairs

The False Boot-Strapping of American Football

I joined a soccer league this winter. It’s a combination of the division I played in this fall and the two above it; during the season opener a few Saturdays back, my team, which had a number of holdovers from the fall squad, spent the first forty-five getting summarily stomped. Rarely did the ball leave our side of the field; every couple minutes, it seemed like our goalkeeper was having to valiantly snuff out an odd-numbers rush. By the time we gathered at halftime, a number of us were talking, with varying levels of jocularity, about quitting the league and resting up for the lesser demands of the spring season.

At that time, the score was 1-0. Had that been an American football game, we’d have been on our third stringers, having lost our first two lines on the depth chart to catastrophically galling injuries. Our coach would have sworn at us at halftime, blaming a lack of effort for our crippling talent deficit; we would have come out, ready to kill, and continued to run hopelessly into a buzzsaw.

But soccer, of course, is a different game; more so than brute relentlessness, offensive success in the sport requires a modicum of a creative burst–of inspired, atypical performance. There is no three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust strategy in soccer that begets sustainable, positive outcomes. We know that it’s not a solvable game, and certainly not solvable by effort alone. It requires brilliance–and luck.

Maybe those elements make soccer unpalatable to Americans–success in the sport runs counter to American dogma. While perhaps the most American element of football is its territorial field layout–you can read (as many have) yardage gains as representing imperialistic successes–I’d argue the second-most is its incentive structure: the first down. Football simultaneously favors grinding consistency and devalues intermittent brilliance. Gaining four yards every play, ad infinitum, is vastly superior a twenty-yard chunk every five plays. Being solid is preferable to being streaky.

Football inherently promises great things to those who don’t stop–who make use of every play, who don’t cheat (and earn penalties), who don’t set their sights too high (and risk incompletions or back-breaking turnovers). The optimal offensive strategy, in theory, is boring; there are no highlights, just a culmination of sustained brutality that results in a seven-point bonus.

This strategy, though, does not express itself in any modern iteration of the game. Perhaps one of Alabama’s recent championship teams comes closest–steadily, unrelentingly plying the opposition into submission. But teams, increasingly, pass the ball, guaranteeing failure roughly forty percent of the time. It’s a bastardization of the sport’s ethos–remember, the forward pass didn’t exist in the game originally–and yet, now such a gameplan is optimal. The de facto best strategy has risk. The de facto best strategy seeks moments of brilliance. There are diminishing returns, inevitably, from ramming one’s helmet into a defensive line time and again. Ultimately, even in the sport designed to showcase this very virtue, hard work and consistency are simultaneously unachievable and insufficient.

The juxtaposition of football’s incentive structure and its optimal strategy represents, I believe, the false promises made to America’s underclasses and their reality. We learn to value the worker who dutifully punches the clock each day, while shunning the flighty idealist. We defund the creative outlets–first arts and music classes for our youth, then the national endowments for adults–in favor of insipid but utilitarian alternatives. We treat our post-school lives as an exercise in avoiding setbacks–be they crippling debt, persistent unemployment. We take solace in following a path of small success after small success, steadfast in our belief that such plodding progress will be enough.

Meanwhile, we–and I’m primarily talking to my fellow millennials here–are not getting ahead in any meaningful way. We’re routinely underemployed, and those who have jobs are taking a smaller and smaller share of the profits. We’re playing by the rules of a system designed for a reality that doesn’t exist, still telling ourselves we’re on the path to prosperity when that path has been abolished. We’re trying to eventually buy houses when the affordable housing we want doesn’t exist; we’re putting our money into our 401(k)s when those returns aren’t what they once were, and retirement doesn’t start when it once did. Essentially, we’re running the ball on every down against a stacked box and expecting that to be enough.

What’s the solution? Well, this is the sad thing: There isn’t one, or, at least, there isn’t a sustainable one. Like a successful football offense, to get ahead, one has to take risks. One has to accept that some unemployment will lead to a greater payoff down the road, that going into debt won’t be a permanent burden. By taking on this risk, some will get screwed. Inevitably, it will be those who are already worse-off–those who weren’t born on third base with a familial fallback of wealth already in place, those who have to provide the land’s fat rather than live off it themselves–they will be the ones who fail more frequently.

The other solution is broader, both idealistic and naive. It’s a perverse, broken sport that the working class is forced to play: We could work to change the rules, so that not only the extremely talented manage to advance down the field. We could give everyone a wider safety net–perhaps a universal basic income, perhaps free college for all. We could make unions more feasible and popular, earning workers more benefits. We could, of course, tax the 1% much more progressively. But mostly, we could awake from our collective daze and stop pretending like this current system is worth keeping. This game has rarely been fun to play; now, it’s worth than ever. The time has come, I think, to at least ask if there’s something better out there.

Against Beer-Shaming

For the most part, India pale ales are fine. Some, in fact, are really, really good: Maine’s Lunch and Dinner, for example, fit the bill if you’re into ELITE IPAs; most any mainstream Sierra Nevada offering does a bang-up job, and you don’t have to get a goddamn cash advance to afford one. People like to hate on IPAs–mostly because they want to hate on the people who love IPAs, which I totally get, and partly because the hop-industrial complex that is overrunning craft beer is both concerning and insane. On the merits of the India Pale Ale genre itself, though, it’s a weak case. IPAs are harsh, and they’re a bit of an acquired taste. But, Christ, isn’t all beer?

