Why Duke-Carolina matters and why (some) Duke kids are dorks

I'll start with a story:

There is a program at Duke and UNC called the Robertson Scholars Program. Basically, it's a scholarship program that tries to "foster collaboration between Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill" (that's from the official website). Anyway, in practice it means that the students that have the scholarship switch places during the second semester of their sophomore years--Duke kids live at UNC for a semester, and UNC kids spend the semester at Duke. Of course, the Duke-Carolina basketball game takes place during second semester. So last year, the group of UNC students who were living at Duke went to the Duke-Carolina game at Cameron Indoor Stadium. They wore Duke clothes to get into the game; but once they were inside, they took off their Duke sweatshirts to reveal UNC apparel. When Duke wound up losing that game, the Carolina kids got to cheer and people were generally upset.

So this year, our student government decided that such an atrocity wouldn't happen again. They passed a new rule saying that Robertson Scholars from UNC were no longer welcome at the Duke-Carolina game, adding a few "Go to Hell, Carolina"s for good measure. Then, the student body president led the Senate in chanting, "Our house! Our house!" I'm not even kidding.

I tell this story because I think it demonstrates two things:

1. The Duke-Carolina game is HUGE on this campus.
2. A lot of kids at Duke are giant dorks.

If I'm going to tell you what it's like to be on the Duke campus in the week leading up to the Duke-Carolina game, you're going to have to remember those things.


I'm probably also going to have to explain Krzyzewskiville.

When Dick Vitale says "The Cameron Crazies have been camping out for months to see this game, baby!" it's kind of misleading. We do live in tents to go to the game, and you do have to tent (yes, we use it like a verb) to get into Duke-Carolina. But it's not like everyone in there has slept outside for over a month straight. Only some of the 12 members of a tenting group have to sleep outside every night. Basically, there are two levels of tenting: Blue Tenting and White Tenting.

Blue Tenting is for the most hardcore fans (cough, crazy, cough, cough). Those kids have been outside since before Winter Break ended January 10th. The first tent actually started waiting December 17th (which was, not coincidentally, the last day of finals last semester). The Blue Tenters are the ones you'll see in the center of the front few rows on TV. From the day they started until January 29th, eight of the 12 members of these tents had to sleep outside every night (which means that these psychos slept in a tent two out of every three nights). During the day, only one of the 12 had to be there.

White Tenting is for kids that like basketball, but don't like sleeping outside in a swamp. It doesn't start until about a week before the game (January 29th this year) and only two of 12 tent members have to sleep outside every night (with one of them there during the day). During both Blue and White Tenting, Line Monitors have periodic checks to make sure that each tent has enough people waiting in it. If a tent doesn't have enough people at two checks, they get bumped to the back of the line. What's crazy is that K-ville started in the '80s when a few kids passed out drunk on the lawn in front of Cameron the night before the game.

The weekend before the game (or the weekend of the game, if it's a Saturday or Sunday game) is designated for personal checks. Personal checks are, aside from the game, the most fun part of the Duke-Carolina basketball game experience. During personal checks, each tenter, individually has to make three of five checks spread over two nights. So all of the tenters have to be there, and everyone on campus makes an appearance. It's like a giant tailgate party--beer pong, the occasional barbecue, Busch Light and 40s. When the game is in March, the weather is usually great, so it's even more fun. Personal checks are tonight and Saturday night, when it's supposed to be kind of cold, so we'll see how they go this year.

If all this sounds complex, I should tell you that it's basically a summary. There's a four and a half page policy that covers everything you need to know about getting into Duke basketball games.

Like I said, kids at Duke are giant dorks.