Here’s How The Sporting Rivalry Between Duke & University of Northern Carolina Extends To MBA Students
Having looked at academics, careers, entrepreneurship, student-led activities and treks in the past few weeks, today we will look at sports and how they can play a huge role in your MBA experience. Sporting rivalries are common in the U.S. – be it Harvard-Yale, Michigan-Ohio State or Duke-UNC. Today, we will provide our readers an overview of the rivalry between Duke and UNC when it comes to sports, and how it extends specifically to MBA students.
The Rivalry between Duke and University of North Carolina
Known as one of the most intense rivalries when it comes to comes to men’s college basketball, the Duke-Carolina rivalry, also known as ‘The Battle of Tobacco Road’ or ‘The Battle of the Blues’, has consistently pitted the two universities against each other for a century, with the first game having been played on the 24th January, 1920. According to the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), UNC is ranked no. 3 on the all-time wins list while Duke comes in at no. 4, and both the schools have just a 22-point difference between them over 70 years and 179 games – Duke has scored 13,559 points and UNC 13,581. The rivalry has produced some memorable, nail-biting matches over the years and is intensified by the fact that both the schools are located just eight miles apart from each other. While the rivalry might have started with two regular season basketball games, it does extend across all sports. Duke also produces special merchandise for the rivalry, with several t-shirts with ‘Beat Carolina’ printed in bold, water bottles, baseball caps and much more.
Season tickets for the games are hard to come by and this does lead the die-hard fans to “campout” for them, which has become a whole tradition in itself. With just 725 season tickets on offer and 1,800 graduate students in attendance, fans are known to campout for 36 hours to get their hands on tickets, which might as well be cherished treasures. The campout starts a day before the tickets become available and includes numerous check-ins over the course of one and a half days till the final results are announced, where the winners are chosen through a lottery-style method, purely based on luck.
The Blue Cup
However, moving past just the basketball rivalry, Fuqua also takes on UNC Kenan-Flagler in the MBA Blue Cup, an Olympic-style athletic competition that is reserved exclusively for both the business schools. The Blue Cup features over twenty events including cricket, soccer, basketball, kickball, running, and community service, to name a few. The Blue Cup takes place each Spring with the locations for the various events alternating between the two campuses each year.
