I have to admit, I was conflicted as the NCAA tournament brackets were announced. I was for many years an avid and extremely outspoken Duke fan and supporter. I loved the way they played team offense, the way they played team defense, how Coach K had class on and off the court. But it all changed a couple of years ago as I was forced to see the changes that were happening to Duke and it's program, not to mention the game of college basketball in general...

The Blue Devils left their unique sets of offenses and went to a dribble, dribble, dribble, then dribble again offense, which featured the individual and not the team, which featured no offense, only what the dribbler created. Bob Knight has to have disowned Coach K by now, allowing Duke to dribble the air out of the ball even though he was taught better under the tutelage of one of the most fundamental coaches in the history of the game.

Duke then focused less on fundamental defense and just tried to make the big plays instead of all the small things. It was either get a steal, take a charge, or give up points. Not the hard-nosed defense that made the offense use the whole shot clock to get up an average shot.

And the last straw, being a coach myself, I couldn't watch Coach K sit and cry at the officials the whole game. THE WHOLE GAME. Yeah, people say he has class, but shouldn't he have class on the court as well? I hate coaching against guys who scream at the official the whole game as it takes away from what's happening on the court. Seriously, pick your moments, and focus on your kids instead of the officials. Take a lesson from a coach with class, Brad Stevens of Butler.

I had always heard the Duke detractors saying that Duke got all the calls, and I didn't care that they were right because Duke was my team, and I like my team getting all the calls. But it was true. And this past year I finally stood up and renounced Duke, which I'm sure would be like Tom Cruise renouncing Scientology, not likely and hard to do as it would involve a massive amount of crow-eating.

So when Duke got put in the easiest bracket in the history of the NCAA, I had a little regression of heart and contemplated bandwagonning Duke because it was a shoe-in for them to make it the the Final Four. I could pretend to be happy and cheer for a winning team to be tied to a winning program (which meant I was a winner too, right?), or I could stand my principles and cheer for the teams that deserved credit, that fought through adversity, and teams that would possibly fail because of the difficult path they faced. I chose principles because, I mean, come on... The committee must have a man-crush on Coach K, or the Duke boosters must have bought the committee a night at Scores or some other like-wise sleezy strip joint. Maybe Coach K blackmailed them, I don't know, but how does the top seed (Kansas) not get the winner of the play-in game, which is supposed to be the weakest team in the field? And Kansas had murders row to play through, the toughest bracket by far... and I don't even like Kansas and I can see this?!

The truth is that the college game is ruined. Coach K sold out on his beliefs in order to follow the crowd and trends of the new AAU-college-individual-glory game. It's the reason Bob Knight doesn't coach anymore, the NCAA is trying to be the NBA, allowing kids to travel instead of pivot properly. All tournament long I watched officials make horrible calls against the underdogs to try and salvage face for the committee and the NCAA. Promoting "stars" that are only in college for one year, and just because they had to come and play for one year because the NBA won't let them jump from high school, John Wall. Promoting coaches who cheat and have been caught cheating, Calipari and Huggins, to get players who cheated, Derrick Rose and John Wall.

I will find a new past-time, I'm guessing it will be at the Mid-Major tournaments, NAIA's, and NWAACC's of the basketball world. As for now, I find solace in the few teams like Butler, who play together, who defend as if their life depends on it, and who show that a team will always be greater than the individual in what is supposed to be ante-professional basketball with a goal of team college glory instead of an individual's self-serving path to the professional NBA. A Butler team with no nationally recruited players, let's be honest, Duke's 12th man and all of Duke's red-shirts were more highly recruited than Butler's best players, Hayward or Mack. I imagine Duke's waterboy, towel boy, and floor sweeper were more highly recruited than Mack as a basketball player.

This is a Duke team with 8 McDonald's All-American's, and honestly, shouldn't Duke, UNC, Kentucky, and the big-name schools be considered failures for not being in the Final Four every year for the amount of talent they amass? The wasted potential and under-achievement baffles me when these big-name school's recruit the best talent in the high school world and do not make it to at least the Elite 8 every year. Look at UNC this year, all that talent and didn't even make the tournament? That is the equivalent to having the answers to an exam, the professor telling you the answers during the test, and still walking out with a giant "F" tattooed on your paper. Not only getting a failing grade, but getting paid millions by the institution to fail that year, even with the answers in hand.

This is why I cannot support Dook and the Dook's that are ruining the college game that I grew up loving and emmulating. The college game used to be basketball at it's most pure level, kids and a coach in it for each other... to be honest, I don't know if there is any pure basketball left at any level as they all seek to be the replica of the level directly situated above the other, leading to the travesty of unpurity in basketball, the NBA.