There are few things we love here at Carolina more than basketball. The very word feels about as good to our ears as the swish of the net when Reggie and PJ are on fire. We would trip over every brick on campus for a year just to be in the Smith Center to watch Plumlee trip over his own feet this weekend. Some students can quote the players stats more accurately than the players themselves. We can remember where we were when the Twin Towers fell and every time the Heels won a National Championship. Most of us fail to keep up with the administrative history of this University, but can name every head coach to ever wear the crown. Yes, I said crown. To us, basketball is ROYalty.
The University of North Carolina is our kingdom and on the throne sits our figure-head. The head coach is one of an aristocratic lineage as dazzling and awe-inspiring as a glance up to the rafters. Each coach has presided over a singular era and an entirely different realm in our history. The foremost of these kings was Dean Smith. No name is mentioned above his and no argument is necessary beyond his name in our kingdom. There are others in the dynasty, yes, but none who held the love of the people for so long or so passionately. So what is it about Roy Williams that stirs in our bleeding blue hearts something faintly reminiscent of the fervor of Smith’s reign, and yet something remarkably new?
For some of us fashionistas it may be the daring sport coats, the adorable sweater combinations or heaven forbid he put on a bow tie and we swoon all shades of wolf-puppy red. For others it could be the fascinating swiftness with which he gets from one end of the bench to the other. One angry turn of his heel is followed by a quick stride past each chair, in perfect tempo with a stream of stinging instructions punctuated by many beloved “daggums” and other equally aristocratic terms in his vernacular. He wins, and oh how dearly we love to win, but that’s still not why we love Roy.
We love Roy because Roy loves us. If Dean Smith was the king, Roy Williams is perfectly comfortable being Prince Charming. He realizes that Carolina is a family, and his job is an inheritance not a contest among bureaucrats of the past and present. Roy is the heir to the throne and has accepted Smith as his father of another era. He maintains the kingdom of his fore-fathers with the grace and respect of a southern gentleman and he brings to it a certain swag it never had. He loves Carolina with every adorable hair on his head and he puts that passion to work every day with his own special recipe for success. He takes the criticisms and the comparisons and he uses them as leverage. For it is truly the Carolina Way to make your own way, and Roy does exactly that. He doesn’t go about things in the same way, but he is forever loyal to the cause and the cause is forever each other. His shortcomings pale in comparison to his passion to protect all that is pure and lovely about Carolina Basketball. For the virtue and praise of this great university, for every Tar Heel that has been and is yet to come, for you and for me he fights each battle. No matter the decisions or the outcomes, he is doing his job the way he feels will benefit us all. We need to stop throwing our leader under the media’s bus and start supporting him with as much passion as he supports us. This March: In Roy We Trust.
Sources:
http://espn.go.com/photo/2013/0125/ncb_u_williams_r_600.jpg
http://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Roy+Williams+UAB+v+North+Carolina+HD2FwH1yxh7l.jp
https://twimg0-a.akamaihd.net/profile_images/610938348/roy.jpg