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Message: [QUOTE="BillSU, post: 2311501"] SU, Duke & unc Duke football is somewhat related to us in that it is still trying to put all the facilities, better players and most of all players and coaches attitudes together so that everyone expects to win. They are like us in the relationship of two sports to one school – they’re known better for their basketball program than football. But things have been changing at Duke just as we are trying to make positive change at SU. The following, if you have time to read, is similar in some ways to our situation. I really hope we can achieve what they have in terms of getting people on the same page with football and expecting great things to happen. With Dino at the helm I think it will happen. And, if Duke rolls into Chapel Hill and beats UNC with their out for the season or limping team of players per CuseLegacy’s article and newly revamped and NCAA examined academic program and blows them out it will be wonderful IMO. Duke had been a national power when the ACC began play in 1954, a status that evaporated within a decade, more or less coincident with the advent of two-platoon football. From 1963 through 1987, a quarter-century, the Blue Devils never won more than six games in a season. A brief flurry of 7- and 8-win seasons followed under Steve Spurrier and Fred Goldsmith. By 1996 a Goldsmith squad went 0-11, the first winless overall record by a league team since Maryland in 1967. The predictably painful parade of losses at Wallace Wade Stadium lost its charm. Some observers called for Duke to drop to a lower level of Division I football. When the school’s alumni magazine commissioned an article on the subject, Tom Butters, then the athletics director, had the story killed. The $22 million Yoh Football Center was built in 2002 on the heels of consecutive 0-11 seasons. Little else changed until David Cutcliffe, a Tennessee offensive coordinator, was hired as coach in 2008. Cutcliffe had done well (44-29) – but somehow not well enough – directing the program at Mississippi from 1998-2004. [B]Duke lately has spent handsomely on the sport, to visible effect. “If you want to play with the big boys, then you have to make a commitment,” says Grobe, whose Deacons surprisingly won an ACC title in 2006. “If you don’t make a commitment, it’s unfair to the players.” Kevin White, the Duke AD, is quick to acknowledge that, in contemporary college sports, investment in football is essential for a power-conference member. One notable result: a major revamp of 85-year-old Wade Stadium – including lowering the playing surface, removing the field-level running track and adding club seating – is scheduled following this season.[/B] “We’re fighting like hell,” White said. For a laggard like Duke, football is a rich area for generating additional revenue. Over the 17 years from 1991 through 2007, even with generous estimates the team attracted only 15 home crowds of 30,000 or more at its 33,941-seat stadium. During Cutcliffe’s first six seasons the Devils matched that total. “I think culture is an interesting thing. I’m serious about what I just said, but I’m smiling. Take the smile off of it, and say what had to be done was (to inculcate) a collective group of habits. That’s what culture is. Everybody doesn’t have to look alike to be a part of a culture. They act alike. And so our collective habits had to go from being in some areas poor, in some areas average, and in a very few of them exceptional (We’re) trying to build exceptional habits, and that’s still a work in progress. We’re not where we want to be.” Needing a win to become bowl eligible for the first time since 1994, Duke largely controlled the game. But late in the fourth quarter, in a twist familiar to longtime connoisseurs of Blue Devils football, UNC running back Gio Bernard picked up a fumble and took it in for the go-ahead touchdown. Only instead of folding, Duke responded with an 87-yard scoring drive, capped by wide receiver Jamison Crowder’s catch in the end zone as he was hit by two defenders. That finish was a stunning break with precedent. “Most definitely it’s a shift,” says Crowder, an All-ACC senior from Monroe. “I’ve heard that from a lot of people, the point of Duke being right on the edge of success and just pretty much not being able to capitalize. I think the attitude now is definitely changed.[B] We go out to compete with anybody and expect to win.”[/B] Last season’s 10-4 record and Coastal Division title, securing a school-best second consecutive bowl appearance, made the point emphatically. This year, facing an easy schedule and returning 17 starters, the Blue Devils again are talking championships, including a bowl win that would be the school’s first since January 1961. Unfortunately, long before Duke beat Elon 52-13 in Saturday’s opener, All-ACC linebacker Kelby Brown and third team All-ACC tight end Braxton Deaver were lost for the season with injuries. That sort of ill fortune sank many a Duke squad in the past, which makes this year a true test of how far the newly competitive program has come. [/QUOTE]

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