The Chronicle

Issue date: 2/5/08 Section: Gothica
Last update: 3/14/08 at 6:41 PM EST

Media Credit: Chase Olivieri Football coach David Cutliffe

As sports fans, Duke students are a puzzling anomaly. They're hopelessly irrational yet somewhat sensible, traditional but still trendy, and, more than anything, just plain weird. They file into Cameron's wooden bleachers for men's matchups even Vegas won't touch and a small yearly slate of women's games. They pack Koskinen for the biennial men's soccer game against North Carolina and, especially now, for any chance to see Matt Danowski and Zack Greer on the same field. Hell, they even show up en masse to tennis matches. Strange? Sure, but that's not the most perplexing part.

Despite the Krzyzew's Chefs and T-Bone the Big Tennis Gorilla, Duke students-in general, at least-refuse to attend football games. And it's not like they refuse to wake up before noon. On the contrary, Dukies make the hajj to the Blue Zone four hours before game time for the bacchanalia of Busch Light and Don't Stop Believin' most reverently known as Tailgate. But for the football itself, for the college sport that draws larger crowds than any other, Duke students are, for the most part, conspicuously absent. Those with optimism flock to Wallace Wade for the season opener, and most leave before halftime, not to return for another year. By the end of yet another autumn, more students enter the stadium's gates for the fried Snickers than the football.

In 2006, Duke ranked 92nd in average game attendance-finishing behind the likes of Northern Illinois and Middle Tennessee State-and that number would have been lower had ACC powerhouses not flooded Wally Wade like a biblical swarm. But when Director of Athletics Joe Alleva fired former head coach Ted Roof Nov. 26, the school found itself with the opportunity to alter the fate of Duke Football-both on the field and in the stands.

On Dec. 14, when most students had already jetted home for winter break, Alleva hired former Ole Miss head coach and Tennessee offensive coordinator David Cutcliffe. In the long list of the program's potential saviors over the years-Towerview dubbed sophomore defensive lineman Vince Oghobaase "The Man to Save Duke Football" last year-Cutcliffe just might have the most claim to that title. And while the revolution begins with the product on the field, the off-the-field results may not be far behind.

"Let's face it: we've got to put a product on the field that they enjoy watching play, and I promise you they will," Cutcliffe says of his approach to solve Duke's attendance malaises. "What comes first, the egg or the chicken? We've got to have people in the stands to create a little atmosphere for the players; we've got to have the players create a product on the field that gets people in the stands…. This is their school. I want this to be the students' football team, and I think they'll enjoy the heck out of it."

Those are fighting words from a man with the charge of revitalizing-or is it resuscitating?-a team with a 2-33 record in its last three seasons. To put that in perspective, in his last two seasons as a coordinator, Cutcliffe was 19-8 with two bowl appearances. His career head-coaching record is 44-29. The man who developed Peyton and Eli Manning is not accustomed to losing, and especially has been not privy to the type of losing the Blue Devils have endured. Cutcliffe wasn't hired for his name. After all, Duke went after much bigger fish (Steve Spurrier, anyone?) before reeling him in. A splashy hire is one way to guarantee ticket sales. The other is hiring a coach with an impressive resumé, a solid football coach.

Cutcliffe certainly falls under the latter category. His mug plasters advertisements for Duke Football season tickets-what Cutcliffe calls "the best bargain in college football"-but his team and its prospects for success will ultimately drive attendance, especially among students. In 2006, Duke averaged 12,000 less fans than Wake Forest, the most comparable ACC institution. Ninety-second place, whether in football or attendance, is not a number that will satisfy Cutcliffe.

And you can bet a season-ticket package that he has a plan to catapult Duke up both lists.

"We're not just going to line up and play football," says Cutcliffe. "We're going to go and execute a plan. We've got smart guys, and we've got smart coaches, and we're going to go execute a plan and I think that will be fun for the Duke faithful to come see. Listen, we've got 34,000 seats. I know everybody knows where it is because I saw a picture of it full at the Rolling Stones concert. There's enough people around here who know where it is to fill it up, so we might as well fill it up."

Enough with the abstract talk, though. How exactly do you change a culture of losing? How does a team that was shut out by Division I-AA Richmond two years ago challenge for an ACC title? In three parts, to be precise.

• Recruiting. Roof could never answer the question of how to find enough blue-chip recruits both willing to play for a floundering program and able to meet Duke's stifling academic standards. Cutcliffe believes the University will sell itself to the right recruits-the "best and brightest," the ones that "get it." He calls his staff the best in America, and he believes his eclectic coaches will be able to dip into a pool of talented, intelligent high-schoolers interested in bringing the Blue Devils out of the ACC cellar.

Just a month after his hire, Cutcliffe made a small splash when Terrell Pryor, the nation's top unsigned quarterback, said he would visit Duke. "I don't plan on playing at Duke, but I just want to see coach Cutcliffe," Pryor told SI.com. Even if the Blue Devils don't sign Pryor, the fact that one of the country's top players would squeeze a trip to Durham in between visits to Gainesville and Ann Arbor shows Cutcliffe's pull in the recruiting world.

• Development of strength and conditioning. In his introductory press conference, Cutcliffe cited speed as one of the biggest obstacles to Duke's success, and specifically said that if a player can run, he would be considered for a spot on the team. He even issued an ultimatum that the team needed to lose 1,000 collective pounds by the start of next season.

Even though he has made his living throwing the ball and tutoring top-notch quarterbacks, Cutcliffe understands the importance of running, especially to the team that ranked last in the conference in rushing offense in 2007. "We obviously don't run as well as we would like," he says. "We want to be a faster team, and I can see that already, and I think that once we condition this team, we'll shed some pounds and we'll shed some body fat and those things, then your talent level in itself improves."

• A continuous upgrade of Duke's football facilities. The Yoh Center, completed in 2003, is a first-class practice facility and football headquarters, and now the attention turns to Wallace Wade, due for a much-needed face-lift. In the age of luxury boxes and obscenely large video monitors, the stadium, built in 1929, is a horseshoe pit of despair. Plans for renovations are already underway (a scaled-down model sits in the lobby of Cutcliffe's office), and an improved stadium could help entice potential recruits.

But Wally Wade could become a Cameron-esque mecca and it still won't fill if the team playing in it can't win. At the very least, the new-look Blue Devils will likely score more points. Cutcliffe, the owner of such an impressive offensive pedigree, will call plays from the sidelines and his run-to-set-up-the-pass approach will appease touchdown-happy fans.

And maybe that's all some students want: a couple of touchdowns, a competitive football game, a few wins every season-a reason to celebrate and turn a Tailgate buzz into something more.

But that's not good enough for Cutcliffe, and given Duke students' obsession for unrivaled excellence in almost every other sport, it's probably not good enough for Dukies, either.

"People like intensity and we will be fierce competitors," says Cutcliffe, who plans on mingling with students to convince them to come to games. "You know how people used to go watch the gladiators? That's pretty intense. When you get into that, I think about that movie and Russell Crowe. We're not going to go out there and try to kill anybody and certainly we're not going to ask anybody to give their life, but tell 'em out there that if they want to wear their armor to the game, that's fine. We're going to have some gladiators come out of that tunnel, and they will love, not like, the intensity of Duke Football. And I get excited just talking about it."

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