Coach Hurley's Drizzy Drake Deserves Your Respect

Congratulations to the University of Connecticut men's basketball team for winning the chip with a 75-60 victory over Purdue, and going Drizzy Drake with back-to-back titles for the first time since the debut year of the iPhone 1. But it's funny how, with all the gaudy numbers and 6 championships since 1999, UConn doesn't get the respect commensurate with its resume. What's the deal with that?  

I ain't gonna lie, it felt good to hear Connecticut coach Danny Hurley shout out Jersey City in the post-game interview on the court! I was born and raised in JC, and many great memories are steeped in that city. But I noticed this before Danny got to Connecticut and the squad went back to back. When UConn had 4 chips, they deserved a ton more recognition and didn't receive it and I call that the Archie Bunker effect.

Archie Bunker is the racist curmudgeon and main character of the 1970s TV show All In The Family, produced by Everywhere Norman Lear. 

The CBB Blue Blood conversation rarely includes UConn, which, like those high-top Donald Trump sneakers, is a complete travesty. The only college teams who have won more men's championships than Uconn are UCLA and Kentucky. Thats it. They've won just as many championships as North Carolina, one more than Duke and Indiana, and two more chips than Kansas; all schools revered for their men's basketball glory. 

I find it's no coincidence that schools most revered for their history of basketball championships started winning titles when the shorts were short and the players were White. It is a throwback to a simpler time in the American experiment, when 

Archie Bunker Choking Meathead

"guys like me we had it made, those were the days" a telling line from the All In The Family theme song.

We all know which "guys" Archie Bunker is singing about, and it's a sentiment shared by a sizeable swath of the country based on presidential voting patterns.

The college basketball TV commentators, talking heads, and the CBB community at large getting misty-eyed with reverence about the history of winning at N.C., Duke, Kentucky, and Kansas, is nostalgia for
anti-blackness and anti-competitiveness.

BEFORE BLACK PEOPLE

Kentucky won the title in 1948, 1949, 1951, and 1958, all years the SEC was segregated, Kentucky didn't have any Black players back then and mostly refused to play teams with Black players. Indiana won championships in 1940 and 1953, in that same pre-Black player's era, as did Kansas in 1952 and even North Carolina was catching chips back then with a title in 1957..."Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again."

You remove the segregated titles from some Blue-Blood schools and the math stops matching. That would leave Kentucky with 4 titles, North Carolina with 5, and Indiana and Kansas with 3. Those two schools would likely not be Blue Bloods, because you ain't CBB royalty if you only have 3 chips.

Old Timey college basketball

Even the term Blue-Blood feels sketchy. Blue blood is an old European term that translates to skin so pale and white, that blood and veins are pronounced and visible. It's synonymous with coming from upper-class nobility, not having an occupation or laboring under the sun. It was adapted to a very Southern, plantation mentality in America.

I call this the Archie Bunkering College Basketball history, and for all intents and purposes, UConn is Bunker's son-in-law Mike, whom Bunker nicknamed "Meathead" and called him that regularly. Mike is a progressive Hippie, with an inclusive worldview that greatly differs from Mr. Bunkers.

Connecticut is too far north to fit into the narrative of old-school Southern nobility (Kentucky, NC, Duke), and the per capita income is too high for the state to fit into the working-class, salt-of-the-earth America lane (Kansas, Indiana).

So without a history of CBB greatness that dates back to Emmett Till, and George Wallace and segregated everything, including teams. Connecticut is also without a strong identity other than a geographical mid-point between NYC and Boston, and being the home of ESPN. In no sense of the word is UConn a storied institution, and that stops some folks from fostering a love affair with the basketball program.

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK

Although fairly new to the champion's circle, being the "new kid on the block" did not damper the Duke's love affair with the country. Duke began winning championships more recently, a mere eight seasons before Connecticut, but perhaps they were grandfathered into the Blue Bloods because of their North Carolina roots, Southern pedigree, and overall elite status of the university. There's nothing like a top-tier school fielding a top-tier team to fast-track adulation.

Commentators and talking heads gush over Duke so much, that it has helped create a sizeable anti-Duke energy amongst college basketball fans. It's difficult to pinpoint why people hate Duke, but you would think they started their title run decades before winning the first chip in their back-to-back pair in 1991 and 1992. 

UConn has shown a spurt of excellence unparalleled in D1 CBB, winning 6 NCAA Championships in 25 years (1999-2024) and that's without top recruiting classes filled with 5-Star recruits that Duke used to win 5 championships in 24 years (1991-2015). 

I think the term Blue Bloods is outdated terminology and shouldn't be used to describe programs filled with Black players whose veins are invisible. Maybe being mentioned in those conversations shouldn't be a goal.

I see that UConn has the 4th-ranked recruiting class for next season, so maybe the talent is coming around to realize that going to UConn is your best chance at winning a chip. The real issue is that top talent doesn't prioritize winning a championship, they prioritize getting to the league and UConn is not the NBA feeder system like those Blue Bloods schools.

That's not gonna stop Danny Hurley and them dudes from going after a 3-peat (don't sue me Pat Riley) because that Jersey City energy is high-voltage, but more legit love for the legacy of the Connecticut Huskies men's basketball team should be forthcoming. Stop all the Archie Bunker business and recognize the real.