Three Dukies over at The Blue Zone (great name,btw) recently wrote a post entitled "Why People Hate Duke Basketball-Part 1" focusing on a "fan" at the Michigan game. In it they decry his media whoring, and according to their description (i didn't see him as I was watching on tv, but I was also washing my hair) it was a pretty egregious violation
"Did he do it to watch the game? No. Not even close. Did he wear a bright orange t-shirt so he could be more recognizable on television? You know it. He waved at the camera and jumped around every time the ball was in front of him. He talked on his cell phone, presumably to his super-proud mother, as she watched her son make an ass of himself on national television.
To top it off, when a group of casual fans (OK, the editors of TBZ and their friends) called this kid out for his media-whore behavior, he had the audacity to make a "T" symbol with his hands and follow it up with an even more douchebaggy "V" symbol. Not only was he acting like a complete sellout, but he was proud of it."
I think it's a general rule that upperclassmen find freshmen as a whole and generally really annoying. But in their description I recognized that what that kid was doing was basically what like 40% (i want to give us more credit) of Dukies have done at some point, though not as annoying and obviously as that guy. Last year when I got tired or incredible squishing and moved over to the White (non tv side) I would alwasy notice some kid in a mustard yellow jacket. And it would always annoy me and piss me off all 4 years that pregame whenever the camera would pan the Crazies that so many people would get all super excited and scream and flash their "We're #1" finger, only to go back to being quiet as soon as the cameras were off (I have a similar minded group of friends who were pissed at this as well.)
And so to be honest as much as media whores angered me, in the picture posted on The Blue Zone there was a far more unforgivable sin happening, namely the girl who was holding up a sign during game action, which is so unacceptable it's sickening (but not nearly as bad as a guy who opened up an umbrella inside during the Carolina game...leading to a Carolina come back that we barely held off 71-70 when JJ stepped out in front of Rashad McCants on UNC's Long Beach play, forcing Raymond Felton to throw the ball out of bounds. I'll never forget that.) The whole point of the game is the game, it's not your clever sign. Signs and costumes are fun and fine, but they are mostly for pregame or halftime, to hold up when the opposing team is near you, or during time outs to mock the other team and its fans. When the ball is actually in play blocking someone's view in Cameron with a sign should be an excommunicable offence.
And as much as I love Cameron (i'm trying to find a way to sneak into the Duke-Carolina game, and I plan on naming one of my kids Cameron as well) I for the most part dissapointed in the deteriorating of our chants and cheers as I went through my 4 years. At times of course they would be amazing (or like my freshmen year when we chanted at the St. John's game "Fire Jarvis" leading to K staring us down angrily, kinda newsworthy) but Cameron just seemed tog row tamer and tamer with most everything being what I called the "roll call" (chanting a player's name followed by 5 claps) or the same tired cheers, including the speeding up of "Let's Go Duke" so that chant which can be so powerful, ends up lasting like 5 seconds before being fast forwarded out of articulation. I mean back in the day, when the Crazies actually earned the title of Cameron Crazies they were making fun of a guy who's parents had both died (I'll admit I tried to get this cheer going against Chris Paul- "How's Your Granddad? He's still Dead") or being allowed to make fun of the other team's fuck up K has cutlitvaed a friendly Cameron where we are to generically support our team while using tame and inoffensive things against the other (at the Maryland game last year me and some friends tried to get a chant for DJ Strawberry "Pass-the-Rock" referring to both the ball and crack, for his dad, it seemed many people were scared to join in.) Of course my friends and I are assholes, we had a fantasy of sitting in the grad student section and injecting a syringe full of AIDS into an opposing player, to make teams fear coming into our house.
And so in order to be constructive and not seem so "back in my day" and old, here are a few chants I have for some of our team this year:
- Gerald Henderson: G-Love (repeated in the manner of the Landlord chant)
- Greg Paulus (who I always referred to as Special Sauce when he was teamed with Josh "Big Mac" McRoberts, and especially when teamed with G-Love): from the G.Love and Special Sauce song " My baby's got sauce/ Your baby ain't sweet like mine"
- Jon Scheyer (one of my jewish friends came up with this one): John-ny Sche-yer MA-ZEL TOV"
- for Zoubek (because when the Crazies started throwing up a Z for Zoubek it looked like a gang sign, and because he's far from it): Zou-bek's gang-sta clap,clap,clap,clap,clap
- I'm trying to do something for Kyle Singler referring to Cingular being the New AT&T
- Demarcus has his D-Marc chant (which is simple and effective)
- for Taylor King (taken from Harry Potter so everyone would get it): Taylor can sink anything, He never misses with his flings, That's why Dukies all will sing, Taylor is our King!
- and for Nolan Smith, the theme from Rawhide: Nolan Nolan Nolan/Keep movin', movin', movin',/Though the [insert opposition’s name here] are disapprovin'/Keep them Dukies movin'/RAWHIDE (i guess that can be replaced by Go Duke!)
- or just a generic "We're Duke. You're not." chant. they'll understand what's being said (or replace "not" with "dumb" or some other pejorative.
*though the Cameron Crazies are still better than any other student section in the country and are the closest thing to those masters of cheering and heckling, European Soccer Fans, that America has. Sphere: Related Content
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