TAMPA, Fla. -- Last year at this time, Fred Goldsmith was settling into his office in the Murray Building. He was meeting his players, and he was learning first-hand about the state of Duke football.
It wasn't too pretty. Duke was 13-30-1 during Barry Wilson's four years as coach. The program was way, way down. Fan interest was also low, and excitement was almost nonexistent.
Goldsmith must have heard the many skeptics. He may not have wanted to believe them, but their arguments were convincing: Duke will never have a great football program. The academic standards are too high. Duke is a basketball school. The school is too small. The support just isn't there.
Many people felt that posting a 6-5 record at Duke would be just fine, maybe even exceptional. Even five wins would be nice in Goldsmith's first year. But considering that the same talent was returning from Duke's 3-8 squad in 1993, the status quo was all that could really be expected. Maybe Duke could improve by one win. Anything more would be considered a miracle.
Fans looked around for any kind of inspiration or encouragement. They looked to Duke's 1989 team, which went 8-4 under Steve Spurrier and reached the All-American Bowl. But they quickly realized that 1989 must have been a fluke. A coach like Spurrier was only the rarest of commodities, and when he left, well, Duke was doomed to an eternity near the Atlantic Coast Conference cellar. So much for that encouragement.
Other people looked at Stanford. The Cardinal had reached the Blockbuster Bowl in 1992 and was a perennial top 25 challenger. The academics at Stanford are similar to those at Duke, so couldn't the Blue Devils at least make a run at the top 25? Was that too much to ask?
It looked that way. Apparently, Stanford had established a tradition Duke could never hope to match. The Cardinal was coached by the immortal Bill Walsh. And before that, Dennis Green, now coach of the Minnesota Vikings, was at the helm. Duke would never get coaches like that. And when it did, the coach would surely bolt in no time (a la Spurrier).
Sure, this Goldsmith guy had some success at Rice, but the Southwestern Conference is not quite the Pac-10 or the ACC. So forget about that Stanford argument. Stanford would be good in football, and Duke would just have to settle for basketball.
Except, as anyone who isn't living on the moon or in a closet knows, something very strange happened in the fall of 1994: Duke became a winner. The Blue Devils won eight games and went to the Hall of Fame Bowl. Duke could easily have won 10 games if not for one-point losses to N.C. State and North Carolina. Hell, with a few more breaks, maybe Duke could even have beaten mighty Wisconsin, the 1994 Rose Bowl champion. As it turned out, Duke lost the Jan. 2 bowl 34-20 in a competitive football game.
So what's the point of all this? Basically, that all the skeptics were wrong. And most of the optimists were wrong, too. I was wrong. Most of you were wrong. We never thought this could happen. Sure, some of the players thought so. And maybe a few others, such as parents and coaches, but not the so-called "experts." Duke defied the odds, and that's what made this season so special.
The team lost its last three games of the year. And you know what? It really doesn't matter. Because, unlike the famous season of 1989, 1994 should prove to be more than a one-year phenomenon. While mighty Stanford bumbled to a 3-7-1 season, Duke took its place among the top 25 teams in the country for almost the whole season. That would have been utterly unfathomable in August of 1994.
Duke returns many of its key players next season, but there will be new obstacles. You can't expect another injury-free season like this one. People won't be looking past Duke anymore, and the Cinderella label will be gone.
However, there is no reason the Blue Devils can't post another winning season next year. The talent-base will be better. The experience will be better. And, as a matter of fact, Duke players are already talking about going back to a bowl -- that chatter started right after the Hall of Fame bowl had ended.
Just think about that -- two bowls in two years? For Duke football? If that possibility doesn't make your spine tingle, you haven't been following Duke football for more than a year.
"Man, the future is nothing but up for Duke football," 1994 ACC Player of the Year Robert Baldwin said following the Hall of Fame Bowl, his final game as a Blue Devil. "We set a solid foundation this year with the level of intensity, the level of work in the off-season. And it can definitely only get better. We were able to recruit a little better this year, and we've got some good guys coming in. It's definitely looking up."
When you think about it, the 1994 football season really was justice for the football program -- for a good bunch of guys and a good bunch of coaches. In one year, these guys shunned the label of "losers" and won the hearts of Duke fans all over.
Maybe that's why the players weren't too upset with the loss in the Hall of Fame Bowl. They came farther than any of us ever imagined they would. They may have been better than the 1989 Duke team. And they were definitely better than this year's Stanford team.
As long as Fred Goldsmith decides to hang around and call Durham home, the Duke program should remain strong. That's why the Hall of Fame Bowl loss was really a very small blemish on a much larger picture.
"As I said before the game, this game wouldn't take away from our season and it wouldn't make our season," Goldsmith said. "We played well, and we played against one of the nation's real good teams. So it doesn't detract from a season where I thought we showed we could win at Duke University, go to a bowl, be successful and recruit towards that."
Those things hardly seemed possible last year at this time.
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