JEFF KOVACS
“Mullet Man” > Durham, NC
Duke G’05 > phD in Molecular Cancer Biology
I’ve been a Duke fan as long as I can remember, and it really was the reason that I came to grad school here… well, it was the deciding factor anyway. So my first year I won tickets in the grad student ticket lottery and I realized that I was going to the Duke-UNC game in Cameron Indoor. That was pretty much when I realized that I wanted to be involved as much as possible in Duke Basketball. I got involved with the grad student ticket committee which I eventually co-chaired with a friend and then I met Ed Venit (Viking Guy) and Ben Torbert (Throatybeard) in lines for games, and, as Ed puts it, our love for Duke Basketball and beer made us fast friends. Ed was wearing this Viking helmet as a way for his mom to see him at games, and Ben just looked weird, so I thought if I was going to sit with these guys in the front, I needed some kind of get up. The mullet wig was actually supposed to be a one-game costume, and I borrowed it from a friend who had worn it as part of a Halloween costume where he dressed up as a UNC fan (seriously). So I wore it and kept wearing it, eventually adding the headband and sunglasses. The three of us, along with some other folks who came and went, formed a group which we affectionately named The Phalanx. So, we then kind of organized the grad section for a number of years. Ben always described me as the head of the Beast. I was the one screaming chants out and yelling at officials, and Ed was the one working the signs trying to coordinate with the undergrads.
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I always thought that the best way to help the team was to cheer the loudest when things weren’t going well… when we needed a stop, or a bucket. It’s easy to get excited after we knockdown a three or somebody gets a big dunk. It’s much more important, I think, to get loud when the guys are feeling down. So that was then, and these days I am working as a post-doctoral fellow in the medical center. I still attend games, but the Mullet Man persona has pretty much been retired.
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What Motivated Mullet Man?
It was never hard to be a Cameron Crazie. I mean, I got to get in line with my friends and watch Duke play in Cameron. What more motivation do you need? I think that it was fun to be a small part of those teams and to help bridge the gap between the grad students and the undergrads in Cameron. Sure, spending seven or eight hours at Cameron every time there was a home game made for a lot of make-up time in lab and late nights spent working after games, but it was worth it! I consider my time as a Crazie a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I guess that was all the motivation I needed.
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Jeff’s Most Memorable Game in Cameron
UNC at Duke (2005)
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Cameron in 3 Words
One-of-a-kind (one word hyphenated!), Perfect, Home
