From the archives: Postcard from the center of the Triangle’s college basketball universe
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A requiem for Tobacco Road
Tobacco Road once facilitated North Carolina’s deep love affair with basketball, a sport that became a defining part of its culture. And the Big Four ACC schools along that stretch — North Carolina, N.C. State, Duke and Wake Forest — once had basketball influence. Now, like the tobacco crop itself, the best days are in the past. Here’s more from The News & Observer.
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A requiem for NC’s Tobacco Road as it loses stature in a changing college sports world
Photo gallery: Take a look back at Tobacco Road basketball action in NC through the years
Tobacco Road by the numbers: How many games? How many farms? How many big match-ups?
The trip from UNC to Duke is about 8 miles. Where’s the fan dividing line on 15-501?
From the archives: Postcard from the center of the Triangle’s college basketball universe
This story was initially published Dec. 29, 2012.
The Center of the College Basketball Universe is nothing much to see. A few yards into piney woods along a largely unused boulevard, just off a pedestrian trail in the middle of Research Triangle Park, it’s a quiet spot under the menacing gaze of a cell tower with nothing to suggest its significance.
This is the geographic center of the Triangle’s three basketball arenas.
From here, it’s 9.72 miles northwest to Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium. It’s 9.72 miles west to North Carolina’s Dean Smith Center. And it’s 9.72 miles southeast to North Carolina State’s PNC Arena.
If Tobacco Road were the home address of college basketball, this is where the mail would be delivered: 35 degrees, 52 minutes, 1.7 seconds north latitude, 78 degrees, 52 minutes, 34.21 seconds west longitude. (Or point your GPS to 35°52’1.7”N 78°52’34.21”W).
The nearest postal address, is 7001 Development Drive in Research Triangle Park, now occupied by Lenovo’s campus. (It once was occupied by Sony Ericsson.)
This spot has moved over the years, slightly southwest when North Carolina moved from Carmichael Auditorium to the Smith Center, more violently west when N.C. State moved from Reynolds Coliseum to what was then known as the Entertainment and Sports Arena.
All three schools play games at home Saturday — No. 3 North Carolina vs. No. 7 Duke in Chapel Hill and N.C. State vs. Miami in Raleigh — and from this spot, you could almost hear the cheers. Or at least the traffic.
The schools in the Triangle are separated by walkable distances, if one were willing to put in some time and effort. (There’s even a fourth Division I school, N.C. Central, snuggled within the same radius.)
After a season preview article in the N&O said all three schools could be included within a 28-mile radius, reader Michael Pjetraj wrote a letter to the editor in 2012, suggesting the neighborhood was quite a bit smaller.
“Based on the current basketball stadium locations, the three courts can be plotted within a circle with a radius of only 9.72 miles with a center point just south of the Durham Wildlife Park Lake and Development Drive,” Pjetraj wrote.
Pjetraj proposed a roadside sign on Development Drive to mark the spot. Standing in the quiet spot, there’s nothing to mark it — yet. .
It’s not until you look at a map that you realize that a mere 400 feet away, visible from a bend just up the trail, sits a regulation basketball court.
Heretofore unregarded and unnoticed, it lacks rims or backboards. The basket stanchions stand guard, impotently; a ghost court. Nevertheless, it’s the center court of the epicenter of college basketball.
This story was originally published December 29, 2012 at 1:02 AM.
