Counterpoint - the market for coaching is completely insane. I can't imagine who you bring in for less that a million today.
Edit; actually found a link to coach salaries from last year. Will Healy at Charlotte makes under a million. Not many P5 guys...
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
Sure, but the relevant question is what we could get for 2.6 million (or realistically more, one would assume if Cut got an extension that his pay would go up, it rarely goes the other way). Yes salaries have gone up, but $500k was chump change for an HC even then.
Yeah not sure how to interpret crowds these days. There are folks who have decided that watching from home is a much better experience - particularly when it is raining out. And folks have made their homes more comfortable for that during Covid. It will be interesting to see how the upper deck folks respond to the early games in CIS. But I quibble with your quibble to say this is the nadir. All that said- Cut is an older coach now and energy wanes. If Mack Brown loses a few more games- he will be looking very old as well because he is. Football is a weird sport- so dependent on depth and I don’t think Duke will ever have the quality depth it needs to sustain a 7-9 wins per season.
Indeed. No one (certainly not me) suggests we can get someone good on the cheap. We'll pay what the market requires. Do note that Clawson at Wake makes less than Cut. A common route for such hires is identifying up and comers from conferences like the MAC where maybe only one guys makes a million bucks...Clawson and Doeren at State came via the MAC route. The trick, of course, is identifying the "right" guy.
My point was more to the hopelessness now - than to blame Cut per se.
And I do recognize the connection and it's both cause and effect, which I think was your point, and a valid one. That said, WF is drawing well, and so now are historically poor attendance Temple and Cincinnati, teams that used to play in cavernous and always empty stadia. Yes, overall attendance is down and TV everywhere, Covid has changed habits, too, etc, and all of those dynamics are part of it. But Duke never enjoyed the massive rise up the attendance ladder for most of the last 30 years, and yet, Duke is suffering more than the average down slide now. They are on the wrong side of both curves.
And true, a lot of that is out of Cut's control. A lot out of Duke's control, period. But it all points to why I feel more hopeless now than I did before Cut came. All of this is magnified by Wally Wade...the way TV magnified the magic of Cameron, it now magnifies the death of Wally Wade. I think everyone, Coach K included, would list Cameron as among the biggest assets of Duke basketball. Your home facility is what largely sets the identity of a program, along with a long term coach, and perhaps a big rivalry that is nationally known.. K is now the biggest asset of Duke U, but before he was, he was wise enough to recognize the value of Cameron. Al McGuire and Dickie V were very helpful in all of this too of course, on national TV.
But Wade is the anti Cameron, and now it's seen six weeks a year...and I would imagine by every coach recruiting against Duke. Shoulda put a dome on it, cut the seating to 25K, kept the rain out and the noise in, and recruited only to wide open passing offense. AT least it'd be loud and fun.
At least Cutcliffe agrees with this point.
Link to his presser today."Until you're winning games that you can and should win, you're not doing your job as a head coach."
https://www.wralsportsfan.com/watch-...-win/19919999/
Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."
I disagree with your comments on the Wallace Wade Stadium renovation and I especially disagree with your suggestion quoted above. Running the ball is exciting football. Mataeo Durant is a special player and I’m glad to be able to witness his accomplishments this season.
As for the stadium, the first time I walked into it as a seven year old boy in 1966 it was not yet named for Coach Wade but it was a magical place in my eyes. It remains magical to me at age 62 and I’m thrilled the renovation did not change the basic look of the horseshoe.
Yes, I wish the crowds were bigger and the team more successful but all I can do is show up and cheer though I admit I might cuss every now and then.
Bob Green
I walked in as a freshman in 1967. Yes, we wore blazers. We had a male head cheerleader who stood on a platform with a microphone. As a kid from a small town in Kentucky, I loved the place. I love the improvements. Yes the seats and aisles are too small for today’s adults. The stadium is not the problem. The record of the team the last few years plus covid are the problems. Even James Bond couldn’t get huge numbers back in theaters. Eventually a good team will bring back the fans. If we could win eight or nine games some years the fans will come. On the other hand I’m not sure kids with perfect SAT’s will ever care about football.