So I’m not here to denigrate the entire genus of IPAs; I’m also not looking to wrap myself to become its flagbearer in the beer debates that reach a level of, like, near-jingoism. Both IPA lovers and detractors make good points, although maybe not quite the points they think.

I think the argument that bros try–and fail–to make when they worship at the altar of IPAs isn’t that IPAs are the best beers. When they unwittingly advance such an argument, it comes across, like a bad IPA, overly strong and unpleasant. The more subtle justification is that IPAs–due to their more complex rendering of hops and ancillary ingredients–have a higher floor than any other genre of beer. The worst IPA undeniably beats the worst lager. This isn’t surprising: IPAs are more costly, more expensive. There’s a minimum threshold required to make, I don’t know, even Abita’s Andygator IPA (the worst beer I’ve ever willingly purchased), and that’s a taller task than Milwaukee’s Best is able to clear. If you’re making a blind choice–assuming cost is no object–and you’re hoping to minimize your risk of selecting a terrible beer, get an IPA.

Note that this is different from saying IPAs are the best. That’s an argument my brother made a few weeks ago, over Thanksgiving, as we stepped inside the esteemed Sam’s Quik Shop in Durham to select a few six-packs. Look at all the IPAs here, he said. When a shop like this has that many IPAs–I’m paraphrasing at this point, but it’s necessary to convey the pigheadedness of the sentiment–that’s just proof that IPAs are the best.

First of all, his claim reeks of confirmation bias; I highly doubt Sam’s selection is so imbalanced. But even if it were true, that’s a classic misconstruing of supply and demand. IPAs get stocked because they’ll inevitably get bought. While Sam’s tries to find the best beers in a particular genre, the store’s still resigned to offering what it thinks it can sell. And, as the number of people convincing themselves that IPAs are superior swells to a critical mass–which, clearly, is what’s happening in the American beer markets–the best strategy for a shop like Sam’s is to heavily concentrate on IPA sales. (I’d also imagine that IPAs, because of their perception of prestige, carry a healthier markup than other beers.) Said more simply, the phenomenon is demand-driven, and most prominently exacerbated by people firmly entrenched in the “IPAs are great” camp.

IPA drinkers also like to construct impenetrable feedback loops. They flock together. “I prefer IPAs,” says one, by way of small talk. “Me too,” says the second, in this very boring yet starkly realistic scenario. Then they abscond to the bar, offering each other recommendations on which beers are best, never fathoming dropping below 6.0% ABV or 40 IBUs. Perhaps someone joins them for the second round and offers to buy them a drink. “Another one of these,” they’ll say, posturing for their IPA compatriot while ignoring their amber-ale-drinking or, god forbid, hefeweizen-loving friend.

Entire classifications of beer, then, get tossed out in the contest of who can consume the most hops.

But this myopia cultivates something more displeasing: beer-chasing. Not the beverage itself, but the inexhaustible pursuit of having all the best beers. One of my old coworkers once talked about he preferred scotch to whisky, not because the former was better in his mind, but because it was more manageable to drink an encyclopedic quantity. Whisky (and whiskey) spans the globe, but scotch is at least confined to one country. Given enough time, you could drink your way across Scotland. Having every type of the other liquor, though, is an obvious fool’s errand.

Untappd has unlocked such a phenomenon for lager lovers: The popular app, designed for the user to rate beers and select, again, the best beer from a range of options, makes it easy to build a robust portfolio. The in-app badges, too, incent novelty in beer choice: A “Master” has 200 different beer samples; An “Elite” user has 2500. Each decision at the bar, then, contains a trade-off: Do I want what I enjoy, or do I want what will impress my digital and real-life peers?

I think, fundamentally, this is the problem with beer drinkers–and IPA drinkers, in particular. Too much choice has proved crippling; anyone who has visited Sam’s, or even just the neighborhood gas station’s now-mandatory “Beer Cave,” knows how the duration and agony of the selection scales with the breadth of options. Consuming beer is rarely never not a good time, but the average drinker needs direction. More often than not, that entails putting on blinders. Only drinking IPAs. Only drinking new beers. Only drinking the selections from a particular craft brewery–Maine Beer Co., Wicked Weed, Stone, etc.

What I hope for is a return to simpler times. It’s the golden age of drinking craft beer. There needs to be a way to simply have a favorite yet standard beer–a reliable choice, readily available. Something to drink regularly and not feel like a pud. Not every purchase needs to be a momentous event. Not every pint glass needs to come with a checklist attached and an Instagrammable pour. Corona encourages customers to Find Your Beach, but my plea actually takes a step back from that: Please, Just Find Your Beer. I’m sure it’s fine.

Raleigh, the MLS, and Amazon

I think I would like Raleigh, in the next round of Major League Soccer bids, whenever those come to pass, to make the list of expansion cities. (The city was passed up this week in the first wave of finalists, but a second selection period is on the horizon.) As a soccer fan and Durham resident, I’d be delighted to have a top-tier team–even if it must compete in the insipid MLS–within driving distance. And as someone who increasingly feels a sense of civic and regional pride, I’d love to claim a local professional team in a sport that doesn’t seem–sorry, ‘Canes fans–horribly anachronistic in North Carolina.

