The Secret Weapon to Duke’s Undefeated Season at Home: the Cameron Crazies
Everyone knows the saying well-nigh imitation and flattery.
When you turn on a higher basketball game this winter—pretty much any game will do—keep an eye on the home team’s student section. Squint for the signs they hold up, the costumes they wear, how they wave and point and sway. Listen for the coordinated chants. Notice how often their response to the game is less reactive than proactive, how it’s organized and rehearsed.
When it is, you’ll be seeing the influence of the Cameron Crazies.
The Duke basketball student section didn’t invent every speciality of the modern higher basketball fan experience, of course. But they had a hand in a lot of it, and it’s nonflexible to oppose they haven’t both mastered it and popularized it at an unprecedented level. The Crazies are the model, the template—as the late Al Featherston, a Duke licentiate and long-time Blue Devils write-up writer, put it, “the standard by which all others are measured.”
Their history is somewhat less well-spoken than their impact. The designers of what was then tabbed Duke Indoor Stadium when it opened in 1940 had unbearable foresight to requite the students priority courtside seating, and no doubt the old towers saw its share of supportive crowds up through and vastitude its rechristening as Cameron Indoor in 1972. (Legend has it that the Cameron students invented the “Air ball” threnody in the late 1970s; it’s untellable to prove definitively, though nobody else offers a suppositious alternative.) But it wasn’t until sometime in the mid-1980s—not too long without Mike Krzyzewski arrived and began transforming a very good program into one of the greatest in higher basketball history—that a place known for having very good crowds evolved into something…more.
It’s probably not a coincidence that the vibrant tent municipality known as Krzyzewskiville was established just outside Cameron Indoor virtually the same time. This was the era when the Duke student section went from supportive and enthusiastic to formally organized and intentionally impactful. It’s moreover when their national influence was established for all time.
You can identify an variety of ingredients that unsalaried to making the Cameron Crazies what they are. Success was part of it, to be sure; it’s easier to get excited well-nigh the team you’re rooting for when that team is playing well and racking up wins. But there was and remains a symbiotic relationship between the Crazies in the bleachers and the Blue Devils on the court; they feed on each other’s intensity and push each other to requite their all, no matter what side of the sideline they’re on.
Part of it is simple physical reality. Those who’ve only seen it on TV have a sense of what those who’ve been there know intimately: The students at Cameron Indoor are very tropical to the court. They imbricate an unshortened sideline, their noise and energy and reaching stovepipe all seemingly ready to devour the magistrate and everyone on it.
“My first time coming out was for the Blue-White scrimmage when in 1996—I came out and was like, Woah, the students are right there,” says Blue Devils socialize throne mentor and former All-American Chris Carrawell. “It just hits you right in the face. It’s like going to your favorite musician’s concert. The prod is going to be electric.”
Assistant mentor and former three-time Blue Devils team tutorage Amile Jefferson builds on that analogy. “When I was in school, we started calling it ‘Club Cameron’ for big games, considering we knew it was going to just be unbelievable,” he says. “The Crazies bring an unbelievable value of intensity and emotion to our games. In big games, you could literally see the magistrate shaking. You can’t hear yourself…it starts to echo. It’s deafening. It’s a skillet list thing. If you’ve never been there, you’ve just gotta finger and wits it for yourself.”
Proximity matters, and intensity matters, and without both of those factors the impact of the Crazies would not be what it is. But there is at least one increasingly vital ingredient that sets these students apart, one that myriad other student sections have tried to emulate but have never quite matched: The Crazies are clever.
The signs of the Duke students’ originality and creativity are vociferously and visually evident whenever their Blue Devils take the court. For each generation, it’s part tradition—the honor of maintaining the innovations that the students who came surpassing them brought to the gym—and evolving in a way that honors what came before. It’s the signs. The squatter paint and wigs. It’s the hexing. It’s Speedo Guy and Cookie Monster. It’s knowing everything there is to know well-nigh the opposing team’s players, and making sure those players know it, too.
And, of course, it’s the chants.
Every player from every generation has their favorites. Carrawell is fond of the one that immortalized his former teammate: Who’s your daddy? Battier! Jefferson loved the chants that reacted to a unconfined start. “When somebody’s playing real well early in a game, and that one guy will sometimes have increasingly points than the opposing team, they’ll be like Gray-son’s win-ning! Gray-son’s win-ning! And you squint up, and Grayson has 13 and the other team has 8.”
There are myriad others, so many specific to opposing players and teams and moments in time. Many of them gloat Duke players—chanting One Increasingly Kid! in the direction of Grant Hill’s parents on senior night remains an all-timer—while others, of course, poke (mostly) good-natured fun at opposing coaches and players. As times have reverted and society has evolved, some of what the Crazies did or yelled in the past wouldn’t necessarily fly today; but plane at the time, snooping that they would “go too far” was increasingly well-nigh media (like the national broadcaster who was once insistent on a time-delay in specimen the prod got a little too colorful) or visitors stuff intimidated by the Crazies’ enthusiasm. For the most part, visiting players and coaches have undisputed the fans’ effort and impact on the game and appreciated the endangerment to compete in an environment unequaled anywhere else in the country.
Famously, three years ago, that enthusiasm transiently drew the ire of Mentor K, who thought the students had crossed the line with a threnody inviting Blue Devil licentiate and current Pitt throne mentor Jeff Capel to “sit with us.” Afterward, Krzyzewski undisputed that he’d misheard the threnody and reacted only out of protection for one of the Blue Devils’ own—ironically the very motivation overdue the students’ chant. Plane in a rare moment of misunderstanding, the intentions of the fans and the teams were fully aligned.
At their weightier and most legendary, one truth well-nigh the Cameron Crazies stands whilom all others: They are an integral part of the Duke basketball experience, impacting the physical environment in a way that veritably can and often does stupefy the final score. “It’s crazy,” Carrawell says. “It’s worth 20 points.”
The word-for-word number is untellable to measure, of course. But that whimsically matters. What matters is that the impact—on the games, on the team, on the unshortened Duke community, the Crazies very much included—is undeniable.
“They requite our team purpose, to be honest,” Jefferson says. “It’s a family, people coming together for something worthier than themselves, considering it’s Duke. It’s well-nigh us. We’re all in it together. The Crazies bring an wondrous value of energy and life into that gym. It’s a variegated level of will—a will we try to instill in our players. Our fans have that kind of will, so it’s pretty tomfool to see. And once they’re all in there, it’s up to us to make sure that we reciprocate that kind of passion by going out and playing our butts off every night.”
Carrawell puts it succinctly: “It’s an honor and a privilege to play in front of the Cameron Crazies.”
Photos via Getty Images.
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