Is Duke Popularity a Symptom of American Anti-Populism, or Vice Versa?

Progressive columnist David Sirota hypothesizes on the country's love/hate relationship with the Blue Devils:

[I]n the Great Duke Debate, I side with the Nation's Dave Zirin. Combining all the leading explanations, then adding Duke's status as an upper-crust, ultra-expensive private school, I subscribe to his theory that says our penchant for hating on the Blue Devils reflects America's larger, more complex relationship with privilege.

This makes sociopolitical sense. A country founded on anti-royalism and defined by anti-aristocrat political rhetoric will naturally profess disgust for, say, Ivy League presidential candidates and incumbent congressmen — just as it will loudly claim to despise Duke basketball (and Yankees baseball and Cowboys football and ... you get the point). In short, purporting to abhor inequality, advantage and dynasty has long been as red-bloodedly patriotic as loving mom, adoring apple pie and, yes, booing teams like the Blue Devils — teams that seem to wear their privilege on their jerseys.

And yet, evidence suggests our righteous inveighing against privilege is depressingly shallow — and possibly fraudulent. Note this recent New York Daily News report:

"When considering why Duke was conveniently placed on a fast track to (the Final Four by NCAA bracket makers), the power of the Blue Devils as a TV attraction must be factored into the equation," wrote the paper, adding that, simply put, "Duke has a history of juicing TV ratings."

This cannot be explained away as a mere product of Duke's alumni fan base or the watch-'em-because-we-hate-'em crowd. Those die-hard audiences, however passionate, are too small to account for such inflated national viewership figures.

We can hence conclude that a large segment of basketball fans who say they detest Duke — and who may consciously believe they detest Duke — actually secretly or subconsciously adore it and its privilege.

I suppose populists should root for mid-major Cinderella-story Butler, then. After all, Butler was founded by and named after an abolitionist, whereas Duke is named after robber baron James Buchanan Duke of the American Tobacco Company monopoly.

Go Bulldogs!