Duke fires head coach Ted Roof.
His record was 6-45, in four seasons.
Interestingly, the single key difference was....a kicker. Duke would have won at least six more games in the last two years if they could kick a freakin' field goal, or extra point.
Coach K, on Duke football, in the Sporting News:
"...Men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski -- widely considered the public face of the university -- to urge Duke's administration to act quickly, one way or another.
"Whatever happens ... let's make quick decisions," Krzyzewski said after his team's victory over Eastern Kentucky on Sunday. "You support Ted, let's give him an opportunity to grow and don't let this linger. Something's going to happen otherwise, then do that. But we need to do that. And then we need to develop an attitude that we can win here, which we can. Duke football can win.
"You have to start out believing you can win," he added. "Our goal, for any sport, Duke should not play a sport where our goal is to be competitive. We shouldn't field a team for that. We should field teams only where our goal is to win with class and dignity. If it's to be competitive, then we shouldn't fund that program. ... Duke should be competitive in everything. For a championship, not just to compete."
Um....look, I'm a UNC fan, so I'm biased. UNC should be able to field a football team that goes .500, and at least competes for a bowl berth. Not BCS, but something. I don't see how Duke can hope to do that. We have 5,800 undergrads. You need 80 football players to have a team. That's 1.4% of the entire student body, playing football.
12 comments:
Kornberg for head coach!
(he would charge less, and, well, wouldn't do much worse). More importantly, he could recruit Ph.D students in political science that could play football...it's all about expanding beyond that n of 5,800.
Tommy the Englishman!
Well....YES! That's always the solution. A bigger N.
Besides, Kornberg would know the players. He has had ALL of them in class, right?
Vanderbilt puts together a respectable team (at least better than Duke's) in a much better football conference, so I'm not sure it's size alone. Vandy may be more willing to let in marginal recruits than Duke, but maybe not given Gee's attitude towards Vandy's athletics programs.
I think with more dual-sport athletes Duke could be successful. After all, the best QB on campus plays for Coach K; if he put his money where his mouth was, Paulus would be playing football too.
I actually enjoyed going to Duke games when I was there... only college stadium I've been to that served funnel cakes. Superdome nachos are pretty good though; I'll probably go to the R&L Carriers Bowl just to have them again.
And what about Wake Forest, which I believe played in a BCS bowl game last year..........
Well, "fundy" you should mention that Wake Forest game last year.
Duke lost to Wake Forest 14-13 in 2006, after missing a field goal with six seconds left. The ball was on the ...(wait for it!) ELEVEN YARD LINE.
Duke kicks a 28 yard field goal, and they beat Wake Forest last year.
28 yards is actually within the range of most college kickers.
Hell, Fundman's SISTER can kick a 28 yard field goal. You might have to buy her a drink, but she could do it. She's a trooper.
Mungo,
What about 1950s Kornberg style football...you know where players play BOTH offense and defence? That cuts your N in half.
Of course, after playing for Duke, you'd have to convince the football players to wrestle professionally for a couple of years. This way, Duke football is not blamed for the need for double hip replacements when the players reach their endowed chair status at a major research university!
Tommy, the 3PM sunset watching Englishman.
There's a class of schools--Duke, Wake Forest, Vanderbilt, Northwestern--which all face this problem. (You can tell which they are when you hear the statement, "School X is the School Y of Conference A", e.g. "Northwestern is the Duke of the Big 'Ten'")
Unfortunately, over the last fifteen or twenty years the NCAA has moved in the direction of requiring schools to play in the same division for all sports. Thus the common-sense solution--running D2 or D3 football programs at schools which are too small to be competitive at D1--is taken off the table.
Grobe for President!
Duke could do what Georgetown did, and put its football team in I-AA. But I doubt the ACC would be happy to have to add a football-only school to the conference to keep the title game or expanding the other sports to 13 teams.
The more radical solution is to get Duke, Wake, Vandy, Rice, Tulane, and a few other schools (Furman? Davidson? Birmingham-Southern? William & Mary?) together into the "Spanish Moss" conference, e.g. the oft-proposed Southern Ivy League.
Hi Chris: do you remember sesame st.??
"three of these things belong together, three of these things are kind of the same, but one of these things just doesn't belong here, and now, it's time to play our game!"
8=)
That's why the "Southern Ivy" never really came about... schools down here are too snooty towards one another. :)
At least when the other Ivies look down on Brown and Cornell, they still let them be in the conference...
The Ivy League is slightly more complicated than that.
In the Daily Pennsylvanian, the term "Ivy League" is used throughout to indicate a distinct group of comparable schools. On almost any issue--academic, athletic, or otherwise--where a cross-school comparison might be done, the Ivy League is treated as the peer group.
The Crimson, in contrast, uses the term "Ivy League" in the exact same way the Daily Tar Heel uses the term "Atlantic Coast Conference". For example, "...the Crimson is the first team in Ivy League history to win seven games in seven straight years...".
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