My first Duke basketball game

I had a chance to go to my first Duke University basketball game ever this week. They played New Mexico State, but it wasn't an "important" game because of some reason I never understood. See, one thing you have to understand about me is that despite living in the Triangle area of North Carolina (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill) for three and a half years, I never managed to get basketball fever. I did, however, grasp the fact that basketball is as big as (or sometimes bigger) church here. And that is saying a lot in North Carolina. It is not unusual to hear b-ball mentioned in the Sunday sermons here, usually something involving "our" team winning.

Another thing I did manage to "get" was that there is not just one team to cheer on (or worship, as the case usually is) in the Triangle area; there are THREE teams that people are just as rabid about (UNC Chapel Hill, or "Carolina", and NC State. Okay, I'll admit, I had to just go ask my friends what the third team was and they roared with laughter). And all of these fans live within about a 30-mile radius of each other. And the teams frequently play each other because they are in the same league. And they don't kill each other despite being so rabid.

Okay, so we went to this game. Not a very big stadium and it wasn't full because despite the fact that noone in Durham (where Duke is located) can get tickets to any Duke games, there are often empty seats because the season ticket holders frequently don't show up when there is a game that is not "important." I was able to go because my friends have season tickets.

So we walk in and take our seats just as they are striking up the National Anthem. For you heathen, unpatriotic foreign friends of mine, this is the tradition at EVERY SPORTS GAME THAT IS EVER PLAYED IN THE UNITED STATES, even peewee baseball. So its routine. And IMPORTANT. But I have to say that for someone who has not routinely attended any sports events since she played girls softball in Fremont, California in the 70's, the experience is just surreal. You stand in a crowd of 5,000 people with your hand over your heart and you listen to someone on the court sing the world's most difficult song (or, in more embarassing cases, you sing along) and you try to look patriotic. But of course, I can't help looking around me to get the looks on people's faces to see if anyone else looks/feels uncomfortable. They don't seem to but I do notice that some people don't have their hands over their hearts. What is that about, I wonder? I mean, are they doing this out of some symbolic rejection of patriotism, or because they are uncomfortable like me, or because they just don't feel like it? The researcher in me wants to go up to them afterwards and interview them about that moment and why they made the choice they made.

But I digress. And that is the point. Throughout the next 2 hours all I could do was to watch the spectacle around me and wonder about all of the interesting/insane/inane things going on around me and, oh yeah, there was a game going on too! One that a very large number of people would have paid good money to see. So I know I sound ungrateful. But it really was fascinating. I felt like a visitor from Mars, or from another country. And I'm American!

So now you know that this blog is not going to be a play by play account of the Duke-New Mexico State game. And maybe you are relieved or maybe you think I am an idiot. And perhaps you are right. But its my blog so I can write whatever I want about the game!

So what else? Oh. The cheerleaders. You can't help notice them. There they are, about 12 of them. And they look incredibly young and pert and, above all, in REALLY good shape. They look like they are in better shape than some of the great, lumbering giants on the court. So why are they jumping around with ridiculous smiles on their face waving confetti on sticks? What do they get out of it? They certainly aren't paid like the athletes (the best freshman player gets $60K a year, which is more than most teachers in America), if they are paid at all. So is it status? I used to always envy the popularity of cheerleaders when I was in high school. But is it that rewarding that it would incite someone to do 20 backsprings across the court during time-outs? I mean, what does that do to your back in 20 years? And why doesn't anyone talk about that when the topic of aging, broken athletes is pretty common? But I guess they are not considered athletes. Again, all very interesting and I wish I could interview some of them...

And finally, there are the fans. The students have the benches down by the court where there are no seats. And, amusingly, they separate the graduate students from the undergraduates. That cracked me up. I mean, what do they think? That they are going to attack each other? Or is it because the graduate students have more sophisticated chants and stunts to pull that they think they should not sit with the hoi polloi? Like "lederhosen guy." This is a grad student who dresses only in lederhosen and stands a few rows behind the basket. When it is time for the opposing team to shoot a penalty shot (which they do annoyingly often, breaking the rythm of the game, in my opinion. But I guess it also gives the poor guys a chance to catch their breath), someone lifts up lederhosen guy so that the person shooting the freethrow will be distracted. As if he wouldn't already be with 5,000 people pointing at him shouting things or all of the 500 students shuffling their feet or waving their arms yelling "miss!"

The funny thing is that the students (who are obviously limited in time and space by the fact that they are usually only at the college for 4 years) seem to pass on the chants from one generation to the next. So, for example, when one of the Duke players, who is large and unwieldly named Marty makes an obvious foul on a member of the opposite team, they all start chanting "Marty doesn't foul!" This is obviously an inside joke so I ask my friend who tells me that this is a loving reference to a Duke player named Marty from the 70's! Similarly, there is "towel guy" who the students start calling to about 3/4 the way through the game "Towel guy! Towel guy!" And so towel guy does his stuff. he wraps a white towel around his fist and waves it very vigorously around the air. I am told that he has been doing this for 15 years and the students noticed it once and have decided to make him an act.

The funniest part about the students' chants is that they frequently start chanting something that none of us middle-aged fuddy duddies in the upper seats can understand. So everyone is going "what did they say? What did they say?" Apparently sometimes they have decided on chants in advance and other times someone just starts chanting and they all pick it up amazingly quickly. Reminds me of the wildebeest we saw on the Tanzanian savannah who just start running all at once, with seemingly no communication between them. Fascinating. Would be fun to...nah!