Not-So-Grand Duke

Reggie Love is not a loser.

But on fall Saturdays, he lives the life of one.

Love is a Duke football player.

The Blue Devils, 0-11 last season, are 0-10 with only a game at Clemson on Saturday between them and a second consecutive winless season.

Love, a sophomore receiver, hasn’t won a game since he arrived.

His might be the most bizarre double life in sports.

He also is a Duke basketball player.

Last April, he celebrated a national championship.

“My professors, they think I’m crazy,” said Love, who arrived at Duke on a football scholarship, then walked on to the basketball team, which means he’s shuttling to one practice or another most of the year. (He’ll join the basketball team as soon as football season ends.) “I love both sports the same, no matter what notoriety I get.”

At Duke, the glamour belongs to the players in shorts.

When the Blue Devils play in 9,314-seat Cameron Indoor Stadium, every spot is taken. The Cameron Crazies chant witticisms or wear blue wigs and face paint, even a gorilla suit.

The gorilla has never been to a football game.

At Wallace Wade Stadium, a graceful horseshoe that holds about 34,000, crowds have dwindled to 10,000 or fewer some games, and it’s not unusual to find an empty front-row seat near midfield.

“The basketball players are godlike,” said linebacker Ryan Fowler, a sophomore. “They’re like celebrities. If you see a basketball player, you point them out. If you see a football player, that’s not anything. And that’s fine. They deserve it. And we don’t yet.”

The day Duke played Vanderbilt, in one of the best chances of the season for a Blue Devil victory, several fans wandered the stadium concourse, oblivious to the football game.

The soon-to-be top-ranked basketball team had an intrasquad scrimmage in two hours.

“I need Blue-White tix,” a hand-lettered sign said.

“I Need B-Ball tickets,” read another.

On the field below, late turnovers made for a 42-28 loss.

Sitting in the first few rows not far from the band, basketball players Mike Dunleavy, Chris Duhon and Casey Sanders looked on, cheering when Love caught a pass near their sideline.

“You can’t help but feel bad for them,” Sanders said. “They’re working hard every day, just like us. It’s not for lack of effort.”

In the small campus community, the players encounter each other often. Some share classes.

“It’s hard,” Dunleavy said. “You want to say something to them. You want to say, ‘Good effort.’ But at the same time, you don’t want to say the wrong thing, so maybe you just ask about school.”

Duke is not unique in Division I athletics. But it is extraordinary.

With a mere 6,200 undergraduates, a typical SAT score in the neighborhood of 1,400 and tuition and living expenses exceeding $34,000 a year, it is more remarkable that Duke has built the country’s top basketball program than it is that it isn’t competitive in football.

But if Stanford and Northwestern can play in Rose Bowls and reach football’s top 25, why can’t Duke do better than 0-11?

“Northwestern, that’s why I never give up,” said Mike Hart, an all-conference tight end who will sit out the final game of his senior season after undergoing ankle surgery. “They had the longest losing streak in the history of the NCAA. Look at them now, winning in the Big Ten, [sometimes] in the top 25, and they went to the Rose Bowl.”

How far behind is Duke? The Blue Devils and Wildcats played in September, and Northwestern won, 44-7.

Why can’t Duke do better?

That is the question for Athletic Director Joe Alleva, himself a former All-American quarterback at Lehigh.

“I get asked all the time, ‘How can you be good in basketball and not be good in football?”’ said Alleva, who has made improving the football program a focal point. “They’re just so different. People don’t understand how different they are.”

Admissions standards are an obvious obstacle.

A basketball team needs only a few elite players--even if it seems Mike Krzyzewski gets most of the best talent in the country year after year.

A football team requires many more, especially to build a defense.

“There is a difference in numbers. For us, obviously, there have to be more,” said football Coach Carl Franks, a Duke graduate and protege of Steve Spurrier--who might have distinguished himself almost as much by the 20-13-1 record he managed at Duke in the late 1980s as he has by his phenomenal success at Florida.

