Meet Cookie Monster, the ultimate Cameron Crazie

When R.J. Barrett and Zion Williamson picked apart N.C. State in their last full game together at Cameron Indoor Stadium, he was there.

When Justin Robinson drained an off-balance three and fell to the floor on Senior Day against North Carolina, he was there. 

And last weekend, when Duke welcomed fans back to Cameron for the first time in 19 months at Countdown to Craziness, he was there.

No, I’m not talking about Mike Krzyzewski, Jon Scheyer, Nolan Smith or anyone else on the Blue Devil coaching staff. And no, I’m not talking about Joey Baker, the lone four-year senior on this season’s Duke squad. Yes, all of those names would qualify, but so does one more:

Cookie Monster.

You may have seen Cookie Monster featured on Duke men’s basketball’s social media pages. You also may have seen him on your TV screen, cheering on the Blue Devils from the famed Cameron Crazies student section, where he’s been standing front row during nearly every Duke game he could attend over the past three years.

But who’s the face behind Cookie Monster?

That would be Parker Betts, a senior at Duke and one of the most recognizable fans of perhaps the most recognizable student section in the country.

When it came to the best rivalry in college sports, Betts was raised in a divided household. 

He and his dad, Battle, were North Carolina fans, while his mom, Amanda, and sister, Lizzy, were Duke fans. It wasn’t a product of where anyone went to school—Betts’ mom and dad grew up in Edenton, N.C., and Cochran, Ga., respectively, and both attended East Carolina. Rather, it was just how things aligned.

“That was the predominant sports rivalry of the east coast, really of the country, and they just ended up picking separate sides,” Betts said of his parents. “My mom was a huge Duke fan...and my dad just really bought into the hype of Roy Williams, Dean Smith and the dynasty that they were building at UNC.”

As Parker watched games with his dad, he naturally joined him on the Tar Heel side of things. But he says as he started to “find [his] place academically” and Duke became an option for him, he slowly began the transition. 

It started out with just a Blue Devil hoodie and a pair of basketball shorts. But by the time his junior year of high school rolled around and he was getting ready to apply to colleges, his closet was a sea of Duke blue. And when Betts officially got into Duke during his senior year, even his dad agreed to put on a Blue Devil T-Shirt.

It was quite the shift, but one the Betts family embraced.

“It's wonderful—I think that's part of life,” Battle Betts said. “I think you want to see somebody grow up and just develop their own path, their own personality.”

And thus, Parker’s transition from Tar Heel to Blue Devil was complete, though he wasn’t Cookie Monster just yet.

The birth of Cookie Monster

When Duke opened its home slate of the 2018-19 regular season against Army, Betts went to the game like most students do. He threw on a Blue Devil T-Shirt, painted his face and got there at an early-but-reasonable time for a spot in the third or fourth row.

While he said the experience was great, he wanted to “establish an identity” among the Cameron Crazies.

So when his parents came down for Duke’s next game against Eastern Michigan, they brought an adult-sized Cookie Monster suit that Betts has had since he was in elementary school, and the tradition was born.

“I said, ‘What about Cookie Monster? Hey it’s Duke blue, can I bring it to you?’” Battle Betts said. “And so we brought it up to him and he jumped right in it. I didn't know if he was gonna wear it or not. I just brought it to him and we went in the game and looked down into the student section and there he was. And so it's been that way ever since.”

Over the next four months, Cookie Monster was there to see it all. He didn’t tent for the North Carolina game that season, fearing that he’d overcommit and “fail all [his] classes.” However, about a month into the semester, he realized he'd be able to make the time for Duke basketball. And while it was too late to tent at that point, he joined a group of friends that were tenting for the North Carolina contest for virtually every other ACC game the rest of the season—usually in his trademarked front-row spot near mid-court or across from the home bench, which (even outside the Tobacco Road rivalry matchup) would require as much as five days of tenting.

Betts’ costume began to garner attention during that 2018-19 campaign—Betts says meeting Dick Vitale, who came over and tried on the Cookie Monster headpiece before a game, was one of the coolest experiences he’s had. But it was during the following season that Cookie Monster really started to blow up.

The growth of Cookie Monster

It all started with a tweet from Duke men’s basketball’s official Twitter account.

It read, “Salute to this Crazie who attends every game dressed as Cookie Monster,” with a candid picture of Betts celebrating in the front row during the Blue Devils’ final preseason game of the year. 

From there, people began to take notice, whether it be those from Betts' hometown who saw him on TV or the College Gameday crew taking pictures with him on the Cameron Indoor Stadium floor. Duke men’s basketball eventually followed Betts on Instagram—which he says was a sign that he had “kinda made it”—and another Instagram account running a contest to determine the biggest college basketball superfan in the country reached out to him.

Of course, all of this made last season—when Betts and every other Crazie weren’t allowed inside Cameron Indoor Stadium—that much more difficult. But even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Cookie Monster’s presence was felt.

For one, Betts and his Cookie Monster suit were featured several times on the fabric tarp Duke used to cover the empty student section bleachers. Furthermore, even though he couldn’t be inside Cameron, Betts wore the costume while watching Duke’s home game against North Carolina on TV.

“I think I was really grasping onto reality where we could be inside Cameron,” Betts said. “The Duke-UNC game was the big reminder there that basketball season just isn't what it could be in the context of COVID. So I think some of it was just kind of trying to escape from [that] reality.” 

The Last Dance

Now that fans are back inside Cameron, Betts is ready to go all out.

For Countdown to Craziness last weekend, he lined up at 6:30 in the morning and stayed in Krzyzewskiville for nearly 12 hours before manning his usual front-row, center-court spot. And with students yearning to get the Cameron Crazie experience they missed out on last year, combined with this being Coach K’s last season, he’s expecting waits like that to become the norm.

“Last week the freshmen definitely showed out. They brought the heat,” Betts said. “So I'm curious to see how people are going to push the envelope with getting out there earlier and earlier and earlier.”

But this isn’t just Krzyzewski's final season as Duke’s head coach. It’s also Betts’ final season as a Duke undergraduate student, putting the future of Cookie Monster into question. 

If things pan out, though, there’s a chance Betts still has more time as a Duke student in Cameron—he’ll just have to stand a section over. And of course, the Cookie Monster suit would join him.

“A lot of people have asked me if I'm gonna pass it down to somebody and keep it going along that path,” Betts said. “But right now I'm looking at grad school at Duke. So hopefully, you'll see me in the grad student section, still donning the Cookie Monster costume.”