Oct. 30, 2008

By Adam Lucas

Understand this: you should not feel sorry for Wayne Ellington.

He is 20 years old and he is on television 40 times a year. People pay money for the privilege of wearing a jersey with his number, or for the chance to scream when he shoots a basketball through a hoop. On a campus of over 20,000 students, he is one of the very few who is known almost everywhere he goes.

But for all those reasons, his life--and the lives of those same players and coaches you'll cheer when the basketball season begins with a Nov. 8 exhibition against UNC-Pembroke--is different than yours or mine.

We tell them they are student-athletes, that they are just like those other 20,000 students. But then we wait in the Smith Center parking lot to ask them for an autograph or try to snap their picture from the other side of Franklin Street.

Last fall, I was describing to Bobby Frasor the adulation that surrounds Tyler Hansbrough in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. After spending the day with Hansbrough in his hometown, it became clear that he is never just an ordinary person. He is always recognized, always sought, always famous.

"It must be a strange life," I told Frasor.

"Not really," Frasor said. "It sounds just like his life in Chapel Hill."

We don't see that, because we always think we are the one person stopping a player to chat about the game or asking them to sign a scrap of paper.

"Do you have just a second?" we'll ask.

Eventually, those seconds add up.

"People like to think they're sneaky," says Wayne Ellington. "I was in Wal-Mart with my mom one time, and this guy was trying to film me with his cell phone. I kept moving, and he kept moving. He thought I couldn't tell. Finally, I turned my back to him and he walked away. We notice. People think we don't, but we do."

Those cell phones can be dangerous. Everyone in college has one, but they don't just make calls. These days, those phones snap pictures and take video footage. With the push of a button, those photos and videos are on the internet.

Hansbrough and Frasor made national news this summer for jumping off a frat house balcony. Most people seemed to miss the story. It wasn't that Hansbrough and Frasor jumped. It was that everyone else in the crowd was snapping pictures.

Joe Wolf and Jeff Lebo were together in Chapel Hill a few weeks ago for the annual UNC coaches' summit in Chapel Hill. The conversation turned to the Hansbrough/Frasor antics.

"Hey Jeff," Wolf said, "was that the same balcony we jumped off of?"

But no pictures exist of Wolf and Lebo, so it remains one of those stories they can laugh about during reunions rather than one of the lead stories on national sports shows.

Chapel Hill is unique because the same people we cheer on Wednesday nights in the Smith Center are the same people we see at Sutton's eating lunch. It's part of the village feel that makes this place special.

They're one of us. Except they're not, and those pictures being taken could have an impact measured in thousands of dollars--or more.

"Students don't think about stuff like that," Ellington says. "To them, they're having fun and treating us like normal students, which I like. But they also don't understand how serious it can be and how stuff like that can impact you down the road."

Players say in most cases they don't mind posing for a picture or signing an autograph, although the unanimous vote for the worst time to approach them is when they're eating at a restaurant. And Roy Williams remains cordial to fans, although he also was amazed when he was recognized this summer while on an African safari at a rustic campsite built into the side of a cliff.

But it's also an aspect of being a college basketball player--and specifically, a Carolina basketball player--that's not in the media guide. So the veterans make sure to educate freshmen on the realities of their new life. For someone like Tyler Zeller, who grew up in Washington, Indiana, being a familiar face is nothing new. But for freshmen from bigger cities, the widespread intensity of the devotion to basketball in Chapel Hill can be an adjustment.

"Right when they first got here, we told them that they didn't understand how serious it can be," Ellington says. "Any picture that's taken, no matter where you are or how good a friend that person is, can go anywhere."

Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.