I could almost believe his confidence if their great QB who just graduated was a RS-Soph or something but not now.

They won’t even play in a championship game.

First – they have no fan support. There is no home field advantage to playing at Wally Wade. If anything, their proximity to Virginia Tech makes it harder for them to win at home, because the stadium is 3/4 full of Hokies.

Second – their academics are even tougher than ours in terms of admissions. They simply can’t pull in the players other schools can.

Third – they don’t have the practice facilities to get better. Their weightroom, for example, is only 3,500 square feet – almost three times smaller than ours.

Fourth – they don’t have the money to get better. Their assistant coaches leave much to be desired. As stated above, the facilities are lacking. The school simply doesn’t make much money on football – either from boosters or ticket sales.

Fifth – there isn’t much local player interest in going to Duke. If you grew up in NC, you probably want to be a tarheel or wolfpack. Maybe even go out of state to VPI / Clemson / USC / Tennessee. Today’s current 18 year olds have been following football since around 2003-2005. Duke isn’t even on their radar.

Sixth – Duke rarely places people into the NFL. By my count they’ve got 5 in the NFL now. We’re going to place more than 5 in the NFL this year alone. They simply don’t have the facilities/coaches to turn a kid with talent into a pro.

Seventh – They are in the toughest division in the ACC right now – arguably the toughest division in the country.* You’ve got Miami, VT, and us – three top 15/20 teams in the same division. They probably need to beat 2/3 of those teams to win the conference, and I just don’t see that happening.

Eighth – Their fans don’t travel (because they don’t have any). Even if they wound up in the conference championship in Charlotte, it would be like an away game (particularly against Clemson).

Nine – It’s impossible to consistently win at Duke. The school doesn’t support the football program. There is a reason they’ve only been to two bowls (both irrelevant) since 1960. Yeah they won 5 games last year, but one of those was against NC Central and they even lost to Richmond. The FBS schools they beat combined for a 15-33 record and NC Central was 4-11 against much inferior competition.

Last – the ACC refs would find a way to screw them out of the championship if they were in it, just so our representative in the orange bowl wouldn’t be Duke.

*SEC west has Bama/LSU/Ole Miss or Auburn, Big 12 didn’t have three ranked teams in one division, although the Texas-Oklahoma combination is pretty tough there isn’t really a third great team.

If I remember right two years ago was the most controversial division in the history and it was the Big 12 South when 3 teams ranked in top 5
Big 12 South
Texas
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Texas Tech