Over the past three seasons, Fred Goldsmith has taken many bus rides back to Durham after demoralizing defeats. It's safe to say that he's probably been stuck in traffic once or twice during that stretch. The trip home after the Blue Devils' 27-24 defeat at the hands of N.C. State Saturday, however, was different in more ways than one.
Not only did the team get a police escort that led it through the dense state-fair traffic on Raleigh's roads, but Goldsmith could actually hear the other commuters as they vented their frustrations at the special treatment the team was receiving.
"The thing that I really liked was that you couldn't hear a sound on that bus on the way back," Goldsmith said at his weekly press conference yesterday. "And I can remember being with some Duke teams that lost some games that I'd have to tell some people to shut up because it didn't mean enough.
"This football team, it means something to win. We were fighting to be winners and we've got winners on this football team, and we've got the right kind of chemistry, it hurts."
The Blue Devils are 3-4 and happy to have broken their 21-game ACC losing streak. But they believe that there is much more progress to be made this season. The team is no longer pleased with moral victories and just playing well. There is a larger goal, and putting W's on the board is an essential part of realizing that ambition.
"Our whole goal this season has been to basically turn around the program," quarterback Bobby Campbell said. "Three and eight, 0-11, 2-9 [the last three years]. This has been the season where we said that we were going to change it and become a winning program.
"Right now, we have to take it one game at a time, but we also see that despite a couple of tough losses over the past four or five weeks, that goal is still definitely in sight. We can definitely get to that point.... We have to play up to our potential, as opposed to coming so close, like we have."
The Blue Devils will end the season primarily on their home turf, facing teams that have a combined 6-21 record up to this point. The first of Duke's three remaining ACC home games, against Clemson (2-5, 1-4 in the ACC) this Saturday, could provide a huge step toward accomplishing what the Blue Devils set out to do.
Duke has played on the road against arguably the three best teams in the ACC. It feels that it is now prepared to come back home, take on lesser opponents and prove to the public what the team already believes-that the Blue Devils can, and should, win in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
"We've been through the tough part of our schedule now," cornerback Ronnie Hamilton said. "We have some more home games, and we're going to try to win out and get out of the doormat of the ACC at the bottom of the standings like we have for the past couple of years. If they see us in the middle of the pack, it'll show how much we've improved."
Duke's goal remains the same as it was at Goldsmith's first press conference before the season opener against Western Carolina. The team wants to finish the year with more wins than losses. If this dream becomes reality, the Blue Devils can be sure that driving home from road games will not be such a silent, sobering experience in the future, with or without the traffic on the highways.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.