Schooling.

• Author: Kinney, David
• Position: UP FRONT - Column

I approached this month's cover story with some trepidation. The assignment went to freelancer Jerry Shinn, a former editorial writer and associate editor of The Charlotte Observer. Those were not the credentials that concerned me. Like a great many of the state's journalists--and all its sportswriters, if you listen to State fans--Jerry went to Carolina. Class of 1959, he was there when the Tar Heels went 32-0 to win the national championship in 1957. "I saw all the home games that year, in old Woolen Gym," he recalls. "You just had to wander there about tipoff time and show somebody your student ID to get in."

I wasn't worried about Jerry's objectivity--though he did confess, "I guess I'll finally have to learn to spell that guy's name." But I knew to keep an eye on Arthur Murray (UNC, 1979), the lead editor on the piece. Reared in the Old Dominion, he had chosen Chapel Hill over Charlottesville. Converts become zealots, and his fervor for alma mater is matched only by the ferocity he feels for her arch foe.

Still, Arthur is a product of the nation's finest journalism school, and what the professionalism pounded into him there might fail to temper, I (UNC, 1971) was confident I could. After all, I grew up a Duke fan. Somehow my old man (School of Hard Knocks, lifetime learning) always had season tickets at Cameron, and I finished my freshman year before the blue that ran in my veins faded to a lighter shade. A guy in my dorm speculated that it took that long to rub up against enough Dookies to realize I despised that place.

But it's an emotion I've never been able to muster. In fact, I bought all three of my grandkids Duke basketball uniforms last fall. I wanted to run a photo of them suited up with...