Duke Football - A Charade

From The Charlotte News and Observer
Published: Oct 02, 2006 12:30 AM
Caulton Tudor, Staff Writer

Duke has every right to be as bad in football as it desires, just as it is free to retain coach Ted Roof for years to come.
But please, Duke, stop the football masquerade. Just stop it.

Stop pretending that football matters. It's transparent. It's also agonizing. It's like watching a trapped animal gnaw off a foot.

It's important to understand that unlike at most colleges, even those in the private sector, there's no motivation at Duke to become competitive in football. Other than the coaches and the players, no one even cares enough to press the issue.

During much of the past decade, Duke football has been alternately frustrating and depressing.

Now it's simply irrelevant. It might as well be a moon over Pluto.

Where football is concerned, Duke has become a place completely different from Northwestern, Stanford, Rice, Navy, Vanderbilt, Boston College and Wake Forest. Each of those schools has a desire, maybe a need, to stay within shouting distance of the football mainstream.

Duke could not care less, but it doesn't yet have the courage -- nor the intelligence -- to say so.

The program has become nothing more than an excuse to spend lots of money on facilities, scholarships, coaching salaries, support staff, travel, stadium upkeep and many other related areas. In college football, losing is an expensive ordeal, and that's especially the case at private schools.

The good news is Duke doesn't care about the steady financial drain. There's that much money in the endowment fund. Most schools try to raise donations by the millions. Duke rakes it in by the billions. The football program can be compared to owners of some professional sports franchises. It's an expensive hobby, but so what?

Through four games this season, Duke has scored one touchdown. Seven of 10 losses last season were by 25 or more points.

It's been proposed by some that the program should be dropped down to the NCAA's Division I-AA. If being more competitive becomes important, going I-AA makes some sense. At least it would be a reasonable refuge if Duke really wants to have a program.

Duke football, from 1930 through most of the 1960s, was good enough to beat any opponent in the country. But situations change. Attitudes change. Priorities change.

Since the late 1980s, the Blue Devils have been in full retreat on the field and in the offices of the program's management. It's all happened in the absence of strong objection on campus or off. Football just doesn't matter any longer, and there is nothing whatsoever wrong with that. But Duke, of all schools, should be smart enough to admit the obvious.