R.C. Slocum has a .715 winning percentage at Texas A&M; at Duke, head coach Carl Franks boasts a mark of .111.
In his 13 completed seasons as the Aggies' head coach, Slocum had never posted a losing record. Franks' best season was in 1999, when the Blue Devils went 3-8.
Slocum ran into tough times at A&M recently, however. His team's 3-5 record against Big 12 teams this season was its first losing conference mark since 1984, and for the third season in a row, the Aggies lost to their biggest rival, the Texas Longhorns, this time by a 30-point margin. With the Blue Devils, Franks has dropped 25 consecutive ACC contests, the most recent being a home loss to archrival North Carolina, a team that Franks has failed to beat in each of his four seasons at Duke.
Director of Athletics Joe Alleva announced that Franks would stay on for the 2003 season Nov. 24. Dec. 2, Texas A&M president Robert Gates told Slocum that this season would be his last as the Aggies' head coach.
In virtually every sense, these two decisions were complete and total opposites. At Texas A&M, Slocum was fired for winning, but not winning enough. At Duke, Franks was retained despite all the losing that occurred during the past four seasons.
Though the situations were quite different, the rhetoric was eerily similar.
"We had a season where we lost several close games that could have gone either way and no one was more disappointed than me with our record," Slocum told the Associated Press. "However, we have some really outstanding young players and I felt our future was bright."
In supporting Franks, Alleva was also intent on focusing on future projections, not current failures.
"I think the team has really improved," Alleva said. "We've gone from losing games by 30 points to losing games by two, three and four points, and that's the first step."
What neither mentioned is fact that college football has come to adopt the phrase so eloquently coined by Wu-Tang Clan: "Cash rules everything around me."
Building a winning team sells tickets and leads to bowl game invitations, all of which lead to dollar bills, y'all.
Perhaps in College Station, money was too much of a focus. A 6-6 record this season was able to overshadow the fact that Slocum was the winningest coach in Aggies history.
At Duke, though, the powers that be need to look long and hard at the bottom line. This was a year of changes, from the completion of the state-of-the-art Yoh Football Center to a loosening of academic standards for football recruits. Shawn Johnson was named to the All-ACC first team, while Alex Wade ranked third in the conference in rushing.
All of the pieces seem to be in place for Duke to rise out of the ACC cellar. The Blue Devils need only one thing: a coach who can lead them in their pursuit of victories-and dollars.
Evan Davis is a Trinity senior and senior associate sports editor. His column appears every Wednesday.
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