To clarify, I should have said committed to a wide open offense minded program, one defined by high risk high reward and speed on offense. A program defined by the offensive side of the ball is what I meant. And yes, A Mateo Durant is very fun to watch and would be even more so in a more wide open offense.
I too am 62, and to clarify my comments on Wade, I've said multiple times it really looks nice. And I'll admit to liking the feel of the horseshoe. I think I know what you mean by magical. I do like that at a certain aesthetic level. The problem is, with demographics being what they are, the atmosphere is just death. Duke football would be better served by an ugly stadium that had some weather coverings for the fan, which would hold the sound in, and would look full with 20 thousand people. Cameron is very nice now, but as I remember, it was an ugly stinky little pit during the years it was becoming a world famous venue. My first visits were in the 70s...one in the 60s when I was tiny. (Rick Katherman, Randy Denton, versus Roche's Gamecocks I think). Then called DIS. But it served the small school with the small fan base perfectly.
Are you sure you weren't in Carmichael? Where did you spend your undergraduate years?
I was an undergraduate at Duke a bit before the point in time that you reference. I have never heard Indoor Stadium called a stinky little pit. I beg to differ, sir. It was Heaven on Earth while Vic Bubas shaped the program. Perhaps you mistook the players' sweat for the ambiance.
As for the football stadium, it's a family gathering place for my ancestors and me. There's so much more to it than bricks and mortar.
Cameron is definitely nicer now than the old days without air conditioning and with birds flying in the rafters but it was widely considered a gem of college basketball venues even back in the 70’s. Even before it’s first Nationally televised game which I attended after standing in a long line for multiple hours- Cameron was known as a great venue for watching college ball. For a time, CIS or the old DIS was the biggest venue south of the Palestra - which had the same architects .
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.inquirer.com/philly/sports/colleges/20130329_Cameron_Indoor_Stadium_rivaled_only_by_th e_Palestra.html%3foutputType=amp
Sports Illustrated once called Wade the best place in the country to watch bad football.
Back in the mid-1970s Billy Packer continually pushed the narrative that Cameron was an aging dump that would have to be replaced for Duke to have any chance of ever again being competitive in hoops.
Back to your regular programming.
I recall that article about Wade.*
Billy Packer said this even before he was denied entry to Cameron because he didn’t have his press pass?
*About the same time as this article, Playboy listed the Holiday Inn on Hillsboro road (now a Days Inn) as being in the top ten places in the USA to get crabs … not the eating kind.
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
If we're going down memory lane: After graduating from Duke, I took a job as the night auditor at that motel. I got the job because my predecessor quit after a young man robbed the place at night and accidentally fired his shotgun...some pellets knocked the toupee off my predecessor, the robber fled thinking he had killed the night cleark, as the clerk fainted, plop he goes... and the robber rolled his car over on the entrance ramp to I-89. To add Duke flavor, the young man was a Duke football recruit who never quite made it to campus.
Stewart Mandell in the Athletic had an interesting Duke comment when answering a question about whether OK St should give defensive coordinator whiz Jim Knowles a big raise and if they should be worried about him going elsewhere: https://theathletic.com/2901238/2021...six-bowl-game/
-Jason "2010-2017 were some very good years for Duke football... 2012-2018 is the best run for our football team since the 1960s. Would love love love to recapture some of that magic" EvansOf course, there’s always the possibility the 56-year-old will get a head-coaching opportunity. Knowles has had an unusual career path: He became the head coach of his alma mater Cornell at 38 and lasted six seasons, but has been an assistant since 2010. I have no sense what his marketability is, but there’s one obvious possibility: If Duke’s David Cutcliffe retires, Knowles, who was his defensive coordinator there from 2010-17, would be the obvious successor. Cutcliffe, 67, has given no indication that move is imminent, but it’s surely not lost on him that his program, which went 2-9 last year and will likely miss a bowl for the third consecutive season, is trending in the wrong direction.
If that comes to pass, Gundy would just have to wish Knowles well and move on. In the meantime, though, there are things he and the school can do to keep him happy.
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?