For immediate release
DURHAM, N.C. (Associated Press)— The Duke Football program, as students currently know it, has been canceled, Vice President for Student Affairs Mary Loneta confirmed Sunday.
The “predominating factor” in the University’s decision to cancel the football program was the incident that occurred at the Nov. 13 game against Boston College.
“Out there on the field, the team just looked like a bunch of effing 14-year-olds passed out in a Porta Potty after having too much to drink,” Loneta said in an interview Sunday, referring to the team’s loss against “those weird Jesuits” Saturday afternoon.
All future football games have, as of now, been suspended, Loneta said, and football games in upcoming years will “likely be very different.”
“The football team has become an embarrassment—it has no connection to Tailgate anymore,” Loneta said. “Now it has to end. I think the notion that a group of Division-1 athletes could so closely resemble unconscious and intoxicated tween boys lying face down in a toilet just crosses the line.”
There was a strong reaction from the students following the e-mail announcement that was sent out at around 10 p.m. Sunday night, and some students have planned an “impromptu football game” on the Main Quad. Within hours of the creation of a Facebook event titled “Main Quad Football,” more than six people had RSVPd that they were “maybe” attending, with one Baldwin scholar saying that she was “sort of excited to play flag football, or whatever it is.”
Despite the overwhelming reaction from students, Duke administrators are holding their ground. One part-time security guard has been moved from Perkins to watch out for any unregistered gatherings in Crowell Quad. Loneta says the administration will do everything in its power to “protect the integrity of the quad.”
Although those six or so students seemed outraged at the cancellation of the football program, many students seemed relieved, attributing the poor turnout at the most recent Tailgate to some people having “to go meet their parents at the game or match or whatever.”
“We hope that the removal of football from the equation will encourage more students to go to Tailgate,” said Loneta. “Tailgate is relatively new, and it takes some time to grow a great Tailgate team. Many of the incoming freshmen are pretty fratty and can rage pretty hard, but it’s gonna be a few years before they just go freaking nuts at Tailgate. I mean, they’re not even greek yet.”
The decision to cancel the wildly popular athletic program was not Loneta’s alone, and he gained support from other top-level administrators such as President Rick Brodface and Executive Vice President Thallman Flask III. Loneta said that these administrators were “totally, 100 percent in favor of eliminating that dumbass sport.”
Flask added that if Duke is really trying to copy the Ivy League, it shouldn’t even try to have a good football team in the first place.
“I mean, it’s sort of a ‘pubby’ thing to have a good football team anyway,” said Flask, referring to the fact that public state schools generally have good football programs while elite private universities do not. “Just look at my name... Thallman Flask III. With a name like that you just know I went to like freaking Harvard or some s—. I’m not tryna make Duke look like some public school.”
According to other administrators, Dean of Students Sue Wuzahick has been keen on canceling the football program for years now.
“That pathetic performance on Saturday really gave us the perfect excuse,” said Wuzahick. “I mean they just looked like complete jabronies out there. I would have rather watched a preteen vomit into a Porta Potty. But on the bright side, Mary and Rick and I can just go freakin’ crazy at Tailgate from now on—shotgunning beers and all that.”
“Yeah, Brodface will go nuts when ‘Sweet Caroline’ comes on in the Blue Zone,” said Loneta. “You know we call him ‘Bro-face’ ever since he took the title of Pledge Master from Nan Bro-hane.”
There is no word yet on what Duke Football will look like next year, but administrators say it will mostly likely be in the style of the more traditional club teams, which generally do not pay their coaches $2 million salaries. The most important thing to note, however, is that no one really cares.
Gossip Bro assures that all characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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