Still, of all the banners in Duke’s football stadium--Duke played in the Rose, Sugar, Orange and Cotton bowls between 1939 and 1961 and in two lesser bowls since then--Duke is probably proudest of the one in the end zone:

“Highest Graduation Rate in Division I Football: 1981, 1984, 1987, 1990, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999.”

Ali Saphir, a senior from Denmark who grew up in England and is one of the few Cameron Crazies who also attends football games, points to it when the next loss seems inevitable.

“If you look at that placard over there, highest graduation rate in Division I football, that’s a national championship right there,” he said.

But Northwestern and Stanford maintain high graduation rates too.

And it isn’t as if Duke doesn’t make allowances for athletes.

Alleva said football players at the school have an average SAT of 1,100, and basketball players about 1,000.

The numbers suggest a willingness to bend.

“Our admissions director, his charge is to make sure everybody we bring here can graduate,” Franks said. “He looks at each guy ... and that means you need to look at more than a test score or a GPA. You need to get to know the young man a little bit. If you’re willing to go to class, willing to try, you can overcome a lot of things.

“I think our admissions director understands that. He’s very helpful. I think he understands we want guys who can help us win games. But I’m a graduate of here, and I don’t want to be the first coach to bring guys who can’t graduate.”

Alleva, studying the football issue, visited Northwestern and decided that upgrading the football support facilities was important, spearheading fund-raising for a lavish $20-million football building under construction near the stadium.

“Our football facility here is antiquated,” he said. “I really felt we needed to show a commitment to the sport of football that would hopefully impress 18-year-old kids.

“That’s what it’s really all about. You’ve got to have talent. I mean, Mike [Krzyzewski] is the best coach in the country, but he has tremendous talent. You’ve got to have good players to win.”

Whether a big, new football building with a state-of-the-art weight room and well-appointed coaches’ offices will help remains to be seen.

Cameron Indoor Stadium, after all, was not always considered a national treasure. That happened only after the small arena was refurbished--and Duke started winning.

“I think there was a time, back in the ‘70s, probably, when we weren’t very competitive and the building was empty, it was old,” Alleva said.

“Now it’s like Fenway Park or some of those old arenas. People come up here in buses in the summer and want to get out and just walk around. It’s like a museum.”

Wallace Wade Stadium has its own history. In 1942, Duke hosted the Rose Bowl when large gatherings were banned on the West Coast after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Today, the stadium is smallish but lovely, set among trees with leaves that turn in the fall.

But it is often empty.

A tiny student body doesn’t help.

“Lots go to the tailgates and just never make it to the game,” said Jeanne DeWitt, a sophomore from Atherton, Calif.

But even if every student attended, the stadium would be far from full. Nor does Duke--which traditionally attracts students from the Northeast and across the nation--have a huge following of alumni living nearby, as Stanford and Northwestern do.

“There are more University of North Carolina alumni in Durham County than there are Duke alumni in the whole state,” Alleva said.

“But it’s empty because we haven’t been winning. I came here in 1976, and we weren’t winning in basketball, and Cameron was empty. And I was here in ’89 in football when we won and we were selling standing-room-only tickets. It’s just a matter of winning and being competitive and people will come.”

Some people believe that instead of spending $20 million on a football building, some of the money would have been better used to get a $1-million-a-year coach and a $1-million staff of assistants.

Alleva shrugs.

“But if you did that--and found a coach like that who would come--the first thing a coach would want if he was being paid a million dollars, would be a new facility.”

Coaching might indeed be the crucial ingredient. Though they weren’t widely known beforehand, it’s easy to argue that Stanford’s Tyrone Willingham and Northwestern’s Gary Barnett, now at Colorado, were the reasons those programs improved.

Alleva hired Franks in 1998 after firing Fred Goldsmith, who managed an 8-4 record and a Hall of Fame Bowl appearance in his first season, then followed with four consecutive losing seasons, dropping to 0-11 in 1996.

Franks, a longtime assistant under Spurrier at Florida, is 3-29.

Once again, people hopefully mention Krzyzewski, who was 38-47 his first three seasons after arriving at Duke in 1981.