A quick summary: The bid that Steve Malik, the local tech entrepreneur and owner of the area’s flagship soccer franchise, North Carolina FC, crafted doesn’t rely on bottomless founts of public financing; he promises to privately fund the $150 million bill a new stadium would entail. The location would not grossly disrupt a neighborhood–like, say, the Verizon Center (the Capital One Arena as of August) did in Washington D.C.’s now-parodic husk of a Chinatown–but rather nestle between the existing commercial spaces where Seaboard Station and Halifax Mall exist. The proposed buildings to be razed are strictly government facilities. I’m skeptical the stadium can create the revenue and jobs Malik says–most projects fail to hit these marks–but by and large this proposal is as innocuous as expansion projects come.

Still, I hesitate. Raleigh and Durham face major questions now and will continue to face them in years to come. They are vibrant communities now earning just recognition for that vibrancy, perennial features on the clickbait rankings circuit–among the best cities for millennials, young entrepreneurs, anyone who has ever used a Juicero while texting, etc. They are changing rapidly: Durham projects a population increase of twenty-two percent by 2030; Raleigh-Cary is the fastest-growing metro area in the state and the fourteenth-fastest-growing in the country. In the mayoral elections this past November, in Raleigh and Durham alike, the lack of affordable housing was arguably the most ubiquitous and pressing issue.

With that topic in mind, focusing on a luxury like the MLS seems irresponsible. But the MLS isn’t the most harrowing potential guest from afar: No, that would be Amazon.

Raleigh and Durham are still semi-longshots to land the Seattle-based company’s second headquarters, but they’re pining for the opportunity to dole out tax breaks and other incentives to Amazon, were Jeff Bezos to be sufficiently wooed. The consideration of such a development is frightening to anyone hoping the Triangle will maintain a semblance of livability and culture. The 50,000 jobs (heavy eye-rolling) the company promises will, if Seattle’s experience proves an accurate harbinger, be given disproportionately to white, well-to-do males; in concert, rents will skyrocket (in Seattle it has doubled in just the past five years), homelessness will rise, traffic will grind to a halt, and public resources will be consumed at a rate beyond that which the higher tax base can support. (These negative factors–among others–contributed to the decision from San Jose and San Antonio not to bid for Amazon.) This process has already begun, but if and when Amazon comes to the Triangle, the gentrification of D.C.’s Chinatown, and Brooklyn, and post-Katrina New Orleans will quickly loom over the Oak and Bull Cities much like the inevitably-erected $2,000-a-month apartment buildings will.

There is, undeniably, an excitement to these bids. Both Amazon and the MLS are big names. It would be *cool* for the Triangle to host either of them: Seeing the somewhat-overlooked region mentioned in national headlines, just by virtue of its being considered, provides a nice dopamine drip.

What is the opportunity cost, though? In that downtown Raleigh space Malik proposed, what else could go there? Affordable housing stock? A no-ticket-necessary public park from which everyone can derive some benefit? And the eight million square feet that Amazon will reportedly need for its new campus: If that can be carved out for a corporation, how can the city make use of it to benefit its current tax base?

Or will the influx of outsiders be the only ones to enjoy the land’s newfound fruits?

In a sense, the MLS bid is fine–in a vacuum. But if getting a sports team becomes merely another step in a large-scale revitalization–an influx of disruptive investment, a whitewashing of culture that is an inherent byproduct of urban privatization, a commitment to building glitzy new toys for some citizens to enjoy while ignoring the essential services its other citizens lack–it’s much less palatable.

And the alacrity with which Raleigh, Durham, and the entire region have sought to please this corporate behemoth–with apparently little consideration for the downstream effects Amazon’s presence will have on its citizenry–can only be viewed with trepidation. Economists have evinced, time and time again, the fallacy of sports stadiums as a magnet for investment. I’m thrilled that the Malik’s MLS bid, then, is perhaps the most sensible possible model. But I’m growing afraid that, in a future urban analysis, cities like Raleigh and Durham will feature in the telling of a cautionary yet not unfamiliar tale, the one where a tornado of a corporation rolls through a town of storm chasers.

Don’t eat soup in public

Let me start by saying I’m no puritan. I’ve been known to have a bit of a devilish tongue. From time to time, my thoughts have maybe even breached the boundary of what one considers “unwholesome.” So I write here not to litigate, judge, or certainly censor, but rather advise: Don’t eat soup in public. It’s disgusting.

This isn’t a clever, sly, in-crowd euphemism. No, I mean this literally: Don’t eat soup–or bisque, or chowder, or even chili below a certain viscosity–in public. I know that we’re steadily approaching winter. I know you’re cold and hungry, maybe even parched, and that soup–that dietary utility player–seems like the solution to all of your problems. Do it. Go buy some soup. I respect your choice as a consumer.

