During my vacation from blogging I spent some time considering the direction this blog would take and the content it would cover. A history tells us I started this blog focusing primarily on North Carolina basketball which has been a passion of mine since childhood. I have since expanded it to include any number of sports stories, opinions, and when necessary the occassional bashing of Duke basketball. I have reached a point where I am having difficult keeping up with it all. I also feel the need to redefine the kind of content I post. This leads me to some new rules for blog.
1. More Narrowly Focused
This means I will save the heaviest blogging for UNC related news and especially basketball season. I will delve into other sports if the news is big enough but for the most part I will stick to what I know and love the most and that is UNC sports and most particularly basketball. As a part of that focus I will offer opinions on college sports in general and give some attention to happenings at Duke and NC State as well as other ACC schools.
2. Hating Your Rivals with Civility
Part of being a UNC fan is possessing a certain degree of animosity for NC State and a high degree of disgust for Duke. That is the territory. That being said there are two routes you can with that. You can be civil, offer legitimate criticism, and bring some humorous quips to the forefront at the expense of your rivals or you can attack them at every turn and go for the cheap shot out of entertainment value. It is my personal opinion that my blog has been characterized by much of the former but sadly enough good chunks of the latter. It is easy, very easy, when you have your own personal soapbox on the internet and really no accountability to take a anything goes attitude of sorts as long as you can make people hit your site. It is easy to bludgeon your rival to a pulp in hopes that people will hit your site because you launch great zingers. In other words it is real easy to be Gregg Doyel at CBSSportsline(and if you do not know Doyel, he is a "columnist" on the CBS Sports website who does nothing but inflame people just to stir the pot without offering any real substance).
One example of how this played out here was in my treatment of JJ Redick. Some UNC fans will tell you I was tame concerning Redick but I thought I was out of line with my treatment of him for DUI arrest especially considering the history of such arrests in UNC basketball. However I did not think my treatment of Duke or Redick in reference to the loss to UNC at Cameron in March or their upset loss to LSU was completely in context of the game and the rivalry. Basically what I am saying is anything on the court or within the context of the season is fair game was long as I am tasteful and using relevant data to back up my criticisms. Ridiculing Redick for his DUI was out of line on my part and does not reflect my belief that all people are fallen in one way or another which calls us to show grace.
3. Thoughtful Analysis Backed Up With Substantive Data
This should not really be a change. Among the things I dislike are people who use personal attacks in an argument and people who make arguments which are all emotions and noise but no real facts. I will do my level best to make sure that does not happen here. This may mean that I am a day late chiming in on something because I need enough time to research and make sure what I write is grounded in reality.
4. Comments and Email Welcome But....
I enjoy comments from readers and emails are fine too. I do reserve the right to do with those whatvever I want to on my blog. I will also not tolerate egregious personal attacks or profanity of any sort. If you do not like something I said then please do me and everyone else who reads this blog(because we know they are coming by the droves) the courtesy of making a decent argument which does not question my lineage or invite me to acts against my own body which are physically impossible to perform. I will delete comments I think are inappropriate or if I get a rash of them like I did when I allegedly insulted UCLA during the Final Four in April I will address them directly and make my best effort to expose any idiocy I find for what it is.
5. I Will Post What I Can, When I Can
I hope to keep this going regularly and in basketball season daily.
And let me also express my gratitude to those who wander my way from other sites or at random. I hope you enjoy the postings here and feel free to offer up any suggestions for how I can make it better.