Politics & Basketball in N.C.

In a post last night on President Obama's NCAA bracket, I suggested that Obama's pick of the University of North Carolina Tar Heels to win it all might have been an overture to North Carolina voters, who narrowly supported him over John McCain and voted Democrat Kay Hagan into the Senate over incumbent and former National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairwoman Elizabeth Dole.

Well, one Carolina native isn't happy: Duke's Coach K. Leading the Drudge Report this morning is a story about Mike Krzyzewski saying, "As much as I respect what he's [Obama is] doing, really, the economy is something that he should focus on, probably more than the brackets."


Perhaps Coach K is unhappy about Hagan's victory: in 2002, Krzyzewski took some heat after holding a fundraiser for Dole at Duke University-owned Washington Duke hotel, just off campus in Durham, N.C. Krzyzewski and Obama come from the same place, more or less--Coach K sharpened his elbows in the Chicago Catholic league as a youngster--and according to the Federal Election Commission, Krzyzewski donated to neither Dole nor McCain in 2008, but maybe Obama's coattails in North Carolina have added to the insult of his UNC prediction.