The Duke Blue Devils Basketball team extended their record to 19-1 this Saturday, beating the Miami Hurricanes by a 15 point margin. And in the process, they burnished their brand just a bit more.

What might you ask, does this news event have to do with egg, our blog, the egglog, or anything at all related to sustainability? Well, besides the fact that Duke is the alma mater of each of egg’s 2 co-founders, Marty McDonald (a somewhat avid Blue Devil basketball fan himself) and Mindee Nodvin, the Devils put on quite the green show at Cameron this past Saturday, while handedly thrashing their ACC opponent. In the name of Focus The Nation Day, a national teach in on global warming solutions, and to symbolize Duke’s ongoing commitment to sustainable environmental practices, recycling and water conservation, the Cameron Crazies -– Duke’s enthusiastic student fans — donned green shirts, emblazoned with the slogan: BLEED BLUE, LIVE GREEN. The more enthusiastic fans skipped the shirts and just went for green paint. (VOC free, non-toxic, hopefully.)

Duke will purchase carbon offsets equivalent to the electricity, steam and transportation consumed by the game, working in partnership with the renewable-energy company NativeEnergy.

“Grassroots movements have a way of starting with the students,” said Jennie Dean, 24, a first-year graduate student in environmental management and one of the coordinators of Focus the Nation at Duke. “Global change is something we’re very concerned about, and it’s our future, so we’re doing something about it. We hope Focus the Nation starts a national dialogue.” We do, too. And if it means getting national exposure for the cause by suiting up for TV camera exposure during the popular Duke basketball games, more green power to them.

In many college communities, including Durham, the university represents the largest consumer of power and water. With thousands of residential units, fleets of vehicles and dozens, if not hundreds, of buildings, an American campus is like a city unto itself. But unlike most cities, a university can take sweeping steps to improve its environmental behavior.

And the issue has hit home recently as North Carolina is in the midst of a very serious water crisis. Duke’s sustainability coordinator, Tavey Capps, says, “We’ve been working quietly for several years now to improve the campus’ sustainability in water and energy use and to build more sustainable new buildings because it’s the right thing to do.”

You can find out more about what Duke is doing around sustianability by visiting their site. And of course, to find out more about how the Devils are doing on the hardwood, you can go here.

Go Duke. And Go Green.