State of the Program – Paging Fred Goldsmith

Today I read a particularly aggravating article from the Duke Chronicle. It put together the same, tired excuses we always hear from Cutcliffe apologists – “Did you know Duke used to be really bad?” To which I reply, “You mean like 1-5 bad?”

“Yeah, that’s what we used to be!”

My retort: “You mean our current record?” The response is typically silence followed by a blathering of excuses that emphasize past history over the current state of the program.

Basically, the argument put forth by folks like The Chronicle is what we’re seeing now is more or less irrelevant. Given that most people are judged on current performance mixed in with how their work is trending over time (we all have down years), I’m unable to wrap my head around the idiocy of it.

But here’s what I want to point out about The Chronicle’s position. The author asserts that those of us who think that Cutcliffe needs to go are lacking perspective. Here’s the tweet:

I don’t dispute that Cutcliffe did a lot for Duke. I don’t dispute that he got the program out of the doldrums of the Franks and Roof era. I love the fact that he took us to several good bowl games and got us three bowl wins. That’s all amazing. But we can’t just look at 2012-2015. We have to look at the string of mediocrity that’s come since then. And we can’t ignore how bad the last two years have been. We need to have some actual perspective on this – and that includes the entirety of his time at Duke, not just a three year period that was really, really awesome.

In doing that, the best comparison I can come up with is Fred Goldsmith and his era at Duke. I remember those seasons well because those were when I started watching Duke pretty much every Saturday as a teen. Goldsmith came to town following four particularly bad seasons from Barry Wilson. Coach Wilson went 4-7, 4-6-1, 2-9 and then 3-8; that’s a stellar 13-30-1. Duke replaced Wilson with Goldsmith heading into the 1994 season. It started great – Duke went 8-4 and lost in the Hall of Fame bowl. After that, it was kind of ugly. The Blue Devils went 3-8, 0-11, 2-9 and then 4-7. Despite the good season in 1994, by 1998 Duke decided it had seen enough and brought in Carl Franks. Goldsmith wasn’t allowed to rest on his crowning achievement – more was expected.

Now, I will give you that one good season doesn’t match what Cutcliffe has done at Duke, but I will say that we’ve reached a decline similar to what we saw during Goldsmith’s tenure. Duke reached some real highs under Goldsmith, but never got back to the magic of that first season. In a similar fashion, from 2013-2015 we regularly contended in the Coastal. Since then? Not so much. We’ve declined, just like we did under Goldsmith. Since 2016, Duke has gone 4-8, 7-6, 8-5, 5-7 and is now 1-5. That’s (checks math) a sub-.500 record.

Just like we did with Goldsmith, it’s time to get a new head coach.

P.S. I won’t get into the internal inconsistency of saying that because Cutcliffe has more talent than Franks or Roof did, we should be more patient with him. Think about that – Franks and Roof had a talent excuse. What is Cutcliffe’s excuse?