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One of the best parts of college basketball is the student sections filled with rabid fans, and it’s pretty hard to top the energy the group known as the “Cameron Crazies” injects into home games at Duke. However, the school has gone out of its way to make sure they don’t go too far.
Common knowledge dictates teams get a boost from playing in front of a friendly crowd, and that’s especially true in college basketball thanks to the well-documented edge that comes with having home-court advantage (one oddsmaker says it can swing a line by as much as 4.5 points).
There are plenty of arenas across the country that opposing players dread heading into, but there aren’t many environments more inhospitable than Cameron Indoor Stadium, the 9,314-seat venue that the Duke Blue Devils call home.
That arena lends its name to the “Cameron Crazies,” the loyal legion of Duke students who go to great lengths to throw visiting teams off of their game.
Duke’s opponents are not only treated to a roaring sea of blue when they step onto the court but risk falling victim to the information distributed to students on the “cheer sheets” that are home to an impressive amount of counterintelligence compiled before each game to allow for bespoke heckling and chants tailored for every matchup.
The Cameron Crazies tend to know how to toe the line, but according to The New York Times, Duke still opted to organize a meeting earlier this year designed to foster an environment of diversity, equity, and inclusion (D.E.I.) inside the arena in addition to Krzyzewskiville (the tent city that pops up when student line up to score tickets ahead of big games).
D.E.I. is a buzzword that’s been villainized by plenty of people who fall on a certain part of the political spectrum in recent years, but according to The Chronicle (the student newspaper that reported on the gathering in January), the advice that was issued wasn’t particularly controversial; students were reminded to “heckle responsibly” and avoid slurs and other problematic language.
I’m sure that won’t stop some critics from hearing about this development and responding “More like the Woke Blue Devils” or some other scathing rebuke, but that’s just the world we live in today.