LITERALLY DOZENS OF FANS ARE AT GAMEDAY FOR DUKE/UNC

Students have been camping outside of Rupp Arena since last night ahead of John Calipari’s return to Kentucky, setting up an all-time environment in the historic venue and around Lexington. You only get this opportunity once in a generation, a Hall of Fame coach returning to the school where they won a national championship on the opposing bench — Rick Pitino’s return at Louisville in 2001 being the closest example to this.

And that set up a decade and a half of one of the most vicious rivalries in sports history.

How could you not want to be a part of something like this?

Fascinatingly enough, the ESPN College GameDay crew willingly turned it down in favor of No. 2 Duke vs. unranked, 13-9 North Carolina — a rivalry game with two regular season matchups and a potential third in the ACC Tournament. It was a decision made by the suits of the Worldwide Leader in Sports, the ratings of Blue Devils and Tar Heels supposedly blowing everything else out of the water year after year. You can’t pass that up in Cooper Flagg’s debut in the rivalry, right? That was the thinking, I’m sure.

That decision led to this showing at GameDay — a bunch of nerds with corny signs not even coming close to filling up Cameron Indoor.

I mean, look at this. Literally DOZENS of fans enjoying themselves pretending the rivalry ESPN shoves down our throats every year actually matters.

The Cameron Crazies are ready for College GameDay 🗣️

📺 10 AM ET on ESPN pic.twitter.com/GIlHY3DWFl

— College GameDay (@CollegeGameDay) February 1, 2025

The crowd grew a bit more when the show actually started, but it’s still not even remotely full for a venue that only holds 9K fans anyway.

Mind you, more BBN members show up to Mark Pope’s postgame radio show every game, let alone College freaking GameDay.

Another MASSIVE crowd for the postgame radio show. pic.twitter.com/UvqlSgpj5m

— Zack Geoghegan (@ZGeogheganKSR) January 4, 2025

Great decision, guys. Well done. You did it.

Just remember: no one outside of Lexington and Fayetteville cares about Coach Cal’s return. That’s what they said.

We’ll see what the actual ratings show.