“I was here when Mike came,” Alleva said. “After three years, the fans wanted to get rid of him. I mean, it was unbelievable. Fortunately for everyone, Tom Butters [the former athletic director] saw that the program was going in the right direction, and he kept him, and obviously he was right.

“I’m not saying that Carl’s going to turn out to win national championships like Mike, but I see the program going in the right direction, and I’m going to give him every chance to be competitive.”

Krzyzewski is supportive and said he wants all Duke’s teams to do well, but he’s in no position to help.

“I really like Carl,” Krzyzewski said. “But I don’t know much about football.”

The football coach Duke forever compares others to is Spurrier, who was here from 1987-89--and the only one of the last eight Blue Devil coaches with a winning record.

Spurrier did it with a wide-open offense, naturally. As offensive coordinator in the early 1980s, he had a standout quarterback named Ben Bennett.

As coach, he had quarterback Anthony Dilweg, the Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year in 1988.

That leads to one philosophy in vogue at Duke: If a team has to play with limited talent, get good skill players and open it up.

“You’ve got to look at what’s realistic,” said Dilweg, now a sideline reporter for Duke radio broadcasts. “Over the last 25 years, Duke’s defense, historically, has rarely held offenses to less than 20 points a game.... We’ve got to put up 30, 35 points a game.”

Alleva agrees.

“I believe we have to outscore people,” he said. “If you look at Stanford and Northwestern, that’s what they pretty much do. When they win, they’re outscoring people. Their games are not 14-10. Their games are 42-40. I really believe that’s what we need to do.”

There are prospects.

Duke has a junior quarterback with some talent, D. Bryant, who passed for 400 yards against North Carolina State but struggles at times with interceptions.

Running back Chris Douglas, only a sophomore, is sixth in the nation in all-purpose yardage and had a career-high 169 yards rushing against Vanderbilt.

“I’m excited about these guys who are young,” Franks said. “And I think we’re going to have another good recruiting class this year. We’re playing 36 guys that are in their first or second year of college football. Quite honestly, it makes it that much more difficult to be successful on a consistent basis when you’re playing that many young guys.”

Those young players will mature. But as Duke’s losing streak drags on--at 22 games, it’s the country’s longest--Fowler, the sophomore linebacker, grows more concerned.

“I want to say I can see the improvement continuing, but I can see how losing season after losing season could really discourage players from making a commitment to come here,” he said.

Fowler, Hart and other players talk about how much they like Duke, the tremendous value of the education--and how painful losing is.

“I’d break my leg for a win,” Hart told reporters after the loss to N.C. State. “I haven’t won in such a long time--it’s been two years--and I think a broken leg’s worth a win right now.”

Now he is out because of an ankle injury, and he still waits for a victory.

But a winning season ... how long might it take? And sustained excellence? Duke hasn’t had three consecutive winning seasons since the 1960s.

Dare anyone ask if Duke football could ever become the equivalent of Duke basketball?

“From where we are right now, to talk about a national championship is crazy,” Alleva said. “We have to put together seasons where we win four, five, six games, do that consistently for four or five years. Then maybe we can talk about winning seven games. Then maybe we can talk about winning eight games.... In other words, we’ve got to walk before we can run. We have to crawl before we can walk.”

John-Paul Kimbrough, a freshman defensive back, paused and thought about the images from Cameron Indoor Stadium, the students with their witticisms, the painted faces.

“Hopefully we’ll turn it around,” he said. “And then we might have some Wallace Wade Wackies.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Extreme Sports

Comparing Duke’s record in basketball and football since 1990. The basketball team started the 2001-2002 season 5-0:

*--*

YEAR BKB FB 1989-90 29-9 4-7 1990-91 32-7 4-6-1 1991-92 34-2 2-9 1992-93 24-8 3-8 1993-94 28-6 8-4 1994-95 13-18 3-8 1995-96 18-13 0-11 1996-97 24-9 2-9 1997-98 32-4 4-7 1998-99 37-2 3-8 1999-2000 29-5 0-11 2000-01 35-4 0-10

*--*