But I don’t respect your right to consume that slop in my general vicinity. Much like electricity, water, and internet prior to next month, we should treat a genial lunchtime–one without neighbors interrupting conversations every ten seconds with a puckering minestronal SCHLURPPP–as a utility. We should respect the sanctity of the public dining table, be it in the office, the cafe, or the food court, and refuse to besmirch it with some pud who has to furiously blow (look at him, he’s NURTURING THE SOUP) on his disgraced slurry to make it palatable.

I’m spilling no secrets when I say soup has inherent structural flaws. Once soup has become the right temperature, it is then too cold. To eat enjoyably, soup requires a mechanic’s tinkering, a Buddhist’s patience. Its fluidity necessitates the manual precision of a calligrapher–better yet, of a sculptor–to put the liquid into its vessel; the final transfer, likewise, begs Dizzy Gillespie’s lung capacity and embouchure to avoid disaster.

That’s before getting into the etiquette for eating soup–the delicate coiffing of the spoon away from oneself, the dizzying heights the spoon must rise before one can dip one’s head to meet it. It is a hopeless, frantic extraction that inevitably ends in dripping, slobbering imperfection. Yes, there are “proper” ways to eat soup. But there’s no way to eat soup and retain one’s dignity. If you engage in this act in my line of sight, I’m afraid I can no longer respect you.

The truth is, when eating soup, you’re consuming a scalding liquid from a height at which liquid shouldn’t be consumed. There’s a reason drinks arrive in graspable, vertical containers. There’s a reason drinks, McDonald’s coffee aside, invariably arrive within an acceptable range of temperatures. Most food and drink make sense; soup doesn’t. (That sentence also presents a tertiary sub-argument against soup, that your public consumption of it will invite the galling, faux-intellectual pondering of whether one “eats” or “drinks” soup. The correct answer is neither: When having soup in public, one “burdens society.”)

Perhaps this take comes across as elitist. After all, public soup kitchens are a great, necessary service. For others, soup is simply an economical option, the most rational budgetary choice. Surely, Lucas, you’re not advocating these soup-buyers are forced to languish alone, shamefully downing their entrees in solitude whilst the Paninarazzi gaggle together in unfettered gaiety?

My response is three-pronged: First, my advice is mainly targeting those foodies in Corporate America, for whom I am skeptical that soup is always the cheapest option: take Panera Bread, for example, where soups, salads, and half-sandwiches are priced equivalently in the “Pick 2” menu, despite the caloric deficits that soups offer. Second, I think a large-scale coordination of purchasing decisions can change the way in which we consume soup. Should bowls become cylindrical? Should spoons be replaced with very wide straws? Should we revive Juicero by reducing every soup to its late-capitalism, inevitably all-liquid state? These are the questions we need to be asking.

Third, soup consumption can be inoffensive in public–but only when undergone unanimously. When the souping is wholly communal, that is, when everyone is being disgusting, there is no dignity to be claimed, no pearls to be clutched. It is a barbaric experience and roundly objectionable to an outsider, but in the absence of none claiming offense, the outrage is vaporous like the famous Zen koan: the sound of one hand clapping back.

In that way, we need to treat eating soup like eating peanuts–hazardous in public. You can eat whatever repulsive things you want–however you want–in the privacy of your own home. But, please, as you go about your day, SCHLURPPP on this: As soon as you step outside, once you start eating soup, you start affecting people’s lives.

On Gun Control

Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin on Monday tweeted, “To all those political opportunists who are seizing on the tragedy in Las Vegas to call for more gun regs…You can’t regulate evil…” He posted this at 10:38 A.M., fewer than twelve hours after the massacre in Las Vegas that left fifty-eight dead and over five hundred wounded, the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

I’m singling out Bevin for what is a pretty typical Republican* response in these all-too-frequent circumstances.** First comes the standard “thoughts and prayers” post, usually paired with how saddened the congressperson–and often his wife, also, because the republican is statistically a heterosexual, connubial male–are by the circumstances. Then, there’s the punting of the political football, the request to give a day’s breath, if not longer, before even attempting to discuss gun control in any serious capacity.

(*Yes, some Democrats, Bernie included, have complicated pasts when it comes to gun control legislation. On the whole, though, they’re greatly in favor of heightened gun control, much more so than their Republican counterparts.)

(**These circumstances being a white guy perpetrating a mass shooting, rather than a person of color and/or, god forbid, a Muslim. Those response playbooks are sinister in their own right.)

But inevitably, if anyone pushes back on these initial postings, what comes out next is the helplessness. The idea that this tragedy stemmed from a singular actor, a “lone wolf,” the mere bad apple of the harvest. The thought that no amount of paperwork and background checks could have prevented the final outcome. The conclusion that, given how preordained (and yet, somehow unforeseeable) these situations are, there’s very little to be done, except to pray for more “good guys with guns” next time. (Judging by the performance of publicly-traded gun stocks Monday, these hopes will be answered.) Mostly, there’s the finality and assured belief that something this horrendous, to paraphrase Bevin, can’t be regulated.

