The Duke basketball experience: Life as a Cameron Crazie

In the week leading up to Duke basketball's home-opener Friday against Davidson, The Blue Zone will run a five-part series examining a different part of the fan experience each day.

To kick things off, The Chronicle's Daniel Carp will take a look at the life of the Cameron Crazies.

Nothing says Duke basketball like the Cameron Crazies.

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The lifeblood of the Blue Devils, these body-painted, arm-waving, jumping up and down fanatics are the reason why a night at Cameron Indoor Stadium is regarded as one of the toughest road games in all of sports. Duke fans love them, almost everyone else hates them and a few people even petitioned the White House last year to have them classified as a terrorist organization. But regardless of your opinion, there's little to dispute that the Cameron Crazies are some of the most passionate fans in college basketball.

From the origins of the airball chant and tenting up to the legendary speedo guy, the Cameron Crazies have been behind some of the most memorable antics college basketball fans have had to offer in the last 25 years. Whether you've seen them up close and personal in Cameron or only know them by that annoying rumbling from your TV, here are a few things you may not know about the Cameron Crazies:

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  There is no such thing as a Duke basketball ticket for students: One of the most common questions Duke students hear is, 'How hard is it to get basketball tickets?' The answer is—they don't exist. Entrance into Duke basketball games for undergrads is solely on a first-come, first-serve basis, so you stand in line with a group of people for every single game (except North Carolina which is done by tenting, but more on that later in the week). Of course as an esteemed academic institution, students will still go to classes on gamedays, so a third of every group will have to stay in line at all times. For your average 9 p.m. ACC game, there will be a good chunk of students out in line by 8 or 9 in the morning. Occasionally you'll have the die-hards who sleep out on the sidewalk in front of Cameron the night before, and for high-profile nonconference games like last year's game against Ohio State or this year's ACC-Big Ten Challenge against Michigan, students will get in line up to three days in advance.

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  Cameron Crazies stand... always: The student doors to college basketball's most hallowed ground open 90 minutes before every home game, so from start to finish Duke students will be on their feet jumping around for four hours at a time, which can get pretty tiring. For the hour and a half before the game starts, there are plenty of fun things to do, like heckle the opposing team, call out Duke players' names, get to know the neighbors you're going to be squeezed into for the rest of the night and of course, heckle the opposing team. If you're ever walking around Duke's campus and wonder why all the students have such well-defined calf muscles, it's probably from those nights in Cameron.

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  Dirt sheets do exist, but probably aren't used the way you think: Everybody likes to make such a big deal about the Cameron Crazies using pre-packaged materials as the secret behind their antics during the game. The Crazies are given a piece of paper on their way into the stadium with the opposing team's roster and some funny tidbits about that person: where they like to eat, funny things they've put on Twitter, if they major in Parks and Recreation Facilities Management, etc. Really, these sheets are for our own personal enjoyment, they rarely ever manifest in the cheers you hear at the game. That stuff is truly organic, what the Crazies get beforehand is moreso for their personal enjoyment—plus, being able to heckle a player by name is always a nice touch.
  
• It's hot, it's loud and it's totally worth it: There are definitely more comfortable places in the world to take in a game than in the bleachers at Cameron, but being part of an amorphous mass of energy is what keeps people coming back game after game. At a school with so many nationalities, races, religions and political backgrounds blended into one place, you'd be hard pressed to find something else an entire campus can bond over. But when you're standing in the crowd jumping around and screaming your face off, there's only one creed you can see when you look around—Duke blue.
  

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It's no secret that home court advantage makes a huge difference in college basketball. The Blue Devils have gone undefeated at home in three of the past four seasons and have lost just five home games since the end of the 2006-07 campaign. Every time Duke picks up a big home win, you'll hear players discuss the impact the crowd had on the home game, completely unsolicited. This team buys into its fans just as much as the fans buy into the team, which is one of the reason why nobody wants to come to Cameron Indoor Stadium to take on the Blue Devils.