K Town

I knew that Duke University students love their basketball, and I knew that Duke takes its basketball very seriously. Today I learned that Duke sports fans are crazy.
Being in Durham I took the time to visit my friend Steve, who graduated from Ithaca last year and is now doing his graduate studies at Duke. He took me around campus and showed me a small niche in the Duke culture: A tent city assembled on the grass in front of the atheltics center. Every year at the beginning of January students assemble this tent community (that's called K Town after the coach of the basketball team) and camp out until the Duke vs. UNC basketball game, which is not until February. So for a month and a half students of every grade gather in this tent community and follow very strict rules. What's the pay out? Some of them MIGHT get a ticket to the game.
Maybe it's because I go to a college where our sports aren't really that big of a deal that I find this a bit unbelievable and crazy. The biggest event at Ithaca College is the "Cortaca" football game, and even then it's only because it's an excuse to start drinking at 10am and not stop until well into the wee hours of the following Sunday. But even for Cortaca students don't camp out a month and a half in advance to get tickets.
I can't imagine living in a tent every day for that long to go to a basketball game, but I'm not going to lie, some part of me thinks that if you had the right group of people with you, it could be kind of fun.