They Have Blue Devil of a Time Getting Win

Woe is Duke.

After consecutive 0-11 seasons, the Blue Devil football team has lost 23 games in a row all told.

Senior linebacker Jamyon Small is the only player on the team who has won a game wearing a Duke uniform.

And in the midst of trying to upgrade the program with a new $20-million football center and admissions standards that allow some of the leeway the basketball program enjoys, Duke lost starting quarterback D. Bryant to academic trouble last summer.

Sure, the 12 games ahead might hold the victory that ends the streak.

“I think I’ll be caught somewhere between a hysterical laugh and a cry,” linebacker Ryan Fowler said.

More Duke: A Sept. 28 game against Navy looms as the best opportunity for the Blue Devils to avoid breaking Northwestern’s record of 34 consecutive losses.

First things first: Coach Carl Franks, preparing for Saturday’s opener against East Carolina, delayed announcing which of two sophomores will start at quarterback.

“I have decided, but I’m not saying,” Franks said. “I don’t think there’s any need to go and make it any easier for East Carolina. They’ve got it easy enough as it is.”

Trivia time: When was the last time UCLA or USC went winless in football?

Appearing on Aisle 3: Ralph Friedgen, Maryland’s portly football coach, will be seen in frozen food aisles in ads for Healthy Choice dinners and ice cream as part of a marketing arrangement between the school and ConAgra Foods, the Washington Post reports.

One part of the deal calls for Friedgen to receive $18,000 toward the renovation of Maryland’s football team house--but only if he loses 100 pounds.

At 312 pounds, Friedgen already has lost 43.

Not offended: Thousands of Tennessee fans were upset by an ESPN promotion depicting Volunteer fans as pig-chasing bumpkins, prompting ESPN to apologize and pull the ad.

But senior offensive tackle Will Ofenheusle had no problem with it.

“I thought it was funny,” Ofenheusle told the Nashville Tennessean. “If anybody should be upset, it should be me. I’m from Tennessee, play here and grew up on a pig farm.”

Looking back: On this day in 1987, Ben Johnson of Canada set the world record in the 100 meters, bettering Calvin Smith’s four-year-old mark of 9.93 by 0.10 seconds in the World Track and Field Championships in Rome. Johnson later lost the record because of steroid use.

Trivia answer: UCLA was 0-5-3 in 1924. (USC was 0-1 in 1901.)

And finally: Playing international basketball for the U.S. team has become a lose-lose proposition for NBA players.

“Lose--an increasingly realistic possibility--and you will be ridiculed and labeled forever,” Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle writes. “Win, and you will be ignored, or at best unappreciated.”

Forward Antonio Davis put it best: “This is the heaviest jersey I’ve ever worn.”