There are two kinds of Cameron Crazies.
The first has taken basic economics and can lucidly parlay marginal utility into a model for Krzyzewskiville behavior. The benefit of sitting one row closer to the action, he'll claim, is not worth a night on the sidewalk outside Wilson Recreation Center.
He knows that the student section hasn't easily filled this season. He knows he can stroll up minutes before most games, efficiently allocating his precious time elsewhere.
Inside, he sees the same game as everyone who showed up before him.
The second Crazie can tell you what it's like to spend Christmas Eve in K-ville.
"It wasn't bad," senior Weston Ijames said. "They gave us Christmas off."
In a season of increasingly vocal criticism that lumps the Crazies together as a single body, Ijames noted that there are "definitely two groups of fans."
There are, it seems, two polarized philosophies to fandom: The first lends support to the claim that the Crazies just aren't that Crazie anymore. The other group-the "few and the proud," as Ijames called them-turns that claim on its head.
Seniors Emily Schmidt and Kaylene Lewek, the first members of Ijames' Tent 1, settled in Dec. 17, the last day of the fall semester's final exams.
This was the earliest anyone had ever begun tenting, Ijames said.
When he arrived Dec. 23, he found that Tent 2 had joined Schmidt and Lewek at the front of the line.
After Christmas, it was 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. everyday with some chairs, a sleeping bag, a football and a deck of cards. There were a few Winter Break home games to occasionally remind Ijames what he was waiting for.
Because rules prevent tenters from setting up the tent itself until Jan. 6, Ijames spent evenings in his Central Campus apartment.
Missing a check, however, was still serious business. "If you miss a check before class starts, you have to wait a week after everyone else has started tenting," he said.
In previous years, this would have been tenting suicide.
Head Line Monitor Mara Schultz, a senior, said blue tenting filled up with the maximum 60 tents before spring semester classes began, and at least 10 tents were turned away.
This is where the facts begin to contradict each other. Attendance at men's basketball games was down. In the fall, the inability to regularly fill the undergraduate student section prompted men's basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski to comment, "This is not that Cameron [of old anymore]."
In a Dec. 15 campus-wide e-mail, Duke Student Government President Elliot Wolf, a junior, emphasized his general comments on the "less-than-stellar" undergraduate attendance with a "special prod to the freshmen, whose turnout has been especially low."
Ijames said that the over-enthusiasm of the first few tenters might, in fact, be a deterrent. He said that when someone sees a group sleeping out for a walk-up game, they might not think they have a chance to come at tip-off.
The criticism has mainly been directed at the Crazies' performance on the inside of Cameron Indoor Stadium, however, not necessarily their enthusiasm outside.
In just four years at Duke, Ijames has already noticed a change.
"It seems more like routine," he said. "At a particular point in the game, people cheer this [one] cheer.... People used to come up with cheers for each individual player, but now you just squish their name into four syllables and clap."
As the University grows in other capacities, one can't help but wonder if a changing undergraduate student body is reflected in the behavior of its basketball fans.
"We're the best and brightest, though, you'd think we'd be able to step up the innovation a notch," Ijames said.
Perhaps students utilize their academic strengths in different ways, Ijames suggested.
"People definitely intellectualize getting in line-'When's the point when I could get in line, spend the least amount of time, get the best seat?'" he said. "And I know people who do it."
Junior Ryan Bott said he tries to go to every game, but usually gets in line an hour or two before the tip off.
"And I always find myself to be in a pretty good spot once I get into Cameron," Bott said. A "pretty good spot," however, is not what Ijames ever has in mind.
"I'm in the front row for every game," he said. "Sitting midway up the bleachers is unacceptable."
Despite the upperclassman presence in the first few tents, Tent 4 is made up of primarily freshmen.
"A lot of freshmen are still going to tent-it's a freshman thing," Ijames said.
And as a member of K-ville's veteran squad, Ijames is a target for rookie queries.
"People give Tent 1 more credit than we deserve," he said. "Freshmen are intimidated by the line monitors sometimes, and so they'll ask me questions, 'Weston, you know when the tent checks are?' And I'll play around, 'Maybe I do. Maybe I don't.'"
Thursday morning, a sheet of light snow descended upon K-ville. Schultz granted grace, veritably vacating the tent city for the time being. A makeshift hut of trash cans, sheets and blankets held fast to what appeared to be the front of the walk-up line for Sunday's game against Florida State.
Ijames was fast asleep.
"Sometimes, when you're the only person in line you feel like these are wasted hours of my life, gone," he said. "But somebody's gotta be first."
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