Joe Alleva understands this much-if he's going to replace player-beloved Ted Roof, he's going to have to make a significant upgrade.
Alleva made it clear Monday that he has ditched the strategy of going after cheap, up-and-coming assistants with Duke ties. Duke is going to turn its abysmal football program around with a head coach who has proven himself at the Division-I level.
I've talked to a number of people over the past few years about Duke's football program-former coaches, scouts, athletic directors, recruiting analysts, opposing coaches-and the thing that they all made clear is that a coach's stability is more important than even his talent. It takes time to implement a system and recruit specific types of players. And the quickest way to lose a prospect is to have uncertainty over whether the coach who recruits him will be there for his four years.
That means two things. First, Duke needed to either come out strongly in support of Roof after this season to aid in his recruiting or fire him. The former would have taken some onions, and it just became clear that with four wins in four years, the administration couldn't do that, so firing him was the right call at this point.
The second is that if you're going to mess with coaching stability, you better have a good reason for it. A mid-level coach, even a good one, in his first year with the Blue Devils is a step backward from Roof in his fifth. Duke's hire must be a coach that can, through his name or track record, inject immediate excitement into the program, pull in a new level of recruits and get wavering alumni to pull out their checkbooks and financially justify his salary to the University.
One thing Alleva might not understand is how hard it could be to entice the type of candidate he's looking for. Duke clearly doesn't have the pull to snag away another BCS head coach, and most of the non-BCS head coaches on the rise will wait for better offers. When someone asked him what would attract a D-I head coach to Durham, he simply said, "It's Duke University."
That may be true in the classroom or on the hardwood, but in the gridiron world, Duke is a coaching graveyard with a terrible stadium, an oft-questioned commitment to football and challenging academic standards.
To get a worthy candidate, Duke is going to have to step up its commitment, a process which has begun with plans for renovating Wallace Wade. Those plans aren't set yet, but they need to include the removal of the track so Wade stops getting confused for a high school stadium.
Even Mike Krzyzewski joined in, saying the University needed a commitment to football beyond just one man. And Krzyzewski, like anyone else in college athletics, knows that "commitment" is a nicer word for money.
Regardless of who Duke pursues, if Alleva is serious about finding someone with head coaching experience, Duke is going to have to pay up like never before. Even if the Blue Devils go after a good coach without the huge name, someone like Navy's Paul Johnson, it would cost them three times Roof's reported salary of $500,000. And even Johnson wouldn't create the kind of buzz Duke wants.
Someone who would make a splash is Tyrone Willingham, if he is let go at Washington. Willingham had a lot of success at Stanford, is a proven recruiter and would be Duke's first minority head coach in any sport.
Chances are, Duke is going to end up with someone like Johnson or Steve Logan, currently an assistant at BC. But if Alleva is serious about turning this program around, the Blue Devils really need someone with more clout and big-time experience, even if it means paying them more than Krzyzewski.
The higher-ups just fired a good coach and a better guy. They better make it worth it.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.