NEW ORLEANS — Even after all the renovations at Cameron Indoor Stadium, there's a door on the east side of the building that has been there for a long time, probably forever. Twenty-three years later I remember that door. It was a beigish-gray. More important, it was cracked open, barely.
Who needs a ticket to Duke-Carolina when there's an open door on the side of an old stadium?
This week here in New Orleans, I've been thinking a lot about that door, and the places it led. I was 17-years-old then, a high school senior. It was 1999. A Duke fan at the time, I admit, the way many my age had become Duke fans, through those Hurley and Hill and Laettner teams. For years I'd fantasized about attending a Duke-North Carolina game, especially in Durham, and for weeks during my senior year I checked the classifieds in the newspaper, the one where I now work, for tickets. They were pricey, I recall. Two, three-hundred dollars. Tough, making minimum wage at Ace Hardware.
