By LES HIGH

I have a new hero, and his name is Will Blythe.

Last year, Blythe wrote the book, “To Hate Like This Is To Be Happy Forever, A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting and Occasionally Unbiased Account Of The Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry.”

Blythe, a UNC graduate and compulsive Carolina fan like myself, spends much of the book trashing – albeit logically and with perfect wisdom – Duke University students and the school’s basketball program.

It’s the best book I’ve ever read.

If you’re a Dook fan, you probably don’t want to read beyond this point.

“To Hate Like This” is also a self-help book for Dook haters such as myself. I’m one of those people who, on my worst days, likes to see Dook lose more than I want to see us win. I’m happiest on those rare days where a Carolina win is coupled with a Dook loss.

Blythe explains why it’s OK, even therapeutic, to hate Dook basketball. My preacher may beg to differ because hate is generally a frowned-upon emotion, but even he occasionally wears Wake Forest regalia in church, so I think he understands.

The reader who likes sports but isn’t obsessed with the Duke, Carolina rivalry can still enjoy “To Hate Like This.” Pat Conroy, who wrote “The Prince of Tides” and the wonderful basketball novel, “My Losing Season,” calls “To Hate Like This,” “The best book on basketball I have ever read.”

The book has been popular, even outside Tobacco Road, because it’s funny, clever and insightful on more issues than just basketball. It is now in paperback and is a New York Times best seller.

I could go on from here and talk about my own loathing of Dook basketball, but that wouldn’t be healthy. Rather, I’d prefer to talk about Blythe’s book so you will buy it and see for yourself why Dook and their coach, Mike Krzyzewski, to whom I will subsequently refer to as POD (Prince of Darkness) are evil.

The book’s jacket proclaims that the rivalry is “the Democrats versus the Republicans, the Yankees versus the Confederates, capitalism versus communism, the life force versus the death instinct. Is that big enough?” Maybe not.

Blythe, who now lives in New York where he was the long-time literary editor for Esquire magazine, came home to write a book about the rivalry at the suggestion of his editor, who saw Blythe contorted on the floor in front of a television in hopes that his body language would telepathically help a Carolina basketball player make a free throw.

Blythe grew up in Chapel Hill, where he learned to hate Dook from his father, a UNC medical school professor, and from his mother, whose disdain for J.J. Redick as detailed in the book is priceless.

His father’s hatred of Dook stemmed from his genuine love for all things Southern and the state of North Carolina.

His father saw Dook students as modern-day carpetbaggers, insulated from the real world in their Gothic rock pile campus, whose air of superiority and smugness among us Southerners and North Carolinians, combined with their ambition at any cost and lack of manners, were offensive and vile.

The book detailed how basketball permeated the Blythe family, as it does so many North Carolina families, even at Dr. Blythe’s funeral following his untimely death in 2001.

“UCLA by 10,” the minister whispered in Blythe’s ear at the post-funeral visitation, “but it’s early.”

Even the sting of death couldn’t overcome Carolina basketball.

But as big a fans as Dr. Blythe and his son were, Blythe’s mother was an even more fanatical.
When asked by her son why she hated Dook so badly, her response was as simple as it was serious, “Because they’re terrible people.”
Hear, hear.

But “To Hate Like This” is also good sports journalism, regardless of your allegiance. Blythe, for example, spent a considerable amount of time with Melvin Scott, a high school pure shooter coming out of the mean streets of Baltimore, only to find his playing time diminished at UNC his senior year. Scott’s story is one of a small triumph, even if he didn’t make the NBA.

Another favorite section of the book is Blythe’s encounter with Dick Vitale, the obnoxious and unapologetic Dook fan, at Vitale’s book-signing in Chapel Hill.

Blythe also spent time with the enemy, trying to find common ground with, among others, a Dook superfan known as “Crazy Towel Guy,” former Duke basketball star Art Heyman, who now runs a bar, Redick and even the Devil himself, POD.

Blythe found that these men were not unlike his Carolina brethren – competitive, compassion and intense.

Though Blythe didn’t exactly come out and say what all Carolina fans think when comparing POD and Dean Smith, I’ll say it for him.

While it’s hard to argue that POD is a competent coach, he isn’t half the human being Smith is. And I’ll add this – something I tell delusional Dook fans who think POD is a superior coach: I won’t give POD the respect he’s due until he accepts the losses that were put on poor Dook assistant coach Pete Gaudett’s record when POD went down with a bad back after a loss at home to Clemson a few years ago. Many people don’t know that POD petitioned the NCAA and was successful in assigning those losses to Gaudett, even though a coach who starts the season as head coach should have those losses put on his record.

Could you see Dean Smith doing that to Bill Guthridge or Phil Ford? Of course not.

But I digress.

I like what Washington Post writer William Georgiades said about the book: “An exceptionally entertaining parable in defense of good, healthy American loathing…an animosity the whole family can share.”There will be plenty of that when Duke and Carolina play each other next Wednesday at Cameron Indoor Stadium – 9 p.m.

I think Carolina will win because our young guys are used to playing in high school gyms, and, with Roy Williams, there’s a new sheriff in town.

I see more back pain in a certain coach’s future.
My prediction? Carolina by 31, but the Dook refs may keep it closer.