It was a mild late-summer night, the kind you appreciate despite its subtle implication that such nights are rapidly coming to a close. Three friends and I had not unexcitedly-excitedly probably isn't the right word-trekked from Edens to Wallace Wade to usher in a new season of Duke Football.
The Blue Devils, despite their 1-11 mark my freshman year, were favorites in the season opener. This was not too unusual considering they were facing off against a Division I-AA school in Richmond. As the sun began its slow descent over the corner of Wally Wade and Duke players emerged from a tunnel with fireworks blazing and fans-that's right, more than half the stadium was full-cheering, I talked myself into Duke Football.
"We may not be good," I thought, "but maybe we'll be competitive. The ACC isn't that good this year. And after all, the BCS did add that fifth game this season."
Three minutes into the 2006 season, hope had made a swifter departure from the sidelines than Bobby Petrino. On the second play from scrimmage, Jomar Wright fumbled a swing pass from Marcus Jones, Richmond recovered, and the Spiders were on their way to a 13-0 shutout win.
And so it is that I approach the David Cutcliffe era with some trepidation.
By now you've heard extensively about Cutcliffe's credentials. He was over .500 at Ole Miss, and he turned Tee Martin into a championship-winning quarterback. He mentored the Mannings! There's even talk on campus that the Blue Devils' football wins may exceed their seed in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2004 (when 2 wins > No. 1 seed).
But a lot of those credentials have been colored by what has happened after the fact. It's probably safe to assume the Mannings would have become pretty good quarterbacks even without Cutcliffe's mentoring, and it's not like Ole Miss hadn't gone to bowl games the two seasons prior to Cutcliffe's hiring. (Props on the Tee Martin thing, though. No arguing around that.)
Most people believe Cutcliffe's experiences in Oxford, Miss., coaching a less-than-heralded team in a major conference, will ease the transition to Duke. But Cutcliffe wasn't inheriting a perennial loser in the Rebels in 1998. In fact, they were 25-20 the previous four seasons, and their coach hadn't been fired. Tommy Tuberville went to Auburn, where he'd turn the Tigers into national contenders on a yearly basis.
Duke, on the other hand? Well, the Blue Devils are 4-42 the last four seasons, including a whopping one conference win. Aligning the two contexts would be akin to comparing, well, Tuberville and Ted Roof.
The point is that Cutcliffe has a much larger mountain to climb, and he's doing so with the added weight of Duke's recruiting limitations. And I'm not talking solely academics. There's the worst stadium in the ACC in Wally Wade (something tells me recruits have yet to be wooed by the renovated female restrooms), low-level training facilities and, oh yeah, the utter lack of a fan base (playing at Virginia Tech means the Blue Devils will miss out on the largest crowd of the season, usually clad in maroon and orange).
All this may make a Herculean task more Sisyphean for a coach whose ability to recruit was called into question at Ole Miss.
To be sure, Cutcliffe has made changes and promises, including, from what I hear, instituting a daily gathering of the players colloquially referred to as practice. (Hearing players talk about Cutcliffe's overhaul of the team's practice regimen leads me to believe that Roof ran his team like my old Little League baseball coaches: "OK guys, now our next game is Saturday at 1 p.m. That means you should be here by 12:30... in uniform.")
He also shifted the student section to behind Duke's bench and, more importantly, to the shade.
Cutcliffe's even using the word "postseason" to refer to something besides banquets or workouts. The schedule is purportedly easier, including an opener against James Madison and home games with Northwestern and Navy (a Congressional Bowl preview?).
But hope and momentum will last only as long as Duke's undefeated season. And don't look past JMU, who lost to Division I-AA Appalachian State by a single point last season. (And every fifth-grader can tell you that if JMU lost to App. State by one, and App. State beat Michigan by two, well then, JMU can beat Michigan. It's called the transitive property.)
Yes, Cutcliffe is an improvement over Roof. So is Rich Kotite. The question remains, though: is Cutcliffe the kind of coach whose presence can overhaul a program?
Logic points to a renaissance of sorts at Wally Wade: three-maybe four-wins in 2008. But Duke Football hasn't been a paragon of logic the last two decades. The only thing that's made much sense is the graduation rate.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.