With Duke’s win over Miami on Saturday they put themselves in the driver's seat to win the Atlantic Coast Conference Coastal division and meet Florida State in the championship game. Miami, Virginia Tech, Virginia and North Carolina are just a number of well-established football programs that will fall behind Duke in the standings if they can win out.
David Cutcliffe is credited with turning the program around. The 2012 ACC coach of the year got his first head coaching gig with Ole Miss in the late 90’s and went on to have six winning seasons and four bowl wins. The 59-year-old plied his trade at Tennessee before the Rebels for 16 years as tight end and quarterback coach as well as offensive coordinator where he groomed both Peyton and Eli Manning.
The man from Birmingham, Alabama was hired in 2008 and made an immediate impact by winning four games in his first season and five in his second. Not much of a turnaround I hear say, well let me put it this way. Between 2002 and 2007 the program won ten and lost 60 with previous head coach Ted Roof leaving with a record of 6-45. The early numbers for Cutcliffe were not huge compared to colleges around them, but in the grand scheme of things they were monstrous.
The Blue Devils won six games over the next two seasons which came as a disappointment. However, Cutcliffe was now able to recruit some serious talent and instil his beliefs and philosophies upon them. For example, running back Jela Duncan – now a sophomore – chose Duke over South Carolina and Purdue. Granted Duke would not have been his first choice, but in years before Cutcliffe, Duke would have been a last resort and not his second option.
The same goes for fellow running back Josh Snead who had offers on the table from Georgia Tech and Vanderbilt. Both players are averaging over five yards per carry through ten games this year. Wide receiver Jamison Crowder is also a fine example. The junior had 76 catches for over a thousand yards as a sophomore and is on course to do the same again as a junior.
But what’s special about Crowder is he elected to attend Duke over North Carolina – the very city in which Duke are based. The 2013 recruiting class included Shaquille Powell, a four-star running back from Nevada. You will have to go a long way back to find the last four-star recruit to attend the school in Durham, North Carolina.
In 2012, Duke became bowl eligible for the first time since 1994 and 2013 could see them ranked at the end of the season for the first time since 1962 – an amazing turnaround for the program once labelled the worst in major conference football.
This school made famous by its basketball prowess – over 2,000 wins and four NCAA championships – will see football come to the forefront if Cutcliffe continues along the same path he is already walking.