Feb. 26, 2001

"I hate karaoke," said cherished friend and noted music aficionado Bill Keith soon after the singing craze hit back in the early 1990s. "The whole problem with it is that it creates magic moments for people who don't deserve to have magic moments."

About six months later, Bill called from his Atlanta home.

"Mick, I wish you could have seen me at our big corporate shindig in LA last weekend. Oh man, they had karaoke singing and this woman came up to me afterwards and said that `You've Lost That Loving Feeling' has never sounded better and she asked me if I had ever been on stage before! Can you believe that? See, I started out with the Righteous Brothers version and then I kind of vamped into the Hall and Oates version, you know, where it goes `a love you don't find every day-ay, day-ay, DAY-AYYYY'! It was one of those magic moments!"

"Oh, you mean one of those magic moments for people who don't deserve magic moments?" I said.

"Naw man, this was different. This really WAS a magic moment."

In a way, the Internet and sports talk radio are both like that. All you need to become a "journalist" is a PC, a modem and some free time. Chat rooms, message boards and the AM airwaves buzz with so much venom, name-calling and rumor that informed opinion and insightful analysis are difficult to find. And fans who taste the nectar of notoriety become intoxicated by it.

The heavyset gentleman approached me at a basketball game, arms spread out wide, palms towards the sky, smiling.

"Mick, it's me! Big Ram! You know, from the message boards!!!! I sent you that email that time about that recruit!!"

I might have recognized Mr. Ram from his frequent contributions except that I stopped going to those places on the web years ago after reading a pithy posting from some numb nut using my name and writing as me.

This whole thing is getting out of hand, like when Opie and his friend started a newspaper and began printing all the gossip they heard everybody in Mayberry say. A lot of people probably still think the infamous Elton Brand email of two years ago was genuine. Matt Doherty, with the reasonable expectation of privacy, made a comment about Duke's cheerleaders in the team huddle and the next thing you know it gets on the Internet and becomes a national story. Website www.acctoday.com was hacked into on Christmas eve and bogus stories were created. Coaches can't say "Shoot, I don't even know how to turn on a computer" anymore, because their players and their recruits are reading everything so they must, too.

And America is still becoming de-socialized at an alarming rate. Folks now seem to know the complete life stories of all their Tommy Tiger and Peggy Pirate and Dukie Dave chat room buddies but they don't even know the names of the family that lives right next door.

Am I being critical of people who are passionate about following sports? Of course not.

All I am saying is, let's be careful not to confuse who we are with what our teams accomplish.

The players and coaches are the doers of the deeds. They are the stars. The magic moments are theirs. We are merely privileged to share them in a small way.

mmixon@tarheelsports.com