The Day the Stores Went Wild
Friday, April 6, 2001
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Getting into the University Store to buy a Duke basketball championship T-shirt on Tuesday was almost as difficult as landing a ticket to the Final Four.
By noon, just one day after the men's team cut down the nets in Minneapolis, more than 2,000 people had streamed through the Bryan Center's memorabilia hub in search of sweatshirts, bumper stickers, pennants, caps, mugs and royal blue Teddy bears.
Fans grabbed armfuls of T-shirts, clearly the most popular item. People accidentally bumped into each other as they squeezed through the store's narrow aisles.
"It's all part of the experience," said Tom Craig, general manager of the university's retail stores. "Believe me, people are glad to be here."
In the early
afternoon, so many fans had turned out for souvenirs that a campus
police officer at the store's entrance had to enforce the occupancy
limit, admitting people in groups of eight or 10 as roughly the
same number exited the store.
Seven shipments of T-shirts - 31,000 in all - arrived early Tuesday from local companies in Wendell and Fayetteville, N.C., and from as far away as Kansas, Craig said. He estimated that, in the wake of the championship, Duke stands to make $2 million in revenues and $1.5 million in licensing royalties.
The University Store and the East Campus Store have the day-after sales down to a science because Duke teams have gone to the Final Four several times, Craig said. For instance, the University store normally has eight cashiers. On Tuesday, 16 were ringing up purchases.
"I'm getting a T-shirt for every member of my family," said Austin Derfus, a Duke senior from Clearwater, Fla.
Not surprisingly, Derfus wasn't the only person making a bulk buy. Stephanie Nelson, another senior and a friend of Derfus, said she, too, was buying shirts for just about every member of her family.
"Except for my sister," said Nelson, of Maryland. "She wouldn't appreciate a shirt. She would think I was bragging, instead of celebrating."
On the other side of the store, local resident Don Kellum was sorting through shirts for out-of-town family members. It wasn't easy, but he managed to find a parking space on campus, he said.
Kellum picked out a gray T-shirt with a Blue Devil logo and the words "Only the Strong Survive" on the front. "It's is for my brother-in-law," Kellum said, grinning. "He's a manly man, very much into sports."
Van Ellis, a longtime Duke fan and a former food production manager at the university's medical center, came onto campus with his 10-year-old daughter Jessika. He said they expected to spend at least $300 on T-shirts, bumper stickers and a Teddy bear with the Duke shield.
"It's been nine years since I've been able to buy new shirts," Ellis lamented, referring to Duke's last national basketball championship. "My 1991 and '92 championship shirts need to be replaced. They have holes in them from moths."
Ellis said he was such a huge Duke basketball fan that one of his bathrooms at home is decorated with ticket stubs, pictures of the men's teams from years past and pictures of Coach Mike Krzyzewski. What's more, the walls are covered with Duke wallpaper.
Picking out her shirts Tuesday, Nelson, the senior from Maryland, said that the team's NCAA victory was an early graduation gift.
"That was the last basketball game that I'm going to watch as an undergrad," she said. "The fact that they won makes it even more special. You couldn't ask for a better finale."
Written by Noah Bartolucci.
