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Duke Football 2013 Discussion Thread

Holy shit. I knew it was coming, but still. I wonder if we cracked the top 20 in the BCS rankings?
 
Wow. I thought that if we ended 5-3, GT would win the division.

Moot, though, when Miami loses to UVA.
 
Selfishly hoping for a 6:00 or later start for Duke/UNC game to accommodate the Iron Bowl.
 
So I'm guessing strength of schedule is why we're not in the BCS top 25?
 
Former 4-star Duke commit Aramide Olaniyan is getting no snaps at UCLA as a redshirt junior. I don't think he'd even play for Duke.
 
BCS #24. Up to #24 in AP ranking, staying put also at #24 in Coaches' Poll.
 
Five 'sleeping giant' programs
November, 22, 2013
NOV 22
9:21
AM ET
By Ryan McGee | ESPN.com
RECOMMEND76TWEET11COMMENTS16EMAILPRINT
Todd Graham
Christian Petersen/Getty Images
Todd Graham and the Sun Devils have a lot of momentum going into 2014 and beyond.
No matter what happens to Baylor this weekend versus Oklahoma State (Saturday at 8 p.m. ET, ABC) and the rest of the season, is there a better story in college football in the past few seasons than the Bears?

For those of us of a certain age, we remember when games against the Bears were an opportunity for bigger programs to wipe off their shoes and get some walk-ons into a game before moving on to the next real opponent. There would be rare stretches when the Bears would crack the top 25 and make a bowl game, and there were certainly a handful of great players to come through, but Baylor’s place in the college football world was a foregone conclusion -- a weaker cousin to the bigger brand names in Texas and the Southwest.

Then came Art Briles, Robert Griffin III and wins over TCU and Oklahoma. That led to a Heisman, three consecutive bowl games for the first time in the program’s 115-year history and (surprise) enough cash flow to finally ditch dilapidated Floyd Casey Stadium for a new $260 million facility in 2014. Now the Bears are the BCS Cinderella story of the season, sitting 9-0 with a legitimate shot to play for the Vizio BCS National Championship.

“A turnaround like Baylor’s gives a lot of other programs hope,” Duke athletic director Kevin White said earlier this year. “It says that if the right people and the right focus are put into place, then you can create the kind of energy and enthusiasm needed to create a winning football program, no matter what your history in the sport might be.”

So who might be the next Baylor? Which “sleeping giant” program is quietly stepping into the on-deck circle with a chance to suddenly shock us all with a not-too-distant BCS run and sustained success? In order to find out, I talked to some of the people who make their living in the sport for their leading candidates.

Here's a look at five programs on the verge of making a Baylor-like leap to elite status.

Arizona State Sun Devils

Wait, I know what you’re thinking. “Dude, they’ve been to the Rose Bowl, so how much of a turnaround would this be, really?”

Yeah, I know, I was there. And that was at the end of the 1996 season. Bill Clinton was still president. Jake Plummer was the quarterback. In other words, it’s been a while. And though the Sun Devils are bowl-game regulars (they're eligible for what would make their 11th appearance since ’97), it’s been a long, non-illustrious line of largely Insight, Maaco, and Kraft Fight Hunger bowl appearances. According to the people I talked to, the potential is there for all of that to change -- and soon.

“ASU has always been one of the great head-scratchers of this business,” a Big 12 athletic director said. “The university is gigantic (59,000 undergraduates), the setting is gorgeous and their recruiting base extends well into Southern California, which is a gold mine.”

Yet the Sun Devils have won just two Pac-12 (then Pac-10) titles since joining the conference in 1978. They have long been middle-of-the-road when it comes to winning games and raising money, with athletic department revenue of just under $60 million in 2012. Now, finally, that might change.

“If you were at that Rose Bowl in ’97, then you saw what that fan base is capable of if they are given a reason to be excited,” a West Coast athletic director told me. (He was right. The RV army that rolled into town made the entirety of Pasadena, Calif., look like a maroon-and-gold-painted Daytona 500 infield.) “Now they have something to be excited about again.”

Multiple ADs pointed to a new willingness to spend money on facilities, an effort aided by the new stack of TV checks. But they also continually mentioned strength of conference.

“USC is having a good month, but they are about to undergo another transition and still have NCAA stuff to get out from under,” the West Coast AD continued. “Arizona and Colorado are a mess. That division could belong to either UCLA or Arizona State for the next decade. It’s up to them to see who steps up.”


Duke Blue Devils

Very quietly, the 2013 Tobacco Road version of the Baylor story has been happening in Durham, N.C., where the Blue Devils are 8-2 with victories over Virginia Tech and Miami (Fla.), have a chance to appear in the ACC championship, and already have clinched a second straight bowl berth for the first time in school history. Nearly every athletic administrator with whom I chatted this week was quick to point that there’s a long list of Baylor parallels to be found inside Wallace Wade Stadium. And that list starts with the stadium itself.

“What was it that Sports Illustrated said about Wallace Wade years ago?” one longtime ACC associate athletic director recalled. “I think it was 'The Most Beautiful Place to Watch Bad Football.' Well, the football’s not bad anymore. And they are also starting to spend some money on the place.”

