On Saturday, Florida State gave Duke a swirlie-and Blue Devil head coach Ted Roof apparently didn't care.
You're all familiar with the concept of a swirlie, right? For the home-schooled, it's the middle school gag where the 250-pound bully lifts up the 98-pound dweeb, dips his head in the toilet and flushes.
Before the Blue Devils' swirlie, the Seminoles snapped Duke Football's coke-bottle-bottom glasses in half and ran the team's underpants up the flagpole.
Then, with 6:18 left in the game (all but about 71 people had left by then, don't feel bad if you missed it), FSU gave Duke the swirlie. Facing 4th and four from the Duke 14-yard-line and leading 44-17, Seminole head coach Bobby Bowden decided to keep his offense on the field instead of kicking the field goal.
The game was over at that point-Florida State's win was assured. Of course, the Seminoles scored on the fourth-down play, making the score 51-17. And Duke walked out of the bathroom with toilet water dripping from its hair.
If I'm Roof, at about the time that Bowden keeps his offense on the field, I haul my former All-ACC linebacker self over to the Florida State sideline and slam the old man into the ground so hard that he breaks his 70-some-odd-year-old hip. Or at least, I'd want to. I can't fault Roof for abstaining from violence so that he could keep his job.
But I'll tell you what I wouldn't do. I wouldn't shake Bowden's hand cordially after the game. I wouldn't walk into my post-game press conference and completely ignore the fact that Florida State deliberately ran up the score on my team.
A day later, I wouldn't continue ignoring that fact, as Roof did Monday. "I don't think about that," he said. "It's our job to stop them, and it's our job to score points."
Instead, I would've brushed off Bowden after the game. I would've walked into the press conference, and the first thing I would've said would be about that late fourth-down try.
"Bobby's Bowden's choice to go for it on fourth down in a late blowout loss was absolutely despicable," I would've said. "In the University environment, we try to teach our players about sportsmanship. What is Bobby Bowden teaching his players? That you can do whatever you want as long as you win? It shouldn't surprise anyone that a coach who would go for it on fourth down late in a 27-point game would also watch over the Peter Warrick and 'Free Shoes University' scandals."
Woah, Alex. I thought you were on The Anti-Train now. You know, "It's okay if Duke not-wins, we expect that. We're just looking at the positives." Remember all that stuff?
But there's a big difference between not-winning and being a loser.
Not-winning happens on the field. Being a loser happens when you let the bully give you a figurative swirlie and then pretend it never happened.
Almost 25 years ago, there was another Duke coach with a program that was kind of downtrodden. But he wasn't about to be anyone's doormat.
"I want to tell you something," Mike Krzyzewski said after losing to North Carolina, January 15, 1984. "You cannot allow people to go around pointing at officials and yelling at them without technicals being called. That is just not allowed. So let's get some things straight around here and quit the double standard that exists in this league, all right?"
By "people," Krzyzewski meant North Carolina head coach Dean Smith, who even by then was a legend, much like Bowden is right now.
Now that Krzyzewski is the legend, coaches like Maryland's Gary Williams, Wake Forest's Skip Prosser and Georgia Tech's Paul Hewitt have taken up the same refrain, saying Duke gets all the calls because its legendary coach bullies the referees. And Boston College coach Al Skinner made similar complaints after losing to Duke last season.
"I don't understand the discrepancy," Skinner said at the time. "You can call whatever you want against us. It's got to be the same on both ends when there's contact going to the basket, and you call a foul."
Maybe it's no coincidence that Maryland, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech and Boston College are real contenders in ACC basketball, while Duke Football is a perennial doormat. Standing idly by while another team strips your team of its dignity by treating it like a second-class citizen is the surest way to build a losing attitude.
"It's kind of frustrating because you don't ever want to see someone running up the score on you," running back Justin Boyle said. "But at the same time, you've just got to worry about yourself."
Roof has done some nice things this year-the offense is undeniably more competent each week, and the defense has made some big plays. But Duke Football will continue to be bullied until its coach takes a stand. Calling out a living legend like Bowden would've been a start.
Too bad Roof missed that chance.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.