All the way up until the Duke-North Carolina game on Mar. 6, staff writer Chris Cussack will blog from inside Krzyzewskille as he lives through the tenting experience. Stay tuned for regular posts, photos and inside information covering Duke Basketball’s most famous student tradition. Click here to check out the full Chronicles of K-Ville website.
K-ville has now reached capacity, after 40 tents filled up the remaining vacancies in the quad late Monday night. Now almost one of every five undergraduates live in the shadow of Cameron Indoor Stadium, braving the latest moderately-cold front to keep spots for next Saturday.
Much has been made recently of Carolina’s mediocre, underwhelming, downright awful season, and how it would the interest in this year’s installment. Monday proved all the worry and speculation was much fuss over nothing, at least on campus. It took longer for Nolan Smith to build suspense before revealing “the Camel” as the secret location than it did for 40 groups to claim the remaining spots in the line.
Now, over the past few weeks I’ve worn many hats on this blog: Crazie, analyst, activist and whiner being probably the most prominent. In an effort at real journalism—the purpose for which this blog series was originally created—I wanted to look at how tenting fit in to the greatest rivalry in college basketball (I don’t say sports in general because of hearing about soccer fans like this. They’re on a whole different level).
Now, the Master’s calls itself “A Tradition Unlike Any Other,” but the difference between golf majors is nowhere near the divide between Duke tenting and any other school’s. I think it’s safe to say that the amount of time tenters spend in K-ville is unrivalled, but the differences extend deeper than that for two reasons.
- Tradition defines the process. More self-regulating happens during Duke tenting than at any other place. It seems the Duke honor code extends all the way out to K-ville. I don’t mean to imply that other schools’ lines are more dishonest than ours, but the tradition of high standards that started here decades ago has rubbed off around the nation.
- While the general campus belief that Duke is home to the country’s only set of line monitors is patently false, ours is the most intimately involved with its school’s team. Many coaches are either unwilling or uninterested in collaborating with the heads of their respective fan groups, other than dropping off some snacks the night before the big game. In contrast, head coach Mike Krzyzewski and his staff work closely with the line monitors to help keep tenting safe, healthy (generally) and enjoyable for the students involved.
See you at the next tent check,
Chris
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