Duke Photography/Megan Morr

November 23, 2009 | Will Blythe is the author of “To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry.” As the title suggests, the book matches the intensity of other books on great sports rivalries, but adds a dollop of humor and a writer’s touch such books often lack. Blythe -- a rabid UNC fan who grew up in Chapel Hill, N.C. -- is freelance writer and a former literary editor at Esquire. He lives in New York.

In an interview with Faith & Leadership, Blythe talks about the particular rivalry he loves and the habits and practices required to be an elite coach, player and fan.

Q: Much of your book is propelled by your admission that you still yell at the television. Why?

I suspect that yelling at the television is a form of ventilation that purges the spiritual toxins from me and insures my psychic well-being. After games, I often feel emptied out. Of course, the room I’ve been watching in can also be emptied out. This can be lonely following a loss. On the other hand, I fear that such ranting may represent a profound failure of impulse control of the same sort that results in murder, assault and Coach K-baiting.

I asked the Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman whether my game-watching tendencies might result in my being reincarnated as an insect or a monkey or a baying coyote on the edge of some lonesome Western suburb. He answered that, indeed, there was some danger in that. I’ve had to weigh my intense fandom against the possibility that I will one day be crouched on all fours out in the desert scrub, barking with longing at a mystifying moon.

For many of us, games become inchoate contests between differing values that we imagine represented by the competing teams. The games satisfy or disappoint our sense of virtue as members of the “right” group. In that sense, the games are not just games -- they’re morality plays.

But I’d rather not take such a philosophical stance on game night, all right?

Q: What did you learn about the discipline, habits and practices necessary for players to compete at the level of Duke and Carolina?

Success at that level requires players to approach basketball like a job. The practices and video sessions alone take hours. The players also lift weights and do additional drills on their own time. Then they have to do their course work. They also have to learn to mesh their own ambitions and particular talents into those of a larger group, often subordinating gifts that have won them acclaim (indeed, scholarships) for the sake of the team. That can be psychologically brutal.

Q: How would you characterize the way each coaching staff works to motivate its players, and how has this changed over the years?

The prevailing view seems to be that a generation or two ago, players would run through a plate-glass door if the coach suggested they do so. Modern players would apparently prefer the coach run through the plate glass door to make sure it’s safe and then post it on YouTube. I suspect that both Roy Williams and Mike Krzyzewski feel they have to be better psychologists than they used to be, that players are a bit more fragile, far less willing to tolerate the General Patton shenanigans of coaches like the Great Chair-Thrower Bobby Knight.