Interview – Carlos Wray Talks Bowl Games

For those of you who haven’t listened to our first interview with Carlos Wray, what’s wrong with you? Listen to it. Now. We’re on Spotify, Google Podcasts and Anchor. Get with the program!

Carlos Wray 2013 Pictures, Photos & Images - Lonny
Carlos Wray gets excited as Duke beats Wake.

Not long after that interview, Carlos expressed interest in coming back to talk about the 2012-2015 bowl games. All four of them. And when you get a chance to talk Duke bowls, you say “Yes!” It took some time to get through them all, the run time is close to two hours, but it’s well worth it. We learn a lot about some big games and big plays that culminated in a win over Indiana in the Pinstripe Bowl in 2015.

2016 University of Louisville college football preview: Duke Blue Devils -  Card Chronicle
A great win. And, fun fact, if you watch the replay on YouTube, you’ll see a moment on the sidelines where Sirk, Jones and Harris are all on screen.

In addition to the bowl games, we get into each of the four seasons and cover some big wins including one from 2012.

Blue Devil Nation: Blue Devils' win was years in the making
Duke Rallies for 33-30 Win Over North Carolina - Duke University
Ring the Victory Bell!

I can’t say thank you enough to Carlos for being willing to come on and do another interview. (And fingers crossed, a third one may be coming this summer.)

Listen here.

Interview – Todd DeLamielleure

FIRST – apologies for calling Coach Franks’ offense the AirRaid and not the Airborne. My bad. I will correct this in the next interview. SECOND – the Twitter handle is DukeFBCoverage, not DukeFootballCoverage. I’ll correct that next time, too. Now, onto the interview …

We stay in the 1990s and the Goldsmith-Franks era this week. Todd DeLamielleure was kind enough to take some time out of his day to talk about his time as a firefighter, his Hall of Fame father, his time at Duke, his professional career and his current work with HOF Solutions, LLC and Tip Of The Spear Football.

Todd DeLamielleure (todddelamielleurehofstra) on Myspace
Todd playing linebacker at Duke – he’s probably about to obliterate some poor guy on the other team.

For those of you who don’t remember, Todd was one heck of a linebacker for the Blue Devils. Along with Ryan Stallmeyer, Todd was part of a hard-nosed and hard-hitting defense. He was fun to watch and left it all on the field. In regard to our discussion of the historic Charleston Sofa Super Store fire which caused the tragic loss of 9 firefighters, you can learn more about this fire and its aftermath (as we get into some of the particulars from the post-fire investigation) here and here.

Listen here.

An Interview with Ben Erdeljac

For the younger fans out there who don’t remember, Ben Erdeljac was a WR at Duke during the end of the Goldsmith era and the start of the Franks era. I enjoyed watching him play at that time and am thrilled to have gotten an opportunity to talk with this former player. We discuss football, coaching, family and how Duke football changed from the 1990s to today. This was a great talk. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did! Listen here.

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Ben at Duke.
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Ben more recently.

Interview – The GOAT of Duke kickers!

All hands on deck for our interview with Duke kicker Ross Martin! Certainly the greatest Duke kicker I remember and the standard by which all future kickers will be judged, Ross was kind enough to sit down and talk about kicking, Duke football, his time in the NFL, what he’s doing now and a couple of big games from 2015. This was a fun talk with a Duke legend.

Former Duke kicker Ross Martin deserves to be on an NFL roster
Notice the awesome uniforms?

Listen to the interview here. Go Duke!

Interview – DukeGang Commit Mandela Tobin

Late yesterday evening (thanks a lot, time zone differentials!), we had a great chat with Mandela Tobin.

Mandela TobinπŸ‡³πŸ‡¬ WeMatter (@MandelaTobin) | Twitter

Mandela is a young man from San Diego with some big plans for himself and for the Blue Devils. During our chat, we talked about going from San Diego to Durham, the recruiting process, what made him commit to Duke, as well as Mandela’s Nigerian heritage. And, since we were talking about Nigerians who have played football, Christian Okoye’s name came up (I may have mentioned Tecmo Bowl). This was a fun talk with an impressive young man.

The Legend of 'Tecmo Super Bowl' - The Ringer

Listen to the interview here. Go Duke!

2020 Concludes – Thanks to Everyone

With 2020 coming to an end, I’d like to take a moment to say thanks to the folks involved in making this such a good season (from the perspective of my blog as opposed to the team’s win-loss record). First, I’d like to thank the readers and the folks who follow me on Twitter. We appreciate you being involved. Second, I’d like to thank the other folks who provide great Duke Football coverage, primarily Duke Maven and the guys from Section 17. I really enjoy the Section 17 podcast and you will too if you haven’t listened to it yet. They teased some off-season podcasts and I hope they follow through on it.

Third and final, I would like to thank the guests who came on and agreed to do interviews. Big thanks to Charlie Gelman, Carlos Wray and Lee Rodio. I’d also like to thank the other folks who have agreed to do interviews that we will get to in 2021. I’m not naming names yet, but I think you will enjoy them when we get to them. I hope we can get some more people associated with the program to come on. I’ve enjoyed the interview format much more than writing articles. You can listen to all our interviews here.

Happy New Year and Go Duke!

Interview – A Wide-Ranging Talk with Lee Rodio

We hope you enjoy an interview with Lee Rodio, a former Duke Football walk-on. During our talk, we cover Lee’s musical interests, the intersection of politics and sports, church, his future plans and the legal profession. Turns out Lee is in law school and that became a significant portion of our discussion. And because Lee was at the Duke-Miami game in 2015 as a high school student, we talked about that. Again. Thanks to Lee for his time and for his contribution to the program. We hope you enjoy.

Lee Rodio, Duke football walk-on, lending voice in Durham ...
Lee Rodio sang the National Anthem at Cameron.

You can listen to the interview here on Anchor.

Interview – An Outstanding Discussion with Carlos Wray

We hope you enjoy a long talk about Duke football with Blue Devil Alum Carlos Wray! Wray was part of a special class that went to four bowl games from 2012-2015 which culminated in a Pinstripe Bowl victory over Indiana in 2015. We discuss how he got to Duke, his time as a Blue Devil, the current state of the program and the 2015 Miami game. Consider this a warning if you’re not emotionally ready for that last part of it.

Top 10 most important Duke football players: No. 6 Carlos Wray | Raleigh  News & Observer
Get ready to hear about Carlos Wray’s favorite Duke moment.

Listen to the interview here on Anchor.

Interview – Analytics Expert Charlie Gelman

In what is a first for Bull City Coordinators, Charlie Gelman, analytics guru for Duke Football and Wrestling, joins Ben for an interview about his work, his background and, of course, football. Big thanks to Charlie for agreeing to participate in the interview. If you want to learn more about Charlie and what he does, listen to this podcast interview. You can also follow him on Twitter. Thanks, Charlie, for doing this, and Go Duke!

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Look what we found on Twitter!

Listen to the interview here.