Duke basketball: The three steps to replacing Cameron Crazies

How the Duke basketball program could replace Cameron Crazies: STEP TWO

As with the noise idea, AP reporter Dave Skretta examined this week how a soccer club overseas has already enacted plans to fill empty seats with something, anything. To do so, he quoted Lubbo Popken, deputy press secretary for Germany’s Borussia Monchengladbach, who noted the difference it made just to have fans’ cardboard-cutout pictures in the stands:

“When it was clear there would be no audience this season, the fans had the idea of bringing their images to the stadium. We were surprised how many people wanted to be part of this idea and have their images in the stadium. It really changed the atmosphere in the empty stadium.”

Check it out:

Again, though, let’s take it one step further for Duke basketball purposes. Let’s ask for a touch more technology, such as live FaceTime video from individual Dukie households transmitting to a screen in each of Cameron Indoor Stadium’s empty seats, syncing with the tiny speakers.

Besides, surely a nerd in the university’s Pratt School of Engineering — of which this writer was briefly a student two decades ago but couldn’t quite hack it due to an overwhelmingly hoops-centric mind — should have the necessary brainpower to make it happen.

Better yet, why not have real-time hologram images of each fan appearing in every seat. Understand, of course, I’ll give the Duke engineers a break if they need some extra time to work out all the kinks for such an endeavor. However, if a lack of funds is their primary roadblock, here’s a possible solution…