I think by now we're all pretty much burned out on Duke football jokes, so I won't bother.
Instead, let me say this. I think Carl Franks is a very nice man. He has shown me and the staff of this newspaper nothing but respect.
This, however, has nothing to do with my feelings about Carl Franks as a person.
He has to be fired.
I'm not saying he is a bad football coach, but he is clearly not the right coach for this situation.
For those of you who haven't been paying attention, we lost every game this season.
And we lost every game last season.
Somewhere over Franks' tenure, the Blue Devils have gone from being bad, to being the butt of every third football joke told on ESPN.
I have heard the argument made that he needs more time to recruit the players to run his scheme.
This is a nice thought, but it's difficult to recruit when the target audience was in junior high last time you won a game. Getting one top-50 prospect won't turn the team around. You need consistent success.
What does it say about the athletic department's commitment to football if we don't fire a coach who hasn't won a game in over two years?
How much fun can this possibly be for our players? Those guys work themselves sick in practice only to get beaten every single weekend.
Yes, to answer your next question, I remember us sticking with Coach K. Not everyone is Coach K, and, Coach K didn't finish dead last.
Do we have to give him five years? Maybe it's a history-major bias, but I don't like five-year plans. We fired Goldsmith, and he had won a National Coach of the Year award.
It's time to move on.
But, Duke football finds itself in an extremely difficult situation.
We need to hire someone who can immediately lend this program credibility and stop the national media from heckling us like the cross-eyed kid in a kindergarten class.
We need someone who can really recruit. Given our extremely high academic standards, we're competing for a smaller pool of athletes than most of our competitors.
Finally, we need an excellent game coach, because we're going to be overmatched a great deal of the time, and we need to beat some decent football teams to produce a .500 record.
Now there are plenty of those types of coaches out there. If you need examples, look at the candidates for the Notre Dame job.
But we're not Notre Dame.
So, we need someone with all of the above, who might actually be crazy enough to take this job.
Sitting around the dorm watching ESPN's Sportscenter the other day, I had one of those John Belushi, "THE BAND," moments.
We should offer the job to Doug Williams.
By my best guess, about 75 percent of you just said, "Who?"
Doug Williams started at quarterback at Grambling University. His senior year he became the first black quarterback named as an AP first-team All American. He was selected by Tampa Bay in the NFL draft, and was later traded to the Redskins.
He won the Super Bowl MVP award in 1988, leading the Redskins to a 42-10 thumping of the Denver Broncos. In 1998, he replaced the legendary Eddie Robinson as the coach of the Grambling Tigers.
During Robinson's later years, the program fell off, finishing only 3-8 in 1997. Since taking over, Williams' teams have finished 5-6, 7-4, 10-2 and 10-1 this season.
Let's go back to that list.
Credibility--this guy has a Super Bowl ring. He played QB in the NFL. He's been a successful coach at the I-AA level. I'm not sure you can get much more credibility than that without having coached a successful I-A program. And trust me, Bob Stoops isn't leaving any messages on Joe Alleva's voice mail.
Recruiting--we'll go back to credentials. When Williams tells a recruit that he knows what it takes to compete on the next level, the recruit will actually believe him. Moreover, Williams would have the advantage of saying that he didn't have anything to do with the Blue Devils' two winless seasons.
Game coaching--I have to be honest, I haven't seen very much of the Grambling Tigers. But look at the guy's record. His teams have gotten better every year he has been there. He won 10 games last season.
Duke has won 10 games since the start of the 1995 season.
The Duke Factor--Williams coaches at a I-AA school, so the Duke job would actually be an improvement, in theory. Think about it, he's qualified, and he might actually come here.
There is another issue that I didn't bring up earlier, because I don't think it should be the deciding factor in choosing a coach. But I think this is worth considering.
According to ESPN, out of 117 Division I-A programs, there are five black head coaches.
I'm not trying to make a claim that athletic directors are biased, but given the racial makeup of the players, that number strikes me as highly unusual.
I don't think we should hire Doug Williams because he is black. I think we should hire him because he is unbelievably qualified.
But I also think that it would be a positive step for a University that maintains its commitment to diversity to actually consider putting that into practice.
Even if we don't consider Williams, we have to do something.
Half the students at this University have NEVER seen Duke win a single football game.
Simply smiling that it's basketball season won't solve the problem.
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