Close, But No Cigar for Duke Football

You know how sometimes a family has two children, one a star child and one a well-intentioned doofus?  Even though the weaker kid lags behind his superior sibling in every walk of life, the family continues to support both children equally.  That being said, the standards of excellence differ for the two kids; while the parents expect perfection from their accomplished offspring, the well-meaning-but-struggling child gets rewarded for merely putting forth a solid effort.

Why is this hypothetical anecdote relevant, you ask?  This Saturday I went to a Duke football game at Wallace Wade Stadium in Durham, with Duke football of course being the incompetent sibling to Duke basketball's star child.  While Duke sports fans expect nothing but excellence from their hoops teams (both mens and womens), standards for football are quite different.  Duke fans came out in droves for the football team's opening game at home versus Richmond (the 33,000-seat stadium was virtually sold out), but they weren't expecting much from their squad.  Even though Richmond is an FBS opponent, the ACC's Blue Devils were just looking for a respectable showing against the Spiders.

Unfortunately, they didn't get it.  While Duke tried to put on an impressive, major college football-like performance on opening night, the team fell short on all levels.  On the field, the Blue Devils were sloppy and inconsistent, and actually ended up losing when their kicker missed an easy field goal in the closing minutes.  Off the field, Duke football couldn't really put things together, either.  The team tried to pump up the crowd by surprising them with new, all black uniforms - unfortunately, the new duds were much uglier than their traditional blue and white unis.  They also didn't match - check the picture to the right, and you'll see that different players had different fonts on the numbers on the backs of their shirts (compare the "1" in "41" with those in "11" . . .).  The football team tried to rise to the occassion with sharp new black uniforms, and while the effort was appreciated by the crowd, the results were poor.  

As a venue, Wallace Wade Stadium was adequate, but only because Duke football lacks a ton of regular fan support.  The stadium resembled a large high school facility, and the track that circles the football field adds an extremely amateur feel to the venue.  I'm also not a huge fan of the stadium's horseshoe shape; while there's no way the team could justify adding the other multiple-thousand seats that would accompany a full bowl, the empty area behind one of the endzones allowed any would-be noise to escape.  Not exactly a very intimidating place for visitors to play, and it showed as Richmond seemed to control the Blue Devils from the opening snap.

Wallace Wade Stadium was sufficient, but not what you'd hope for out of an ACC stadium.

Despite the poor results on and off the field, the fans supported their team throughout the game.  It seemed like everyone in attendance was a Duke basketball fan, just there to support their university and root on any effort the football team could muster.  No one was expecting much, just like parents don't expect much from their inferior kids.  Even though Duke football dropped their first contest to an inferior opponent, the fans in attendance seemed reasonably happy that their squad remembered to show up for the game.