This attitude, of course, is a complete crock. It’s an attitude that, due to the sweeping, unfettered political lobbying power of the NRA, exists for questions of gun control but very few other issues. Does the right feel helpless when it comes to questions of abortion–after all, “nasty women” will manage to find the relevant doctors one way or another–or does it seek to restrict the funding for and accessibility to clinics throughout the country? Do Republicans throw up their hands on the issue of voter fraud–if you want to cheat the system, sooner or later you’ll manage to cheat–or do they milk every last ounce of difficulty out of the registration process to adversely affect the marginalized, time-strapped voter? Illegal immigrants will do whatever is necessary to ruin America, the Fox News-tinted logic goes, so, then, why bother building a wall or eliminating DACA?

The truth is these regulations, whether or not they’re 100 percent effective, have some impact. The victims and targets of these policies know this; republicans, certainly, know this, which is why in so many instances they eliminate regulations that hinder their goals. It’s for this reason that they want lower taxes for the rich. It’s for this reason they want to undo the Dodd-Frank Act and enable more perfidious banking practices. It’s for this reason that the right won’t abide the slightest, most token bit of lip service when it comes to combating climate change. 

The regulations we have in place in America–and those we don’t–are no accident. Whether it’s regarding gun control or any other hot-button issue, the Republican party line is clear: Undesirable, unacceptable, and unfavorable actions and activities can be regulated to the point of effective extinction; everything else, well, can’t. As such, this dichotomy invites a ridiculous but necessary question. For the right, will the carnage that we saw in Las Vegas–not to mention Sandy Hook, Orlando, and the 272 other mass shootings that have already occurred in America in 2017–ever truly become unacceptable?

No Good Songs Are 3-4 Minutes Long

Most people are dunking on Taylor Swift’s new song, as well they should. More so than her typical overwrought, focus-grouped maudlin efforts, this song, “Look What You Made Me Do,” repulses in every sense of the word. It’s a steaming pile of factory-farmed, eastern North Carolina hogshit, whose downstream impact will be felt for generations.

But this song was doomed–beyond its aimless lyrics, uninspired production, and general absence of intent beyond an attempting photobombing of a disinterested newscycle–by its length. At three minutes, thirty-one seconds, Swift’s latest is right in the sweet spot of the worst songs that get produced. The good three-to-four-minute song, much like the effective 600-word essay, or the seventy-minute movie that clips along nicely, does not exist.

I need a “Mad Men” spinoff that just focuses on Harry Crane and radio practices in the 1960s. (Credit: Vox)

Songs trying to make it on the radio have coalesced to this length, a function of history (radio stations only could play music on 78s and, later, 45s, which held three or so minutes) and the insufficient time span and patience of listeners. As technology developed, average song length grew, but it has seemingly returned from its early nineties peak, settling in around 3:45.

It’s understandable, then, that music of this length has been produced in the past. But now, with the proliferation of streaming services and the decreased influence of the radio, there exists a chance to make better songs. Specifically, shorter or longer songs, because any song whose length starts with a 3 that’s immediately followed by a colon is–to use the technical term–trash.

The three-to-four-minute song can’t help being the way it is. It didn’t ask to be the awkward, gangly musical teenager that thinks it’s doing well but, in fact, is a tornado of idiocy, bad intentions and ill-conceived ideas. More to the point, the three-to-four-minute song inherently serves no purpose. Think of your typical radio play: Odds are it has a brief intro, two verses, each followed by a chorus, a third part with no purpose but to extend the song and, perhaps, invoke a key change, and a final chorus. If the artist is popular, maybe the third part features one of his/her friends; if the artist wants to have some flair, a saxophone. And then, after a seemingly brisk 3:39 (“Shake It Off”) or 3:46 (The Chainsmokers’ “Roses”) or 3:47 (“Despacito”) that simultaneously rambles on and on, the song draws to a close.

Friends, this is a horrible framework in which to operate. Let me be blunt: If an idea can be fully expressed in two and a half verses, perhaps it’s not worth writing about! In fact, most songs fall into this category. The easiest way to improve an overcooked piece is to simplify; you can edit those thoughts down to simply two verses, and we, the audience, can get out in a cool 2:18 (like with  “She Loves You,” by a little band called the Beatles). That song simply starts with the chorus. It’s delightfully quick. Nat King Cole’s “L-O-V-E”? Just two verses, a trumpet break, and then those two verses again. The entire conceit is simple, and it didn’t require Sammy Davis Jr. stepping in to upset things by spelling some different word halfway through. Which is good, because even at 2:30 it starts to seem stretched. The Marvin Gaye and Tami Terrell duet of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” actually follows a lot of the foolhardy road map above, but since, on top of maintaining a healthy, robust BPM, it doesn’t dawdle on the intro–four bars–and the choruses–a mere eight bars for each–the whole thing is a scant 2:24. Even Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” ends in 2:04, despite eighty percent of it consisting of him saying “I know.” Short songs work.

Long songs work, too. Long songs–the good ones, at least–are the kinds of songs that don’t get merely tossed off. They’re produced by way of significant, strenuous mental effort; their length is justified, earned. Could you imagine a three-minute version of “Hallelujah,” or “Stairway to Heaven” or “Purple Rain”? Even a song like Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky” which, honestly, has no real structure to it works at its extended length (4:40); to cut a minute would simply not make sense. These songs are statements, and more often than not, 200 seconds or so isn’t enough for a meaningful statement.

