K-Ville From The Front Line

I don’t even know how to begin this post.  

I guess I’ll start with a caveat:  I’m a freshman.  I’ve only spent half of a basketball season in the Crazies.  But I’m also a life-long Duke fan who’s had the opportunity to attend nearly every home game in Cameron for the past nineteen years.

I’ve led my high school student section to a “Best Student Section” award. I’ve taken note of crowd dynamics and venue acoustics.  I’ve methodically studied the Crazies and their craft for the past nineteen years of my life.  I was there for Speedo Guy. I was there for “Inspiration/Perspiration”. I’ve been a ball-boy for the team.  My grandparents were in the building for “In-Hale/Ex-Hale” and the original “Airball”, and boy, were those my bedtime stories growing up.

I may be young, but I know what the hell I’m talking about.

I came home from the Wake Forest game tonight and started my post game ritual:  two bottles of Dasani and a quick read over the Duke Basketball Report and The Devil’s Den message boards.

Both boards are currently running threads about the lack of interest in this year’s basketball team. Shall we go down the list of posts? Let’s:

• i have noticed a difference in the crowds for a couple of years now. it all started with the jumbotron and playing videos and songs before the game. to me, that is not cameron. cameron is walking in 15-20 mins before gametime and hearging the band playing, students singing and clapping, and in between songs chanting for theri devils. that doesnt happen anymore. 
   
• hell, half, and this is no exageration, of the students dont even know the cheers. as someone said earlier, things are changing. the kicker the other night was when they had a noise meter on the jumbotron. are you kidding me? the damn thing continued to say the crowd was getting louder as they stopped cheering. get rid of the videos (the sound system in cameron is terrible) and lets get back to basics. just m .02 worth.
   
• The crowd tonight is absolutely awful.
   
• the crowds over Xmas break were louder..good lord this is embarrassing..
   
• This is honestly the first time I have ever complained about Cameron. WTF is going on tonight.
   
• it really does seem dead tonight. just bad. fix it Cameron. get dirty again. quickly.
• The Crazies are spoiled. Really, REALLY spoiled. Being a Crazie comes with a certain responsibility… apparently they think they’re just there to be entertained.
   
• Shouting out a players name is nice, but a serious lack of creativity with these Crazies.
   
• Tonight was WEAK… Cmon Crazies!
   
• I’m sick of hearing excuses for why the Crazies suck on any given night. Mid-terms, semi-formals, rush, weather… the fact that current students think those are valid explanations is just proof of how much things have fallen off. 
   
• Cameron cannot turn in to one of those places that only gets up for a few games a year.  Cameron is one of Duke’s best assets, and its durable beyond K.  We have to keep it great.
   
• Let’s face it Cameron is nowhere the place it was during the Foster years, and 86-01.The reason is Coach K.He has toned the crowd down so much that even tonight he had to get off the bench to try to get the crowd into the game.I miss the antics the students played on certain players on the visiting teams and I believe it has made a big difference in Cameron by moving the students away from the benches.Duke though is all about the mighty dollar.Com’on Duke let the students be allowed to show their creativity again and even the old farts upstairs aren’t yelling like they use to.We are spoiled and I’m goin to say it,Cameron is slowly turning into WINE AND CHEESE!!
   
• Bring back some old traditions that made Duke the crowd in basketball.Let the band member play charge on the trumphet and let the pep band lead the team on the floor.PLEASE DO AWAY WITH THE STINKING VIDEOS OF THE PLAYERS AND K.Bring back the spotlights,turn the houselights off and introduce the team the old way.New ideas are SOMETIMES good, but the REAL FIRE AND INTENSITY that made Cameron tough to play in is simply not there today! Change is not necessary all the time,look at our political situation.I rest my case!
   
• Being a Cameron Crazy is about having an IMPACT on the game. When I was at a game, I didn’t give a damn about getting on TV or coming up with the most creative costume. I viewed it as my JOB to help create THE most formidable home court advantages in all of college basketball. So I yelled and jumped and cheered even when I didn’t really feel like it. It’s not the team’s job to inspire the Crazies to cheer. It’s the Crazies job to inspire the team to excel. Apparently no one understands that anymore.
   
