Playing the fans

“Start your tractors. Start your tractors,” chanted several thousand people painted blue and white, wearing wigs, and stacked one layer in front of the other like dill pickles in a glass jar.

They may have looked like they had just finished a battle scene from “Bravehart,” but in reality, they were several thousand Duke University students, the Cameron Crazies, who are so passionate about their basketball team that they go to extremes to make Cameron Indoor Arena a hostile place for the opposing team.

Sunday evening that team was the Virginia Tech Hokies. The tractor chant was for them. The game was over; the scoreboard said Duke was going to win big; the farm-boy Hokies might as well go home.

You either love the rowdy, sometimes funny, sometimes profane, antics of the Cameron Crazies -- or you hate it. But if you study ancient records of sporting events held in pit-shaped arenas, you will find that they were far from docile affairs.

History says that pits have been places of brutality, most often the venue for pitting animal against animal unto death. On the eve of battle, Alexander the Great held cockfights in one. Fighting birds with razor-sharp claws showed the soldiers what aggressiveness looked like. In Elizabethan England, people relished the sport of bear-baiting. Unruly spectators clapped and shouted, and threw up their caps as they watched a bear tied to a stake fight off dogs intent on killing it. At the end of the contest, the bear might be dead, but mauled dogs surrounded the bear’s bloody carcass.

Today, animal vs. animal contests are illegal in most civilized places, but the pit arena is not. Its depth, small playing area ringed with steeply rising seats, and the proximity of fans to the action is still intimidating, yet the place is far tamer than the ones of old.

That’s because a fight to the death has been replaced with the sport of basketball.

And in university arenas, students are a watered-down version of raucous ancient spectators. They are not there to see blood or chopped-off heads on poles. Their purpose is to intimidate the opposing team with their close presence, with constant, ear-shattering noise, and with taunting chants that rattle the visitors and cause them to lose focus. Cameron Crazies go so far as to research the opposing team to learn their weaknesses, which they turn into chants designed to crack their composure. The results can be funny, innovative, entertaining, and annoying. This is called atmosphere and it’s legal.

The Cameron Crazies may be the most infamous and outrageous student fans, but they have company. Virginia Tech has its own raucous ones who call pit-shaped Cassell Coliseum home. Rejecting the Medieval tradition of hospitality, they make visiting teams feel unwelcome. Last Thursday evening, when the University of Virginia players were being introduced to 9,500 VT fans, students with faces painted orange and maroon, wearing orange wigs, and orange shirts chanted “Go Hokies,” loud enough to drown the introductions.

When an opposing player throws up the ball and misses the goal, they chant “Air ball. Air ball,” for the rest of the game, every time the player touches the ball. It rattles lots of players who lose the ball out of bounds, walk, double dribble or have the ball stolen. They pick on good players by finding something to mock, like their hairstyle or socks. Most of the time, these tactics result in points by the home team. This is college basketball atmosphere: intimidating, irreverent, mocking, and entertaining.

An example is a spontaneous cheer that came out of the student section during a game with George Washington University. Several of their players had names so long that they would barely fit on the back of their jerseys. Many of those names ended in “ski.” During the second half, with the Hokies narrowing the gap in the score, a chant went up: “U.S.A, U.S.A. U.S.A.” Students kept it up until VT capitalized on the distraction and scored.

Game officials and visiting team coaches are not immune to jeers and taunts, either. Recently a coach, tired of taunts from nearby students, got into a shouting match with them. However, at the end of the game he applauded them. He understood that their antics came out of their passion for their team, their desire to support it and to disrupt the rhythm on the floor. It wasn’t a personal attack; it wasn’t mean-spirited. It was the lively atmosphere of college basketball: energetic, creative, and inhospitable. The pit-shaped arena helps to create this environment.

When you go to the opposing team’s home to play, you not only play the team, but also the fans. That’s what the announcer for the VT-Duke game implied on Sunday evening as the game came on the air: “Tonight Virginia Tech will take on Duke and the Cameron Crazies in ACC hoops.”

That’s exactly what the Hokies did, but they shouldn’t take it personally -- they left with their heads still on their shoulders.