Die-hard Carolina fans - who paint their entire body a bright shade of blue and scream until their throats are raw - rarely stop and ask, "Why?"
But English professor Fred Hobson has.
His recently published memoir, "Off the Rim: Basketball and Other Religions in a Carolina Childhood," looks at the phenomenon in the context of growing up with basketball fever on Tobacco Road.
Hobson lectured on the memoir and the culture of basketball Wednesday in Dey Hall. About a dozen people showed up to hear him describe his memoir, which he did not read at the event.
He instead traced his lifelong obsession with college basketball, beginning during his youth in Western North Carolina and developing as a UNC professor.
He said he was inspired to examine the basketball culture some years ago after a painful North Carolina loss to longtime-rival Duke.
The agony of defeat was impeding his ability to prepare for the class he was teaching, he said, and he asked himself, "Why do I care so much?
"I have no financial advancement, social gains or royalties if my team wins. And I know that a lot of other people wonder the same thing."
The memoir is another turn in what is becoming a trend of writing about the state's favorite past time.
