As you know, the Duke-Wisconsin game is on ESPN Tuesday night. ESPN will come in and do their usual thing – if Vitale is there, he’ll play along with the Crazies. The cameras will pan along the sidewalks and then along the bleachers, trying to get shots of you guys, all happy and energetic and waving, because that crowd shot is worth millions to ESPN, frankly. We’re not even referring to Duke; we’re talking about that shot in every gym they go to. That is a really key shot for their broadcast: just look how often it shows up on Sports Center.But while the crew in Durham is performing the usual shtick, flirting with the crowd and so on, other parts of the empire are actively attacking Duke.

So since in many respects, they’ve given Duke the bird, why is it that people continue to dance to their tune when they come into Cameron?

On the one hand, they love to come here, because they know they’ll get the ratings and the cool crowd shots, but on the other, why should anyone cooperate with them when they have, more than once now, crossed the line into either just terrible reporting or cynical exploitation of a marketing opportunity?

Well, here it is: Duke fans, and specifically the Crazies, have a chance to hold ESPN accountable. It would be great to deny them that money shot of Crazies in full splendor. It would be classic if, rather than that, whenever the camera panned over them, the Crazies just crossed their arms en masse and stared at the camera until it went away. It would be a mild but effective protest. It probably wouldn’t be as hard to explain as signs and cheers against the Bullies from Bristol, but hey – you guys are creative. We’re sure if you want to let ESPN know you object to their recent maltreatment of one of their major moneymakers, you can come up with something.

It would be fun, and rather fascinating, to turn their cameras against them, and then see how they explain it on the air. And everything else aside, ordinary people don’t get many chances to sock a major media company in the nose. That’s a story you can tell forever.