Cameron Crazies: an endangered species?

Duke Undergrads,

I am a Duke alumnus and an Iron Duke with basketball season tickets. I have the pleasure of normally being upstairs in Cameron for almost all games. At the Feb. 20 Georgia Tech game, I had my former roommate from Duke in town, and we were able to get tickets in the student’s section. When we picked up our tickets, I was very surprised to find out we were sitting in the main student’s section, directly across from the Duke bench. When I was a Duke student in 1983-1987, the early years of Coach K’s incredible Duke career, the graduate students were upstairs in the corner, and almost all of the bleacher seating was reserved for undergraduate students. Today many of the seats available to undergrads when I was an undergrad are no longer available. The area behind the benches is almost all allocated to the athletic department, and the end zones are now occupied by the graduate students. Yet with more undergrads at Duke today than ever before and less undergrad seating available, the undergrad seating is not filled for most games?

I don’t get it. There are 1,000 seats for 6,000+ undergrads. You are an undergrad at the best basketball program in the last 20+ years, and have a free ticket to see your team play in what is arguably the best venue in college basketball. How about carving out a couple of hours from your other activities, studying or whatever you are doing and get out to a game?

So, are Cameron Crazies an endangered species? I hope not. We have rejected building a big arena to keep our home court advantage, and the Cameron Crazies are a key ingredient of our basketball success at Duke. While I really enjoyed being downstairs and had forgotten how great it is to be that close to the action, I hope that we are not heading towards a day when an old guy like me can have courtside season tickets. We can’t let this happen. You’ve got one more chance this year, so go over to Cameron March 2 to cheer on your Blue Devils to a victory over Clemson. GO DUKE!

John Philips

Engineering ‘87