The artist can also take a note from EDM, which, for all of its drops and dopaminal excesses, at least knows how to create an effect on its listeners. Just say screw it. Do you know how long the intro to Earth Wind and Fire’s “Got to Get You Into My Life” is, before they actually start the first verse? One minute, eleven seconds. (The popular yet much inferior “September” is, of course, 3:35.) You ever hear “Vertigo and Relight my Fire” by Dan Hartman? No words until 3:57 in. It’s great, and the full album version is 9:44.

I will concede that good songs occasionally fall into the three-to-four-minute parameters, but not by design. The last example is a useful case study: The proper treatment of “Relight My Fire” is as the main course, following the four-minute appetizer of “Vertigo.” As such, most treatments pair these songs together. A single featuring simply the latter song exists, presumably for radio purposes (its runtime is 3:42). I have never heard that, because every version I’ve found on YouTube features the extended play. I’m sure the cleaved, barren version works; clearly, though, it’s inferior, as the fans have spoken and demanded the sprawling if indulgent effort, not the Garage Band-esque, training wheels-attached starter kit edition.

To cite a more recent example, take the Bruno Mars-Mark Ronson collaboration “Uptown Funk”: The album version is 4:28, yet the radio version is 3:57. From what I can tell, the intro in the radio version has been somewhat abbreviated but the ending has been completely neutered, with one of the best horn parts of the whole song (around 4:10) becoming a casualty in the race to the finish line. The 3:57 version still bangs–after all, it’s “Uptown Funk”–but it exists in lieu of a much better song that’s a mere 13 percent longer.

In that sense, I guess, a more conservative take is warranted; it’s also more damning. It’s not impossible to have a good three-to-four-minute song. But the easiest way to do that is to first create an incredible two-minute or five-minute song and then make it demonstrably worse. If you’re aiming for that sweet spot to begin with, then I question your taste, your level of mental complexity, and your general purpose, and I also reserve the right to turn off the radio, just like *that*.

“Oh, wow,” said the writer, now liberated from the incessant bleating on his eardrums, free to spend three-and-a-half minutes however he pleases. “Look what you made me do.”

Oh, The Duke-UNC Graphics You’ll See

Last year at this time, I delivered perhaps my finest PSA yet: a diatribe against the fallacious idea that Duke and UNC, erstwhile and proximal rivals, are a mere eight miles apart. In fact, as I pretty definitively showed with the use of Google Maps, they are nine miles apart. Thankfully, and famously, the rest of the sports world took notice and–what’s this?

from the dang ncaa dot com website.

Reader, for a large portion of this past year, I thought I’d get to the bottom of this myth–this invasive species that has wormed its way into the public consciousness. I tried to track the number through the ages, across AP stories and local blogs, combing through columns and deep dives and letters to the editor. I pitched this story to websites that I assumed would jump at such a scoop, at such an important investigation. No dice. Very quickly, I saw that the incumbent, inertial weight of “eight miles down Tobacco Road” was too much for me to combat. How can one hope to explain a truth that the world is simply resigned to?

So I pivoted. Fortunately, when facing a rivalry laden with the grandeur of Duke-UNC, there exists no shortage of tropes and storylines to analyze at a meta-microscopic level. And today, on the eve of the 248th meeting in this series (UNC leads 136-111), I offer you a cheat sheet for doing just that, and a rooting interest beyond the game itself.

Let me explain: Every year, when Duke and UNC meet, the viewer is, without exception, inundated with a graphic detailing, in case they were somehow blissfully unaware, of the competitiveness of this matchup. For example, in March 2017, over the last 98 games in the rivalry, Duke and UNC had each won 49 games, and the Blue Devils had scored a more one total point than the Tar Heels. A month earlier, they had been tied on both points and games over their last 96 matchups. In 2015, the two teams had been tied in total points over their last eighty-eight games…you get the picture. It’s close, and it’s easy enough to slice the data some way or another to find a ridiculous stat underscoring the thin margins between the two schools.

this is from 2017, but the fact that these blend together and are not even remotely memorable is precisely the point.

Easy enough, that is, except for this year. Go ahead; see for yourself.

I made this spreadsheet in anticipation of these soundbites: What would I hear tomorrow; what incredibly gerrymandered datasets would accost me in graphic form; and how could I gird myself against this statistical self-satisfaction?

But what I found is that tomorrow should be a safe time. Sure, the two teams are tied over their last 102 meetings, dating back to February 1977, but the point total doesn’t neatly sum to zero, or even a single-digit difference; Duke has outscored its rival by 12 points in that span. More importantly, there is no series of consecutive games, up to the present day, over which Duke and UNC are tied on total points. This, I must say, is tremendous news.

Yet we cannot become complacent. In the columns to the far right, I’ve detailed the horrible scenarios in which, following Wednesday’s game, we might be subjected to these same stats in a mere matter of weeks. Column L details the point differentials that could bring the aggregates level over the last however-many-the-hell games; column M outlines the same for the win-loss ledger. Down around row 150, we can see the nightmare scenario: the situations in which a UNC win, by a precise amount, will almost guarantee the trotting out of such statistics prior to the March 9 showdown in Chapel Hill. (A quick clarification on how to read the table: Looking at row 148, we see that if UNC wins by 25 on Wednesday night, then Duke and UNC will be tied on wins and points over their past 102 meetings. If UNC has a more modest win of 19, we can see, in row 156, that the same will be true when considering the past 98 meetings.)