Like Baylor, Duke is a relatively small school with deep church ties. Like Baylor, Duke has always accepted its place once football season begins -- which is, “we’ll endure this and wait for basketball.” But like Baylor, Duke snatched up a genuine genius of a football coach. David Cutcliffe, like Briles, is offense-minded and nearing the age of 60. Both men are widely respected among their peers, relish the role of underdog, and have won over alums and donors with dialect-infused yarns about Texas high school football, the Air Raid, Bear Bryant, Peyton Manning and beyond.

“Cut’s attitude is so much like Art’s in that they look at people who use a history of losing as an excuse like they are from another planet,” explained an SEC athletic administrator with ties to both schools. “Eventually, if they keep talking about winning and then they start actually winning, well, then everyone has to buy in. That extends to high school coaches. Both guys immediately attacked the recruiting trail. It changed the way they were perceived immediately.”

Just as important, neither coach seems to be looking to leave. Ever. Briles recently signed a 10-year extension, and Cutcliffe recently told me, “I’m too old to move again. I’m in this as long as they’ll have me.”


North Carolina Tar Heels

Just a few miles up the road from Wallace Wade Stadium is Duke's perennially confounding lighter-blue rival. The consensus among those whom I talked to is that if the Tar Heels ever got their act together, they could get on a decade-long run of top-shelf success. But that’s a gigantic if.

“North Carolina has always had the money, the willingness to build facilities and their pick of the litter in one of the country’s most underrated recruiting bases,” an SEC administrator said. “But the only coach they ever had who understood how to maximize all of that was Mack Brown. And even he realized he was on an island and got the hell out of there.”

Many believe that Larry Fedora is a guy who grasps all of that. The former Southern Miss coach has never lacked for enthusiasm and handled a tough NCAA-overshadowed inheritance as well as could be expected. Now, after starting the season 1-5, the Tar Heels have fought back to the edge of bowl eligibility. The trick going forward will be keeping Fedora around.

“He strikes you as a guy who is on the ladder,” the SEC administrator said. “That’s always going to be UNC’s problem. If they can ever get past that perception as a stopover, a rung, then they could get on a run that lasts for a long time.”


Kentucky Wildcats

Are you starting to see a pattern here? Basketball schools that have never been able to get long-term traction in football have long been a mystery to those who make their living running athletic departments. That’s why ADs spend so much time admittedly obsessed with dissecting those seemingly rare dual-threat schools such as Ohio State, Michigan State, Florida and most recently, Louisville.

“Most of the schools that have success in both -- I would throw Michigan in there, too -- are Midwestern schools,” one Big Ten administrator said. “And most of those schools are in Kentucky’s backyard. So that tells you that the potential is there, both in recruiting and in fan-base support, to make a turnaround. Now they would seem to have a coach who can spur that.”

That coach would be Mark Stoops, who has earned rave reviews for his fearlessness when hitting the war zone that is Midwestern recruiting. Kentucky is currently ranked 17th in the ESPNU class rankings (it’s been ranked as high as 11th), and in the words of one of our experts, “is having its best recruiting class, well, ever.”

“You know what he [Stoops] understands?” said a Big Ten AD, referring to an advantage that Michigan and Ohio State have leveraged for years. “He knows how to use Kentucky basketball as a recruiting advantage. Take those kids into Rupp Arena when it’s rocking and say, ‘This is what we want to do with football, too.’ Too many programs have infighting and jealousy among the two big programs. That’s so stupid.”

Unlike Duke and UNC, Kentucky has the disadvantage of trying to make its turnaround in the SEC, the nation’s toughest conference. However, the Wildcats would at least seem to be in the right division.

“I think you could add Vandy to this list, but their ceiling is much lower and I think James Franklin is gone soon,” an ACC AD said. “And I’m sure some people would want to bring up Ole Miss or Mississippi State, but there’s just no way they can be consistently great making a living in the SEC West.”


Minnesota Golden Gophers

Speaking of the Midwest, it doesn’t get much more Middle Earth than Golden Gopher country. They’ve also been one of the great stories of 2013, running out to an 8-2 record despite the part-time status of coach Jerry Kill due to ongoing health issues.

I was there in September 2006 for the TCF Bank Stadium groundbreaking ceremony, and I’ve never seen so many people look so relieved. Why? Because they were finally escaping the Metrodome. And in the minds of many, returning to campus gave them the best chance to finally start adding additions to a dusty collection of national and conference championship banners, the most recent of which read 1960 (Associated Press national title) and 1967 (Big Ten championship).

“I would say the same about Minnesota that I would about the ACC schools and even Baylor, and that’s that they are catching their conference at a good time to make big leaps,” an American Athletic Conference administrator told me. “And like Kentucky and Vanderbilt, I like my chances of making a turnaround in the Legends [Division] or whatever they’re calling it now. With the exception of Michigan State, most of the programs can’t seem to get it together. Just two years ago I would have had Northwestern at the top of this list. Now I’m not so sure.”
 
aiw said:
Did Clemson screw us out of Atlanta?
No. I think Clemson still goes Orange. Not enough diversity from at- large teams for OB to pick anyone else.
 
Schlabach and Edwards on ESPN.com calling a Duke/UCLA Sun Bowl. Same website, ACC blogger projecting Russell Athletic Bowl vs. American #2

Yahoo: Chick-Fil-A vs. Missouri
 

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