Juniors Cami Parrish, Lauren Deruyter and Mark Pratt are spending their third Carolina winter as residents of Krzyzewskiville. Their tent is a dark makeshift mass of tarp and strings, which can be pulled to hoist the shelter into the air to make room for the group’s 12 Cameron Crazies. On the tent’s surface are the spray-painted names of the Duke Men’s Basketball team.
Today, scores of blue tenters will join the black tenters, braving the cold air and hard ground for more than a month to earn a spot in the sea of blue that will greet the Tarheels March 6 .
K-ville debuted in 1986, but “crazie” sports fans date back to the time of our ancestors.
Humans are social animals, and play is a fundamental part of human behavior. Sport, as a form of organized play, can bring people together in groups that resemble the clans, tribes, hunting bands and warring parties of old.
“Originally, these groups... would have been literally vital, but psychologically, we don’t really distinguish important from unimportant memberships anymore,” Mark Leary, professor of psychology and neuroscience, wrote in an e-mail. “So, we can get carried away by a group of guys throwing a football down a field.”
Orin Starn, Sally Dalton Robinson professor of cultural anthropology, said sports fans at a game exhibit “communitas”—they have equality based on a group ritual. These communal rituals are often marked by costumes, chants and “sacred language,” Starn added.
Duke basketball fans speak their own “sacred language” in the stands of Cameron Indoor Stadium: cheers echo, feet pound, painted faces shout “Let’s go Duke!” and blue afros bob up and down.
“Being part of the crowd in Cameron or even just watching a game at home gives one the sense that he or she is connected with other people—other members of the clan, so to speak,” Leary said.
Starn said attending a sporting event can be a religious experience for some.
“There’s a bunch of believers,” he added.
In the dark outside her tent, Parrish said she thinks tenting was part of the Duke experience and a way for students to bond.
“Gameday is exciting,” she said. “We spend all day getting ready, changing clothes, painting faces and cheering Duke fans as they walk by and taunting UNC fans as they walk by.”
Parrish and her friends will be guaranteed a spot at the game, but others who were not as devoted or lucky will have to watch events unravel on television. They will crowd in common rooms or on dormitory futons to watch what may be Duke’s first home victory over the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 2005. Across the country, millions of other basketball fans will tune in.
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