Nearly everyone watching Wednesday will have a vested interest; this heated affair, like most of its kind, has no truck with agnostics. But no partisan or centrist should be forced to bear witness to this mindless numerology–this transparent book-cooking to prove a point that’s been made a good half-dozen-hundred times over–and so I hope that we can all come together and cheer for an outcome that doesn’t hinder our sanity. We should all agree, at the very least, to root against a UNC win by 19, 23, 24, 25, or 30 points. If you hope to be even further inoculated, though, it is my sincere and unbiased opinion that you extrapolate from those five figures and make it easy on yourself: Don’t be selfish; root for Duke.

Stop Saying Duke is Eight Miles from UNC

Tonight Duke and UNC will play each other for the third time this season, and there’s a little-known fact about the two schools, a fact that’s definitely not brought up every goddamn time they face each other on the hardwood: The schools are merely eight miles apart. “Eight miles apart on Tobacco Road,” folks say, which is a very delicate way to describe the perpetually clogged lanes of 15-501. It’s a fact mentioned in pregame reports, postgame recaps, on Wikipedia pages and blogs–so many blogs!–like this one. It is part of the common parlance, part of the public record, the trivia that everyone knows such that it’s no longer trivia. It’s a joke I’ve made before on Twitter. It’s a stat I’ve spent the better part of two years trying to make a coy reference toward in Duke’s alumni magazine, where I work. And yet–

*cues 30 for 30 music*

What if I told you it was all a lie? What if we’d been inculcated over many years to believe–to trust!–a lazy statistic based on imprecise measurements?

What if Duke and UNC…were nine miles apart?

Sir, I just asked you if you wanted a Bo-Berry biscuit.

Forget the biscuit. Yeah, I said it–forget the biscuit. This is too important.

***

Google Maps is useful. It’s creepy as hell, and it remembers WAY too much stuff about bars I’ve been before and apartment complexes I’ve considered living to the point where it was almost impossible to get clean screenshots for this post…but it’s useful. And because of that utility, we’ll be getting quite familiar with it today.

On the site, you plug in two locations, and it gives you, typically, the driving distance between them. Do that with Duke’s stadium and UNC’s stadium and you get 10.6 miles. It’s parking lot to parking lot, Towerview Boulevard to Raleigh Road.

But that’s not good enough. It’s confined by roads, calculated for grounded vehicles. What we want, though, is the distance “as the crow flies”–that, ostensibly, will give us the eight-mile number. If you right-click on your starting point, you can use a tool called “measure distance” to get precisely that.

But time and again, we fail to get those numbers. If you start at the Duke Chapel and go to Chapel Hill’s Old Well–perhaps the two main touchstones of the campuses–you get 8.79 miles. Quad to quad is 8.6 miles. Stadium to stadium–Cameron Indoor to Dean Smith Center–is perhaps the truest metric when talking basketball, and it’s 8.85 miles.

I couldn’t get both stadiums to show up on the map, but I encourage readers to double-check for themselves. And, please, tell me that’s not nine miles.

Only if you draw from Duke’s stadium, on the southwest corner of its campus to the heart of UNC’s quad do you start to get values below 8.5. To such buffoonery I say, please, let’s try to have some academic rigor. It’s a slippery slope from that to, say, drawing from the edge of Duke Forest to UNC’s east campus, which gives you a tidy 5.79-mile distance between the two. Why stop there? Cameron Indoor to the city boundary of Chapel Hill is 4.92. Are the campuses actually five miles apart? Get out of here.

What we quickly realize is that any honest measure of the distance between the two schools is closer to nine miles than eight. Proper rounding dictates then that, by any estimate, these universities are nine miles apart. And yes–you’re goddamn right that this is a semantic post, but I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore!

***

Why do we say eight miles, then? I’d argue that any measurement under ten miles appropriately conveys the closeness of the universities. The cities of Durham and Chapel Hill are about 10.5 miles away, city hall to town hall, so any number closer than that is already icing on the cake. They’re so close that the team’s basketball coaches live and vote in the other’s county–K in Orange County, Roy in Durham County. How much closer does ESPN need them to be, in their prepared in-game graphic, to really get the audience to engage?

I’d even argue that “nine miles” sounds better, aurally, than “eight miles”–the assonance of the I’s livening the phrase, while also dodging any confusion about Detroit’s Eight Mile Road. Which is what, if we’re committed to using the erroneous number, we should really start calling 15-501, but I digress. 

The point is that “Nine miles” is a better statistic in every sense. So I don’t know if it’s laziness, or a lack of fact-checking, or both, that enables the wrong number to persist. It’s such a prominent stat that I don’t hold any hope of really changing minds with this investigation: BIG EIGHT MILE has too much clout to overcome. But I hope we can all be a little bit more mindful of these numbers when we quote them. In a rivalry where every number matters, where every showdown presents a chance to look back and show how close the two teams are over the last 100-some games, we don’t need to lie to say they’re physically closer than they are. 

