Personal checks and rushing the court

Like I was saying in the last post, this weekend was personal checks. I made mine (I'm in tent #61, if you're looking for full disclosure), so I'm going to the game on Wednesday.

The scene in K-ville totally lived up to expectations despite the fact that it was like 25 degrees outside. On Friday night, I saw one kid randomly wearing a Scooby-Do costume and just walking around. Then, this other kid was chugging out of a handle of vodka and breathing on a lighter. It looked like a flame-thrower. It also looked really safe, especially the part about mixing vodka and fire. He had this whole group of people gathered around him, like 10 or 15 deep, so I couldn't get that close. Not that I really wanted to. I'm flammable, and I didn't want my brass monkey (malt liquor and orange juice) to get warm. Actually, I'm not entirely sure this happened at all, except I did see the flames, and I heard people saying that a guy made them by chugging vodka and then breathing on a lighter. So the story's at least half true.

The other cool part about K-ville is how it's totally lawless. There were cops just standing there watching a girl who literally looked like she was 15 vomiting into a trash can. At one point, the line at the women's room got too long, so a bunch of girls just walked into the men's room, which was awkward. There are probably over 100 trash cans set up around K-ville, but no one actually throws their trash or beer cans away. They just kind of throw everything on the ground. The really environmentally-conscious people throw their trash into the bushes, where they can't see it anymore, so it's not littering.

Saturday morning, I had to spend some time in the tent (see: the one person in the tent at all times rule), so I went out there at 8 a.m. The ground was all muddy (actually the mud had frozen over, since it was so cold) and there were beer cans, bottles and broken glass all over the place. It looked like a war zone. In the bathroom, there was mud (I think) smeared all over one of the walls and the floor was caked with mud (again, I think). I took a nap until like 11, and when I woke up, everything was clean again. Some guy was talking on the phone about how the mess says a lot about Duke students, how we have this sense of entitlement and feel like we can just throw our trash on the ground and not clean anything up. In our defense, most of us were drunk. Plus, if they have people that just come around and clean up after us, then there's no incentive to throw stuff away. I mean, why rob those clean-up guys of a chance to make a buck?

Saturday night was more of the same, except there were a lot of TV networks and individual people with video cameras. Being a Cameron Crazie is like being a part of a brand. Seriously. I can't go to a basketball game, or sit with my friends in K-ville, without a camera being stuck in my face. When I was a freshman, it was fun and cool to be on TV, but now it just feels like I'm being exploited. Honestly, the loudest some people get at the games in Cameron is when a TV camera is pointed in their general direction. I'm not saying they're wrong, I'm just saying they look stupid. So I try to avoid being on TV/the subject of someone's documentary on the Cameron Crazies.

Anyway, on Saturday night, I was carrying around this toy light saber with me because I found it on campus and thought it was funny. A guy with a camera came up to me.

"Is that a light saber?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied.

"Why do you have it?" he asked, pointing his camera at me.

"Because I found it, and I thought it was funny, and I liked it, so I brought it out here," I replied.

"So if you miss a check, and they try to send you to the back of the line, will you use it to cut someone's head off?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I'm not going to do that. This isn't a real light saber, anyway, so I can't do that. It's just a toy."

He turned off his camera and walked away.

Oh yeah, the game on Sunday. Great game. Those Colts are all right. And Peyton Manning, that guy's pretty good. If, if you like six-five, 230-pound quarterbacks. Laser, rocket arms.

As for the Duke-FSU game, don't worry about it. I, for one, think it was nice of Duke to give Florida State a chance to win in Cameron. Seriously, though, the strange thing about covering Duke (especially on the road) is watching the way other teams and their fan bases celebrate when they beat Duke. I have been present for three court-rushing scenes in three years covering Duke on the road (at Maryland two years ago, Florida State last year and Virginia last week). Really, the only one that made sense was the Florida State game last year, when Duke was the No. 1 team in the country and hadn't lost an ACC game all season. When Duke's having a down year (5-4 in the conference is a down year), it really just doesn't make sense for fans to freak out like that. I wonder if every other top school (Kentucky, Indiana, UConn and, yes, Carolina) gets this same court-rushing treatment when they lose during a down year. Part of me thinks it's only Duke.

Anyway, the reason I bring it up is that after the Duke-FSU game, the Florida State players rushed on to the court and a couple of them, I'm not going to name names but one of them was a star who scored 37 points in Cameron last year and his name rhymes with Pal Hornton, started woofing at the student section and popping their jerseys. Come on guys, you're taunting Duke students. The only heavy lifting most of us do is our calculus books. We know you're better than us at basketball. That's why you're on the floor and we're not. You stay classy, Tallahassee.

(I can't believe that never caught on. I mean it rhymes and everything. Plus, it's totally ironic if you've ever been to Tallahassee. Miserable place. Major highlights include that seedy Days Inn on West Tennessee Street, the feeling that wherever you are you might get shot, and that girl in the cowboy hat that was in Maxim.)

On an entirely serious note, it was great to see J.J. Redick's jersey retirement (the guy is basically the reason I became a Duke fan after 17 years rooting for Maryland). It was one of those times (when they retire the jersey of the ACC's all-time leading scorer and Grant Hill randomly shows up to watch) that I remembered again how lucky I've been to be a student and a fan at Duke. The applause for J.J. and the genuine love in the building was special, and it reminded me why I sleep outside in a tent so I can go to all of these games. Yeah, it's sappy, but it's true.

More about the game/matchups/whether or not anyone on campus actually thinks Duke can beat almighty Carolina tomorrow.