Benefield: Why I really, really, really want North Carolina to lose in Final Four

I hate Roy Williams. But in deference to my boss who likes to remind me that hate is a strong word, I'll dial it back to this: I super duper don't like Roy Williams.

I daydream about ways I'd like to see North Carolina, but more accurately, their head basketball coach, lose. Would it give me more pleasure to see them blown out by Oregon Saturday or to lose a heartbreaker in the NCAA title game Monday night?

Which makes me wonder, am I weird? It can't be normal, this churning bile that burns every time I see or hear Roy Williams. I didn't go to Duke. I didn't go to Kansas. I haven't even been to North Carolina barring an airport layover 25 years ago.

So I called Sonoma State professor and sports psychologist (among other titles) Glenn Brassington and essentially asked: Am I crazy?

Oddly, the answer is no. It's surprisingly normal, according to Brassington, and not because everybody super duper doesn't like Roy Williams. Although they should.

'There is social psychology research on how you identify with teams,' he said in a soothing voice, calming me down. 'It builds your social connection … it's like your family network.'

Brassington told me you can gain those social connections not only in rooting for teams, but rooting against them.

The documented dopamine jolt one gets when your team does well? Well, a Harvard Intergroup Neuroscience Lab study says we get the same jolt when a team or person we don't like does poorly.

The way I see it, I'm doing myself good in rooting for Roy Williams to fail. Publicly.

'You perceive an injustice,' Brassington went on. 'Hostility is more what you are talking about — a slow burn. You are upset about it, you start imagining all the things that this person is doing.'

Roy Williams has always leaned hard on the aw shucks avuncular bit. He uses the word 'dadgum' more than anyone has the right to. But it seems like a charade.

It was unmasked for me in 2003 when Roy Williams, in a postgame interview, questioned reporter Bonnie Bernstein's humanity for asking the most logical question in the world in the most respectful way possible.

If you'll recall, Roy Williams, then head coach at Kansas, was the highly anticipated pick to take over at his alma mater UNC after the 2003 season. He deflected all questions in the run-up to the NCAA title game in which his Jayhawks were competing, but after they got bested in the final game 81-78 by Syracuse, Bernstein asked the question: What are your plans?

How dare she.

In the Bernstein interview, Roy Williams not only questioned her humanity, twice, he went dirtier. He tried to belittle her, saying the male producer in her earpiece had forced her to ask the question.

'As a journalist that's fine, but as a human being that's not very nice because it's not very sensitive,' he said. 'I've got 13 kids in that locker room that I love.'

Of course, Roy Williams bolted for UNC before the tears in the locker room were dry.

So the seed of bitterness was planted. What came next made it go full bloom. Kind of like a rash.

Roy Williams has been the head coach of UNC basketball through a good part of what is considered by many the most egregious academic fraud scandal in NCAA history. The NCAA has expanded its investigation to cover 2002-11 and could possibly put the 2005 and 2009 men's basketball titles in play.

In a nutshell: For more than 18 years UNC offered bogus classes involving more than 3,100 students, more than half of them student-athletes. No instruction was given and students who turned in papers were given high grades, regardless of quality. It was a scheme reportedly created to help maintain the eligibility of athletes in major revenue sports.

Roy Williams isn't named in the investigation, but the men's basketball program is. Roy Williams' down-homey protestations that he didn't know what was going on ring hollow. That aw shucks thing again.

Yet for as much as I don't like him, I'll admit, the guy is a pro. He wins — in the ultra-competitive Atlantic Coast Conference, no less. To get to the upper echelon of coaching where he resides, he probably knows what his players eat for breakfast. Surely he knows what classes they are enrolled in, what their grades are and how it's affecting their eligibility. He'd be a dadgum fool not to.

But Roy Williams, who makes nearly 15 times the salary of the governor of North Carolina, likes to wring his hands, turn on the southern-drawl charm and call all these mean questions about rampant cheating 'junk.' He seems keen to paint himself as an aggrieved party who's losing out on blue-chip recruits because of the taint of the investigation. Poor ol' Roy Williams.

According to the Raleigh News & Observer, widely credited with keeping the investigation alive, UNC has spent nearly $18 million defending itself against the allegations. The school's main line of defense? So many students took the bogus classes it constitutes academic fraud, not athletic fraud, so butt out, NCAA.

From a CBS Sports story in February, here is UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham: 'Is this academic fraud? Yes, it is by a normal person's standards. But by the NCAA definition (it is not).'

'I'm telling you what happened was bad, but it's not against the rules,' he said.

Ah, the Carolina Way.

And no, the NCAA isn't an innocent in this. Perhaps only Rep. Devin Nunes could have made a bigger mess of the investigation.

The NCAA has dropped the hammer fast and hard on schools that have done far less. So the foot-dragging seems to be a way to keep a marquee institution in the mix of one of its biggest moneymakers. Again, call me cynical.

'I think we should all feel queasy about this,' said B. David Ridpath, associate professor of sports administration at Ohio University. 'Why are they still playing when this is still going on?'

Ridpath is clearly my people.

'Here you had 18 years of violations that essentially became more available to regular students because they simply wanted to keep it going,' he said. 'To sit there and say that other students got the benefit makes it OK? We are talking about one of our best public institutions.'

Ridpath, who has written in Forbes magazine on the topic, said the NCAA is on trial as much as UNC. It's like a competition to see who can emerge looking less terrible.

'This case has not followed any real procedure,' he said. 'This one has been really strange.'

And still the Tar Heels get to play.

When video of UNC hero Luke Maye getting a standing ovation arriving for his 8 a.m. class after his last-second bucket for the win against Kentucky last Sunday went viral, I chuckled at the irony. Of course they are clapping — a UNC basketball player actually attended a class.

I still haven't decided whether a blowout Saturday or a tearjerker on Monday would give me the high I'm looking for, but I'll take either one. I just super duper hope that Roy Williams loses big, dadgum it.

You can reach staff columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com, on Twitter @benefield and on Instagram at kerry.benefield. Podcasting on iTunes and SoundCloud 'Overtime with Kerry Benefield.'