Have the Crazies Lost Their Creativity?

FanHouse was on site for Duke-UNC. And we have Notes from Cameron Indoor.

Generally, Duke students are not just loud, they're also funny. It's what distinguishes them from everyone else in the country. And not funny in a crude N.C. State-Maryland kind of way, but in an intellectually superior, extremely clever kind of way. Not on Wednesday.

There were little-to-no player specific cheers and even some of the old standbys used by the Cameron Crazies were absent. Instead, we were treated to a whole heck of a lot of "Let's Go Duke," over and over again. After finding a "Cheer Sheet" -- the renowned slips of paper handed to students before games for synchronized harassment of opposing teams in Cameron after the game -- let's just say I was pretty disappointed.

Why? Because here's the Carolina player specific "playlist."

[Ed] Davis: Daddy's boy! or Roy's third choice
[Wayne] Ellington: Gerald's better!
[Danny] Green: You can't dance!
[Tyler] Hansbrough: You flop! You wine! You travel every time! or Tyler travels! Every time!
[Ty] Lawson: Ty fought the Law, and the Law won!
[Roy] Williams: Roy is diz-zy! Clap, Clap, Clap-Clap-Clap

I mean, no offense, but really? That's the best that a bunch of highly intelligent people could muster over the course of two weeks leading up to this game? Really?

(Aside/caveat: I've seen a substantial number of games at Cameron Indoor Stadium over the past 20-some years, and the students and fans during Wednesday's loss to North Carolina were as loud as I've heard them in a long time. But still, not so much on the creative side.)

Additionally, the Duke cheers for their own team were pretty "meh" -- they had nothing prepared for Greg Paulus and actually suggested the use of "Fee-Fi-Foe-Fum!" as a cheer for Brian Zoubek. The final straw might actually have been the students' decision to use "Bull-S***" as a chant when they disagreed with a call; while technically accurate, it's always more fascinating when they break out a well timed "We Beg to Dif-fer!" directed towards the referees.

Look, Duke fans aren't the reason the actual game itself happens, but they are a huge part of the atmosphere at Cameron Indoor Stadium. And frankly, I think we've all just come to expect a lot more out of them. It would be sad to think that they had lost their creativity.