Any story that begins with Barack Obama and Coach K sounds like a joke, and they’re about to be joined in a bar by a priest, a rabbi and an imam. But this is no joke: a minor tiff between the Duke coach and the fricking President of the United States threatened to spiral out of control, dragging our country into a second civil war.

What started as a jab by Krzyzewski at Obama over his snub of Duke in his NCAA bracket has required a team running damage control, including Krzyzewski’s wife Mickie, Obama’s aide Reggie Love, and an ESPN investigative team. Everything seems cool now, but for a while there, Coach K might have been the leadership of the Republican party.

Read more…