I’ve never liked Senior Night.
Maybe it’s because most of the seniors who fill the student section don’t quite know what they’re doing. Maybe it’s because that game is dead compared to other games in Cameron. Maybe it’s because I just missed the cutoff of people to enter the stadium before the seniors last year, so I’m bitter.
But I understand the reasoning behind it. Seniors get one last chance to essentially be guaranteed a spot in Cameron. When people ask them if they ever went to a basketball game while they were at Duke, they can tell them about attending a game with their classmates—and probably about watching a win.
Because that’s one of the most crucial components of Senior Night. You may not like watching hundreds of seniors pile in ahead of you, but the Blue Devils often win because the opponent, while usually an ACC team, is never as important as it could be.
It’s not North Carolina.
Even when the rivalry contest is the final game of the season, Senior Night takes place the game before. I’m sure there wasn’t much thought put into this. The Cameron Crazies would revolt if hundreds of seats to the biggest game of the year were reserved for seniors.
Nevertheless, it indicates the importance of the timing of a special night in Cameron. And if the line monitors are going to add another special night this season, they must be careful when they do it.
As it stands right now, the Nov. 13 game against UNC-Greensboro is tentatively scheduled to be Greek Night, which would function similarly to Senior Night: The first several hundred independents would be admitted to Cameron, followed by a ton of Greek students, and then the rest of the independents would fill out the student section.
It’s tricky territory because suddenly some casual basketball fans have a better chance of getting into the game than others for no reason except the fact that they are in a Greek organization. Unless you are willing to wait in line for hours to be admitted in that first wave of independents, you’re probably going to be stuck in a corner of the student section. It takes away the basic premise of the Duke fan experience: The more dedicated you are, the better your seat.
That being said, I’m all for increasing attendance at basketball games, and I can see the logic for this plan. It would probably fill the student section, and ideally some of those Greek students would come back to future games on their own. Something has to be done about student attendance at non-tenting games, and Greek Night—unlike more relaxed tenting rules—might actually be effective.
But we have to look at the other aspect of Greek Night, the part that makes Senior Night work: timing. The game against UNC-G is the Blue Devils’ regular season opener. No one in his or her right mind would compare UNC-Greensboro to UNC-Chapel Hill, but I think the basic principle is still important: You have to consider the existing excitement for the game in the context of the surrounding schedule.
Tulsa is a far less appealing opponent than the Tar Heels, so let’s schedule Senior Night against the Golden Hurricane instead of against North Carolina. The Spartans, meanwhile, visit Cameron on opening night, and compared to what is happening before that—exhibition games against Pfeiffer and Findlay—the UNC-G game is a relatively big deal.
It’s also on a Friday. I don’t have any numbers to back this up—and I’m not sure they even exist, because officially there are 9,314 people at every game—but weekday games are far less crowded than weekend contests. (Case in point: Three years ago, I showed up to a Wednesday game against Holy Cross 30 minutes before tipoff and stood in the third row.) If Greek Night is going to happen, why not hold it Monday, Nov. 16 against Coastal Carolina or in the second round of the NIT Season Tip-Off the following day? Because those schools don’t have Greeks as their mascots?
I’m still not convinced Greek Night is a great idea. I don’t like that it prioritizes one group over another. But attendance has to improve, and I can’t think of a better solution. (If anything, the line monitors might need to add another special night—Freshman Night. That way, at least they’re recruiting fans for the next four years, and people will not go to their first game on Senior Night and lament the fact that they had not gone to more during their undergraduate careers.)
The stands should be full Nov. 13, whether it’s Greek Night or not. If they aren’t, the problems with Cameron run a lot deeper than anything a special night can fix.
But until we see that students aren’t excited enough about a preseason ACC favorite that just added a big-time recruit to fill Cameron, let’s keep things the way they were for big games, like the season opener. Just get in line.
It shouldn’t have to be any more complicated than that.
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