Stacking The Spectrum against Cameron Indoor
I recently visited one of the nation’s most famed college basketball arenas: Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, North Carolina.
Cameron Indoor is the home of the Duke Blue Devils. It’s been in use since 1940 and has a hallowed reverence when you walk in. You can literally feel the history the place has to offer from so many years of a successful basketball program.
The Devils have won 84 percent of their home games played at Cameron. Part of the success comes from the crazed fans that support the team, the Cameron Crazies. Only 1,100 student seats are available, but the atmosphere is electric.
As a Utah State student that’s been to many games, I couldn’t help but compare how the Aggies’ HURD matched up with the famous Cameron Crazies.
History
The walls of Cameron have seen way more games that have a lot of meaning. Duke has won five National Championships, so history tips the scales in favor of the Blue Devils. People are excited just to be inside of it.
The fans at both venues are super close to the court but it feels closer and more intimate at Cameron. I was on press row and had fans touching me almost the entire game. It was nuts. However, history alone doesn’t give you a win percentage of 84 percent.
Free-throw distraction
Duke and Utah State boast many of the same distractions like swaying, swirling and yelling. But I give USU the advantage here. What sets it off for me is the yelling that continues after someone makes a shot and the quiet pounding on chair backs that build up to an explosion just before a shot. Duke fans are good, but not the best.
The Aggies still made most of their shots and it didn’t seem like the distractions got into the player’s heads. Where the Cameron Crazies really made their impact, though, was the ability to get everyone to participate.
Organization
The student section is extremely well organized. All the fans are on the same page all the time. That’s one advantage that Cameron holds over the Spectrum. At the Spectrum you often see good cheers but only half of the students participate and everyone else doesn’t know what’s going on.
Team-based cheers that change every game are a staple at the Spectrum. However, they aren’t used at Cameron. Students at Duke use the same cheers every game, every week and every year. Everyone knows the cheers and everyone participates together, unlike the fluid changes that sometimes cause confusion at USU.
The Utah State student section needs a good solid leader or a sign at the front to let people know what’s going on because after seeing what happens in Durham, the Aggie student section needs some organizational work.
Noise level
I went to a game during Thanksgiving holiday at Duke — it was still loud. But, I’ve heard the Spectrum be much, much louder. Looking at old videos of the Spectrum in its prime or even a few seasons ago against San Diego State, it has the potential to be deafening. Due to size and how it’s organized, the Spectrum takes the cake for noise.
The problem is a game over a break or one that isn’t a big conference game at Utah State doesn’t have a lot of students. That brings me right to my next point: attendance.
Attendance
A full Spectrum has 4,000 students compared to only 1,100 — which actually swells to 1,600 and standing room only at Cameron. However, students in North Carolina always — always — fill that up. Students in Logan often don’t fill the Spectrum.
That’s really the bottom line. If the HURD can fill up the Spectrum, it’s one of the top basketball arenas in the nation, but if it’s not full, those 2,000 empty, fall-colored seats have a long staring contest with the opposing team.
The game I attended was during Thanksgiving break against a non-conference team Duke had never played before. It was still full. Aggie students need to do a better job of attending games if they want to be consistently recognized as one of the top student sections in the country.
— Kalen Taylor is a sophomore double-majoring in journalism and Spanish. He’s all about football, basketball, tennis, hockey and anything to do with sports … except for baseball; that’s just not his thing. Watch for him living the dream on ESPN one day. Contact him at kalen.s.taylor@gmail.com or on Twitter @kalen_taylor.