MVN - Most Valuable Network

The Blue Devils have a new head coach

They can finally breathe easier in Durham since they have found the man who will replace Ted Roof as the head coach of the Duke football team. The Blue Devils have grabbed David Cutcliffe, an offensive coordinator from an SEC school (Tennessee) that has done his job well both for the Vols and prior to that Ole Miss, where he was head coach. However, at Duke Cutcliffe will have his work cut out for him since the talent level is pretty low and the recruiting war pretty high.

Two things come to mind with this hire. First, will Cutcliffe have enough energy for the job? This isn’t a stop in and work on the playbook type of job he’s taking. It’s a sit down and try to fix something that’s been broken since Steve Spurrrier left type of job. That takes us back to a long time ago and many winless seasons, a 10 loss season, well you get the picture. I’m not sure that Cutcliffe is the right man for the job, but only time will tell.

On the other hand, he was able to win at Ole Miss and he was doing a good job of helping the Volueenters win in the SEC. That has to count for something, doesn’t it? My gut feeling is that Cutcliffe took this job as a stepping stone back to being a head coach in a big time program. I don’t think he or the school will be happy with the results of the hire and it won’t last past three seasons, with double digit losses vs wins in all three.

Duke, in my humble and non professional opinion, is one of those schools that needs to stop thinking about big time names or whatever else most colleges think of when they hire a head coach and instead go find a Division III man who is looking to break into Division I. Or even a young coordinator that’s looking for his first shot. In other words, they need someone that’s going to do anything and everything to win because they have never tasted the fruit that is winning. All of these coaches that come and go are people that know what it means to win and they also know that down the street or in the next state there’s a college they can win at without doing as much work as they have to do at Duke.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 15th, 2007 at 1:58 pm and is filed under ACC, Duke. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.