Engineering freshman Ted Rosenbaum sports a pair of red socks for every Penn basketball game to show his support for the team.
Rosenbaum is one of hundreds of Penn students that make up the Red and Blue Crew, Penn's official student basketball fan organization.
Across the nation, student sections at college athletic events have become just as much a part of the game as the athletes themselves.
From the Orange Krush at the Illinois to the Cameron Crazies at Duke, the fans are the ones that set the tone at the arenas.
"Unofficially, we're a mob or organized hecklers," said College senior Jon Lubin, who is the president of the Red and Blue Crew.
However, compared to some other schools, Penn's student fan section is considered tame.
In order to get tickets to a game against their archrival -- North Carolina -- Duke students camp out in the middle of winter as early as five weeks before the game.
"Basically by the end of the tenting period we have well over a thousand ... camping out for the UNC game," said Stephen Rawson, a senior in the School of Arts and Sciences at Duke. Rawson is in charge of monitoring the hoards of students who wait on line to get into basketball games.
"The passion of the students is absolutely amazing," Rawson said. "The great thing about Cameron Crazies is that there is no standard ... the creativity of the fans really catches people off guard," Rawson said.
When Duke played the Virginia Tech Hokies, the entire student section did the Hokey Pokey in the stands. They also come up with various cheers at the players.
For example, in a game against Florida State in 2000, the Crazies chanted "Don't eat me!" in reference to the Seminoles' 6-foot-10 350-pound sophomore Nigel Dixon, whom Rawson cheekily called a "large person."
Yet Rawson emphasized that Duke students are "classy fans." According to Rawson, "swearing is nonexistent, it's just about basketball and having fun an just supporting your team ... there are boundaries that you don't cross."
At the Illinois, the Orange Krush is comprised of 1,115 members who must earn their spot in the student section. Students must solicit pledges for every three-point shot that their team makes in the upcoming season.
In the past six years, the Orange Krush has raised over $600,000 for charity and they are expecting to raise over $500,000 alone this season, according to Orange Krush President, Mark Perkes, a junior in the College of Business.
"The one thing that makes us stand apart from [other] student sections is what we do off the court," Perkes said. "What we do for the community, that really transcends anything that happens on the court."
On the court, the Orange Krush has been known to do stretches with the team before the game which Perkes said is always fun to watch.
In addition, they have sometimes needed to go undercover when traveling to an away game.
For last Tuesday's game at Michigan, the Krush went incognito in order to buy tickets and get into Crisler Arena.
"We always have to make up fake names to get tickets," Perkes said. "We created a fake name called Youth Action. ... we all wore black shirts to the game and right before the tip off we took them off and we had the orange" shirts on.
As for Penn's Red and Blue Crew, the attendance may not always be stellar -- the Palestra has averaged 52 percent capacity so far this season, while Duke and Illinois sell out virtually every game -- but Lubin said he does not think that they have anything to be ashamed about.
"I would love to see Penn fans come to our games with the same numbers and enthusiasm [as other schools] but I think in our own way we've got something to be proud of here."
