In the earliest days of Duke University, the athletic department faced the same essential question it does today-finding the right balance between athletics and academics.
In 1933, the football team was 9-0 and a win against Georgia Tech would likely lead to a Rose Bowl invitation. The bid would have given the Blue Devils national recognition, but coach Wallace Wade actually recommended turning down the bowl game because he wanted Duke to be seen as an academic institution, not a football school.
Duke lost that game to the Yellow Jackets, but Wade's feelings on the role of sports has, for the most part, remained the cornerstone of the athletic department.
But while administrators, coaches and players still struggle with the same questions Wade did, the environment in which decisions are made is completely different.
Just ask Jack Persons, a long-time Duke coach who began his career in 1931 at the age of 20.
"The biggest change in Duke athletics is the money," he said. "They have more money now than they've ever had."
That money has changed just about everything. In the 1990s, college athletics are bigger than anyone from Wade's era could have ever envisioned. The money, the television, the endorsements have forever altered sports at Duke.
The money has also had a major impact in the proliferation of non-revenue sports and the amazing growth of women's athletics since Title IX passed in the early 1970s.
The glory days of Duke football
On January 6, 1940, the Duke Indoor Stadium was officially christened at a game between the Blue Devils and Princeton. The new stadium, at the time the finest in the South, was paid for largely with income earned by the football program.
During the stadium's dedication, University President William Few mentioned the rising interest in basketball and predicted that it might someday pay its own way, just as the football program did.
That's right, basketball was once nothing more than a non-revenue "also-ran" in Durham. First and foremost, Duke was a football school. The Duke name was spread through the gridiron.
The date of the indoor stadium's first game was almost exactly one year to the day after Duke appeared in its first Rose Bowl. This is not a joke. The Blue Devils were actually in two Rose Bowls in the late 1930s and early 40s.
During the 1938 season, the Blue Devils went undefeated, untied and unscored upon. The Iron Dukes, as they were called, were one of the most dominating football teams in the history of collegiate athletics. They earned a trip to the 1939 Rose Bowl in Pasadena, but during the game's final minute, the streak finally broke. With 40 seconds left in the contest, the Trojans scored on an 18-yard touchdown pass and won the game 7-3.
The game was broadcast on NBC radio across the country (as well as in a few foreign countries) and with the unprecedented exposure, Duke won thousands of new fans. Eddie Cameron, an assistant coach for that team and a future athletic director, called the Rose Bowl "the turning point in Duke athletics."
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But then Duke offered to host the Rose Bowl, and Oregon State made the trip to Durham, where they disappointed the Blue Devils, 20-6.
Duke was now a national name in the sports scene, but the athletic department wasn't the only thing changing.
At the time, Allan K. Manchester, the dean of freshmen, noted that as the football team's prominence grew during the Wade era, the caliber of student coming to the University increased.
The University no longer had to actively recruit students-students came to them.
Duke was now a household name.
The rise of basketball
Wade's retirement did not signal the end for the football program, but the Blue Devils have never again reached the level of success they had under him.
Under new coach Bill Murray, the team had a 93-51-9 record in 15 years. He resigned in 1965, claiming that the University's rising academic standards and unwillingness to accommodate his needs were making it impossible for him to have a successful program.
The 1970s were simply dismal and as academic standards continued to increase, the team's success and campus prominence plummeted. Steve Spurrier briefly injected hope into the program in the late 1980s, but he left the school after the All-American Bowl in 1989 and since then, Duke has had three coaches and a 30-72-1 record in the 1990s.
But as Duke football continued to lose, the men's basketball program started to win, and win big, eventually transforming Duke into a basketball school in the 1960s.
After the 1942 retirement of legendary coach Eddie Cameron, Duke always had successful seasons, but never stormed the national scene until the hiring of Vic Bubas in 1960. In Bubas' 10 seasons he went 213-67, but more importantly, led the team to its first three Final Fours.
"That was the turning point," Persons said. "With the hiring of Bubas, that's when Duke first began switching from football to basketball."
Bubas' success began just as Murray's struggles with the administration began, and sure enough, the two programs started heading in opposite directions, both in success and popularity.
Basketball's popularity was growing on campus not just because of success, however. The sport in general boomed during the late 1970s and '80s as television exposure increased and the likes of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson took the game to new heights.
Three more basketball coaches came and went until the spring of 1980, when athletic director Tom Butters took a gamble by hiring unknown Army coach Mike Krzyzewski to replace Bill Foster, who resigned to coach at South Carolina.
The hire turned out pretty well for Duke. The Krzyzewski era is well-documented, complete with two national championships
ESPN, Nike and unprecedented press coverage are now integral parts of Duke basketball. The national recognition brought by the Durham Rose Bowl cannot even be compared to a Final Four.
And while the exposure has been great financially, many are pondering if its good for the student-athletes. This spring, Blue Devil fans were stunned when three basketball players left school early to enter the NBA Draft.
"It's a changing time," Krzyzewski said this summer. "Those kids were exposed to extremes.... They've been exposed to extreme notoriety and success very early."
Women and non-revenue sports
While the men were grabbing headlines this past year, the women's basketball program enjoyed its best season ever, capped by an appearance in the national championship game.
Although the program began in 1975, just recently has it received the financial backing and support to make such a tournament run.
In 1969, Duke had 127 scholarships: 110 for football, 17 for men's basketball. Now, 30 years later, the scholarship distribution has shifted and Duke's 210 scholarships are nearing a 50-50 distribution for men's and women's varsity teams.
While the men's basketball and football teams makes nearly all of the athletic department's money, that revenue is shared among all sports. As a result, women's sports and non-revenue men's sports are big-budget and played at entirely different levels in this day in age.
"I coached lacrosse from 1938-66 and in that entire time, I don't think I spent $30,000 combined," Persons said. "But today, that's just one scholarship. The money is just so much more now."
In some sports, recruiting intensity is beginning to match that of football and basketball. For a while, historically successful teams like baseball tried to go without scholarships, but in the end simply could not get the same talent as other schools.
But the biggest scholarship change came in the form of 1972's Title IX, the law that requires gender equity at organizations that receive federal funds. In a rise that has paralleled the infusion of money into college athletics, women have gone from playing inter-dorm games on East Campus to competing for national championships across the country.
At Duke, Title IX means that the athletic department, and its money, now have to be split evenly between men and women.
Several of Duke's women's programs were established during the 1970s and two more have been added in the last five years, with rowing the most recent.
And although non-revenue and women's sports continue to grow, they still do not have anywhere near the fanbase as men's basketball. But if the past 75 years has taught Duke athletics anything, it's that times change.
After all, not too long ago it was football, and too a lesser extent baseball, that represented Duke's big draw.
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