So sing it. Sing “nine miles, not eight” from Franklin St., from Ninth. Sing it from Fullsteam and Top of the Hill. Sing it from the 15-501 overpass of I-40, right between the two campuses. Let your voice carry the message back to both, but sing loud: It’ll have to travel just a little further than you thought.

On the Steelers and the NFL’s flaws

The Steelers lost in the playoffs yesterday. There was a time when such an event would send me into a weeklong funk. That it doesn’t now can be chalked up both to my heightened age and my proportional apathy about sports–and relief that I don’t have to watch Tom Brady mince my team’s secondary for the umpteenth time next Sunday. But really, I think the loss to the Jaguars also laid bare some basic truths about football’s structure that warrant consideration.

Let’s start with the game itself. The most scintillating aspect of the Steelers yesterday were their receivers. Antonio Brown (2x), Martavis Bryant, and the versatile running back Le’Veon Bell all made tremendous touchdown grabs; Bell had a second score on a lateral where he caught the ball at the ten and made the remaining defenders look silly. From an aesthetic perspective, the Steelers shined yesterday: Pretty much every play they made was an overt demonstration of supernatural physical talent and coordination. It was–in combination with the Vikings’ dramatic last-second victory over the Saints–a day of football that reminds you that, oh yeah, football can be pretty fun.

So we’re all good, right? Well, even in that list of sterling performers were some insidious strains of the NFL’s flawed ethos. Brown was playing through a torn calf muscle that–although it didn’t hinder his bottom line–nevertheless seemed to affect him throughout. On the Steelers last drive, with them down ten with a minute to go and the game essentially out of hand, Brown wasn’t out there even though Bryant, Bell, and JuJu Smith-Schuster all were. He did what fans–and coaches, and owners–expect of their players, which is to play through injury. He played yesterday at “not close to 100 percent,” according to a source. But, the logic goes, that’s fine: The bill will come later. For now, he needs to do his job.

It’s a tortured philosophy. Players risk injury every game; when they inevitably suffer setbacks, they’re expected to risk further injury for the betterment of the team by playing before they’re ready–even though they’re endangering their future income when making such a decision. NFL contracts aren’t fully guaranteed; most players can be cut at little-to-no expense.

Bell, the inimitable running back and yesterday’s other star, has made airwaves with his upsetting of the apple cart that is the NFL labor market: He’s talking retirement, despite being 25, in the prime of a running back’s career. The reasoning? He played this season under the franchise tag–a one-year contract that, for superstars like him, represents wage suppression and a source of long-term instability. (A franchised player’s pay is the average of the top five paid players at the position or 120% of his previous pay, whichever is greater. For Bell, arguably the best in the league, such a sum won’t be close to his true market compensation.) The Steelers are threatening to hand him the franchise tag again, which means he must play productively and healthily for another year to earn the multi-year contract he deserves. Again, the player must sacrifice in the short term, with little guarantee–or likelihood–things will work out for him.

But the most uncomfortable element surrounding the NFL and the Steelers, though, remains the spectre of Ryan Shazier. Shazier, the middle linebacker who suffered a spinal injury six weeks ago and has just recently regained feeling in his legs yet is still wheelchair-bound, continues to maintain a positive disposition despite his condition. He’s shown up in the press box for multiple games; he spoke to the team at halftime during Sunday’s loss. Team members wore his shirt featuring the motto “Shalieve” before the Jaguars playoff game; a portion of the shirt’s proceeds will go to spinal research and The Boys and Girls Club of Western PA. Shazier in recent weeks has become a mascot, a Gipper-like figure for the team to rally around. Had the Steelers won, and even continued on to the Super Bowl, I have little doubt he would have been a Media Day staple.

What’s unfortunate, though, is that this storyline of esprit de corps almost allows the Steelers and, by extension, the NFL to turn a catastrophe into a branding mechanism. A disastrous injury–rather than sparking conversations about improving player safety, difficult discussions about whether and how inextricable elements of football’s violence can be eradicated–merely becomes a tangential movement, much like the blackballing of Colin Kaepernick for protesting police brutality somehow turned into Jerry Jones taking a knee for “unity.” Shazier’s paralysis feeds into a Rovellian blog post. A player, with his agency lost, transitions to a motivator for the betterment of the team. A man becomes a brand, and the league manages to shy away from any individuality and humanizing elements, or acknowledging–yet again–a blemish on its shield.

I don’t mean to blame Shazier for remaining positive, or for making T-shirts for this good cause. I’m happy–and amazed–that he’s able to turn a negative into some semblance of a positive like this. I blame the league, though, for being complicit in the aftermath of his injury, for not directly addressing the risks football poses for players and taking responsibility for them. On top of the other compensation disadvantages the NFL bestows upon its labor pool, NFL players on average have a career of 3.5 years, and the league’s average pay and minimum pay are the lowest among the big four U.S. sports. I’ve focused on stars in this post, but for the NFL’s second and third tiers, the situation is even more dire.

The solution or sacrifice can’t always come from the individual. The plights of three great players–Brown, Bell, and Shazier–all indict the system. Which means, quite simply, the system has to do better. I’d be lying if I said I was hopeful.