• Some will say it is the winning but we won plenty from 86-2001 and I don’t recall the Crazies being questioned like they are right now.  K can give all the pep talks he wants but I think there’s a deeper issue, maybe the student hierarchy over there needs a shakeup.
   
• I think there’s just been a change in the demographic over the last couple of decades. Most of the crazies don’t seem to be huge basketball fans anymore, just nice kids who want to be part of the experience. 
   
• Worst conference game crowd wise I’ve been to that I can recall. Crowd was dead for virtually all of it. Dawkins’ 3’s seemed to barely awaken the crazies. K was once again trying to fire them up. Pathetic that a 64 year old coach has to fire up a bunch of kids to support a 16-2 team ranked #4 in the country.
   
• When you go into Cameron as a student, you have a single task, to make Cameron Cameron.   It requires you to come out hoarse and exhausted afterwards.

You know what the sad part is?  They’re absolutely right.  I sure as hell feel it, and I know some of you do, too.  Part of me wants to say, “You know what? They don’t know crap.  Most of them probably didn’t go to Duke.”  That’s probably accurate.  But at the same time, these concerns are real, and they ought to be addressed. 

So, what’s really going on in Cameron? There are a myriad of problems plaguing our fine student section right now.

Sit down and get out your notes. Turn your textbooks to page 1986. Class is in session. 

Problem 1: It’s boring.  We do the same damn cheers every. Single. Night.  I can list them all out right now in about twenty seconds. Ready? Go:

Offense:
Here We Go Devils, Here We Go! (Clap Clap)
Let’s! Go! Duke!
Let’s Go Devils! (Clap, Clap, Clap Clap Clap)
Go, Devils, Go! (Clap Clap Clap)

Defense:
General Hexing 
De-fense! (Clap Clap)
Boink, Boink, Pass

That’s it. Go watch the replay on ESPN3. Tell me if I’m wrong.  If I am, I’ll shut up.

So what do we do about this? Well, obviously, we need new chants. New stuff.  These are great classics and can stay, but let’s introduce some new material into our repertoire.  We ought to open the doors an hour earlier before an upcoming conference game.  Get all the students to come by offering free pizza or t-shirts.  

It’s a shame that it has to come to free swag to get Duke students to come to a freakin’ Duke Basketball game, but, hey — you know what they say about desperate times. 

Let’s just introduce some new stock cheers.  Hell, Utah State has a great student section and they do cheers my high school did.  We need new cadences that we can use so that the chants don’t become repetitive and monotonous.  

Problem 2:  We don’t have any more creativity.  The system of dirt sheets that we use is outdated.  Why are we printing thousands of sheets that students drop and forget about five minutes after they walk in?  Here’s how it works right now.  The students get the sheet, read it, laugh about one or two things, and then get distracted by some rap song or video on the scoreboard and forget everything they just read.  

Why do you think all the creative chants are gone?  When cheer sheets existed, they compacted the information into chants that were easy to remember.  Now, we have to remember some long, drawn-out Facebook post or something. It’s terrible. 

Make the dirt sheet an electronic, NetID-protected resource and make it available the night before the game.   Give us some time to come up with comedy gold.  We need to build our wit back up from the ground, seeing as we have none.  Make it available online so that students can access it on their phones.

Oh, wait! Phones, you say?  

Problem 3:  Technology sucks.  This is a big one because it’s the hardest to change.  The amount of texting/Facebook-ing/Tweeting/picture-taking during game time is absolutely ridiculous. 

Another caveat: I freakin’ love technology.  I’m a CS major, for crying out loud.  My dorm room looks like Mark Zuckerberg’s in “The Social Network”.  And I know I’m going to sound like an old geezer when I tell you to

TURN OFF YOUR STUPID PHONE AND WATCH THE GAME.  

How do we fix this?  It’s embedded in our generational DNA to be constantly connected.  We can’t institute a phone ban in Cameron. We’re not a police state and it would kill all enthusiasm.  No one likes being told what to do.  

There’s a more complex issue at work here.  Our generation is so concerned with documenting our experience that we forget to enjoy it.  ”Hey! Look at me! I’m a Duke student! At a Duke game! Court side! I’m so close I could collect Andre Dawkins’ sweat in a jar and sell it on the internet!”

