Caulton Tudor penned quite an interesting piece on what is (more like what is NOT) Duke ‘Football’.
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.
Instead of starting by sending you to Tudor’s piece, we are going to send you to Dave Sez’s blog entry and comments that link the piece. (Click here)
I think Tudor’s missing an important aspect for why Duke and AD Joe Aleva don’t push harder for a better football program. It’s not because they have a huge endowment and don’t mind wasting money on football. Not at all. It’s that they simply don’t lose money. Take a look at a post I wrote back in May, 2005, looking at athletic department earnings from the 2003-04 school year. Duke made an amazing $21 million in profit that year, best in the ACC by $15 million! Why change anything? They don’t spend that much on football, but still reap in their share of the ACC’s television contracts, bowl earnings and now the ACC championship game. While their paltry attempts at winning on the field may look pathetic, to an accountant, Duke’s football team is a perfect business. But not trying, they pretty much can’t lose.
Dave Sez continues and offers the following thoughts (with which I respectfully disagree):
So what can be done? What should be done? The only thing that makes sense to me is for the rest of the ACC to step up and try to force Duke’s hand. Maybe set some sort of minimum standard that all ACC programs need to meet to stay as a full conference member. I don’t think it would be crazy to consider kicking Duke’s football team out of the conference, but keep the rest of their teams in. A better solution might be to penalize them for their failures. If they can’t compete with the rest of the conference, why should they get an equal slice of the pie? They aren’t going to bowls, they aren’t an attractive TV team and they certainly aren’t going to be playing the championship game anytime soon. Maybe if the ACC said you must average at least 2 1-AA wins per year over any 4 year period or you only get a half share in the conference. If you average under 1.5, you get a third. Less than one per year? One fourth and so on. At some point, it would no longer be financially advantage for Duke or any other program to slide by.
I ask – why do we care if Duke is more competitive in football? Seriously…
EVERY conference has at least one patsy, if not more than one. With the ACC’s new balance of power and the struggles of our North Carolina teams to attract enough talent to elevate their programs (see this link), then I don’t know why anyone should WANT Duke (or any other team in the ACC) to get better.
Duke has an excellent academic reputation. They serve the ACC extremely well across all fronts. Why not let them also serve us all well by providing easy wins for our football teams? Seriously. As if the ACC actually needs or desires more parity. Isn’t it already tough enough for the 7 or 8 teams in the middle to elevate themselves to the top of the conference? Why would we want to make the creation of another ACC/National power more difficult by pushing Duke to become more competitive?
Let’s let the Blue Devils manage their athletics program the way that they want to. From an enterprise-wide perspective, they serve the ACC very well.
