Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
I'll also point out (I think I may have already) that this is something we're going to have to deal with sooner rather than later anyway, unless people think Cut is going to continue to coach (effectively) until he is 80. If we're that defeatist about finding a new coach, whether it is in a year, 3 years, or 5 years, we might as well just shut the program down now and save ourselves a bunch of trouble.
I don't think that "who will replace Cut" is "the worst argument" against ending his tenure.
Let's be (Carl) Frank. Duke head football coach is a crappy job at best. Little to no university support. Terrible home crowds. A handful of teams in conference that tend to rule the roost. Difficult academic restrictions (compared to some schools).
You want to add to that list "ran out of town the first coach to win a bowl game in 60 years?"
You have to ask who the heck would want the job. If we run off the architect of the best run we've had in half a century, we deserve whatever comes next.
I could argue with it. (And will.)
Mtn Devil's premise is that Duke runs Cut out of town, yet the title of this thread is not "Let's fire Cut", it's simply asking if it is time for him to retire. (That answer is no.)
The difference between leaving on your own terms and being "run out of town" is huge. Cut is not being run off.
Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."
His other points are outdated, by a decade. I'm responding to the most recent and worthy one. (PS, I will always be proud of the difficult academic restrictions...that one is timeless and worthy and we've been proven successful with them in place. It does not add to Duke HC being a "crappy job at best")
Last edited by CameronBornAndBred; 11-21-2019 at 06:16 PM.
Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."
As a reasonable point of comparison Stanford has 32 players in the NFL and Duke has 9, many from the 2013 era. Of the Duke 9 less than half are starters.
Cut has narrowed the comparison with Stanford by miles and I pinch myself that Duke isn't where they were not too long ago.
To be blunt why can't Duke get players as good as Stanford? Seems to me this is a first stop in evaluating a program. Assistant coaches come and go (hopefully) and so do players. The top teams have a half dozen stars with the rest having a high floor. Not that we need to be the top but like Stanford the Top 20 doesn't have to be an unreasonable expectation.
Don't know of inherent reasons why can't Duke be the Stanford of the East except that it's an hour and a half farther from the beach.
Here are a few:
1. Less competition geographically. Simply not as many schools in the West as in the East (number overall and number of high academic schools).
2. The weather. While is was freezing across the country last week, it was in the 70's here. It's never that hot, never that cold. It only rains in winter.
3. Stanford has a better overall athletic reputation than Duke (or any most other schools in general). Stanford has won 123 NCAA team national championships, the most of any NCAA D1 school. Stanford has won them in 20 different sports.
3a. Which means that Stanford spends more money on athletics.
4. Silicon Valley is a huge draw for the STEM athlete thinking beyond a professional athletic career.
For the record, being out here, I'm not a Stanford fan.
9F
I will never talk about That Game. GTHC.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
And I believe I have read that assistant coaches are paid very well. Part of this is out of necessity for them to be able to live in the very expensive area around Stanford - you don't want assistant coaches who are working ridiculous hours to have to commute an hour each way. But they are also paid well to help attract and retain good assistants. I believe Duke has made major strides in this area but likely is still behind its peers.
Tired, outdated arguments about "running off" Cutcliffe.
First, no one is going to do so.
Second, in response to the notion of "who would want the job," LOTS of people would want the job.
As others have pointed out before, in the pre Cut days, Duke had crap facilities and paid crap salaries, and had a crap football budget. Guys like Franks were paid something like $500k, laughably low.
Then the administration finally saw the light, decided to pay competitive salaries (which they currently do, Cut is generally around the median salary of ACC coaches now, getting something like $2.6 million, the median being around $3 million.)
Facilities got upgraded to reasonable levels, e.g. indoor practice facility (not everyone has one), WW construction, etc.
Getting crowds to WW may always be a challenge, for all the reasons we've talked about for weeks...but WHEN the time comes to replace Cutcliffe (which I imagine will be when HE wants to retire) there will be plenty of (for example) MAC level coaches applying for the position.
Agree that no one is going to run off Coach Cutcliffe, not should they (in my opinion).
As to the second point, yes, lots of people would want the job, but would Duke want any of those interested coaches? That’s the issue Mtn. Devil was getting at: What level of coach could Duke reasonably be expected to get? I have zero idea of the answer.
Some have mentioned the fact that Duke used to be bad in hoops too....and it's normally mentioned in context of being an apt analogy to our football program. It is not, for a lot of reasons...some Duke specific, some inherent....here's a few:
Much easier for small school to build a hoops program than it is to build football...IOW, the advantages of a large school are minimized in basketball but magnified in football. (there are about 10 factors baked into this one answer).
Cameron had potential as a great home court -- for atmosphere -- Wade IMO does not. Cameron is right sized for Duke, Wade is not.
When Bill Foster had his nice run and then K started building the program...the glory days of Vic Bubas were not that far in the past. There was something to build on, and that was one of the things K realized and has commented on. Duke's football glory years are now a minimum of 60 years in the past...
"The Class that Saved Coach K" - or whatever that special is called, about the class of 86...represented four players. You can't turn around a FB program with four players.