Gross. Don’t do that.  

We’re so concerned with proving our identity as Duke students through documentation on social networks that we’ve completely forgotten to be Duke students.  

You go to Duke, and one of the great things about being a Duke student is that you get kick-ass basketball seats. You know that. Your friends at Duke know that.  Your friends at home know that. Your family knows that.

You don’t need five thousand pictures of yourself in Cameron on your Facebook page. Seriously.  Watch the game for a change.  

“But we only take pictures during warm-ups and time-outs.”

Great, but you’re forgetting that those are part of the game, too!  Most of the best chants and taunts in Cameron have come during time-outs and during warm-ups. So get off of your damn iPhone 4S, man up, and tell their center that he has man boobs. As loud as you can. Now.

Problem 4:  The music during time-outs and warm-ups.  This one’s a no-brainer.  The rap music is so loud in Cameron that the players can tune out whatever they want. We can’t heckle them because they can’t hear us.  Get rid of everything except the band, “Every Time We Touch,” and “All I Do Is Win.”  We need some alone time with the players to have a nice little chat.  

While we’re at it, cut back on the Blue Planet videos.  They’re great and look awesome but distract everyone from the action on the court.

And, for those of you reading this who have tickets in the upper deck, know that it’s harder to hear the band from the undergraduate section than it is from up there.  Can we get a mic on them or something?  At least the drummer’s kick and snare so we can synchronize.  That’s why clapping on all the songs goes haywire halfway through and then has to re-syncopate.

Problem 5:  Chant starting is going south.  

Who leads the Cameron Crazies?  

In the past, it’s been extremely organic.  Chants just start up, and because they’re funny and creative, people join in.

Well, since we aren’t funny and creative anymore, we need someone to step up and direct everything.  Who’s it going to be? Obvious candidates are the Line Monitors and graduate students.  Right now, both are doing their part somewhat, but they aren’t always exactly coordinated.  Many times two separate cheers start simultaneously, leading to confusion as to what exactly we’re yelling.  

We need someone who’s loud and not afraid to look like an idiot.  

This person, ideally, would be any person who walks into Cameron on a given game night.  We should all be loud and not afraid to look like an idiot.  They call us “Crazies” for a reason.  Cheers are best started by one person whose voice can carry throughout Cameron.  

We ought to move the Line Monitors to middle center of Section 17, about three or four rows up. Open up more space in the front row for students who want to actually wait in line.  Let them start the chants from a centralized location where everyone can hear them. 

Problem 6:  Our basketball fandom is lacking.  We’re brilliantly intelligent students here at Duke.  But, as one of our esteemed message board posters noted above:

“I think there’s just been a change in the demographic over the last couple of decades. Most of the crazies don’t seem to be huge basketball fans anymore, just nice kids who want to be part of the experience.”

How much do you know about your Duke basketball history?  Who was Christian Laettner? Grant Hill? Bobby Hurley? What about Vic Bubas and Bill Foster?  When was the first Krzyzewskiville started?  

Do you know about the original “Airball” game? Did you even know that the Crazies are credited with inventing that cheer?  What about “In Hale/Ex Hale” or “You Suck, Richard”? What about the “Avuncular Letter”?

For those of you reading this post — if you understood every reference I just wrote, bravo.  I’m guessing, however, most of you didn’t.

Duke’s student body aren’t basketball fans anymore. Please take thirty minutes and go into the SI Vault and read some Duke lore. Go on the ACC Vault and watch Duke games of old.   As we do with any subject, study it.  Look to the past and the great standard we have to live up to. 

Well, that’s my rant for now.  I know that it will probably fall on deaf ears.  But Cameron is one of Duke’s most treasured possessions.  

I was at a leadership meeting for the House Councils on East Campus, and someone mentioned that Cameron is one of the few places — not just on Duke’s campus, but in general — where issues like race, gender, and background all fall away.  

It’s just basketball, and it’s good because it’s pure. 

We’re at a crossroads right now. My roommate just came in and agreed with me.  ”It’s dying,” he said.

So let’s think this over.  Are we doing the best we can, or can we step it up a notch and get back to basics? Let’s regain our Eye of the Tiger.

Do you want to be part of the Duke students that let the Cameron Crazies die?