Mike Burke
Cumberland Times-News
February 26, 2010 — Cal did it last night against Arizona, and Georgetown’s going to do it Saturday against Notre Dame. So just because a bunch of think-tankers from Berkeley and a bunch of lawyers from Georgetown jump off the Empire State Building, do the North Carolina Tar Heels try to beat them to the sidewalk?
Of course not. So why on God’s green earth would the North Carolina Tar Heels ever wear silver basketball uniforms?
Because Nike told them to.
Oh, well now I understand.
Look, if you didn’t see any of the Carolina-Florida State game Wednesday night, you have no idea what we’re talking about here, but the Tar Heels, as part of a marketing gimmick designed by Nike to commemorate the 25th anniversary of its Air Jordan line, wore silver uniforms, just as Cal did last night and just as the Hoyas will do tomorrow.
Again, I don’t care if Cal does it, and I don’t care if Georgetown does it. Even though the Burke family crest reads, “We’ve hated Carolina longer, but we hate Duke more,” my delicate senses for tradition were violated by seeing North Carolina in silver uniforms.
I ask you, did you ever see the German army wear silver uniforms to commemorate an anniversary of a favorite invasion? Would the New York Yankees wear silver pinstripes? Would the Green Bay Packers wear silver uniforms? For any reason? Would the Dallas Cow ... Well, wait a minute. Would the Montreal Canadiens ever wear silver? The Nebraska Cornhuskers? Penn State? Then why would North Carolina, forever a standard in the uniform game, stoop to such Nike nonsense (well, we know why).
Hello? God is a Carolina fan? That’s why the sky is Carolina Blue? Gag me with a Nike, isn’t that the crap we’ve been hearing for our entire lives? There’s no silver. There’s no silver. There’s no silver in North Carolina’s uniforms! No silver.
Of course, with the way this season has gone for Carolina, maybe they were disguises.
Okay, kick ’em while they’re down, because this ain’t Matt Doherty. They’re not going to be down for long. But don’t make excuses for them, either. They’re feeling the smelly residue of their own success, and when you lose the players Carolina lost to graduation and the NBA and essentially are left with so many freshmen playing critical roles, things like this, including playing in a near-empty Smith Center, are more likely to happen. Even if you’re North Carolina, and even if your freshmen are “NBA ready” as Carolina’s freshmen were said to be. Nor does it help to lose Ed Davis to an injury, but the dye had been pretty well cast by that point.
As for the NBA ready, Coach Roy Williams should hope some of them are NBA ready. And this is not to imply old Roy doesn’t love each and every one of them (hey, the guy hugs and cries faster than Jim Leyland and Dick Vermeil combined), but talented as they may be, the pieces to this puzzle just don’t seem to fit. I don’t say that on the cold hard facts of Carolina’s 10 conference losses. I say it based on the eye test. Even when they were getting impressive non-conference wins against Ohio State and Michigan State, it looked as though they were incapable of playing together.
Look, we like to have fun at Huckleberry Hound’s expense, but if Roy Williams can’t get a team to play together after nearly 30 games, it doesn’t appear it will be a group that will ever play together. But say this for old Roy. He didn’t bail out with injury or illness and have the sub-par win-loss record stuck on somebody else’s resume.
We shall see, of course, because with the ACC tournament coming up, Carolina will still have a chance to throw a monkey wrench into somebody’s plans. But at this current pace, the Heels won’t even be eligible for the NIT, less than one year after winning the school’s second national championship in five years.
Strange days, indeed, but no need to make them any stranger.
Don’t make the sky silver.
Mike Burke is sports editor of the Cumberland Times-News. Contact Mike Burke at mburke@times-news.com.
