HTS 2019: Dook

There’s a chapel bell tower in the distance. Some might call that ironic, given the association of that particular word with a baby-blue wearing school a few miles down the road, but, in terms of skyline, it by all means dominates the horizon. The basketball stadium next door to the football field is little more than an unassuming brick box from the outside. In the middle ground, students scurry from dorms to academic buildings down the tree lined sidewalks. In a lot of senses, it’d be easy not to notice major collegiate football going on down the street.

Duke Blue Devils

Opponent Background:

• Conference: Atlantic Coast Conference (1953 - present)
• Location: Durham, North Carolina
• All-time Record: 513 - 524 - 31 (.495)
• Home Stadium: Wallace Wade Stadium (Capacity: 40,004)
• National Championships: N/A
• College Football Playoff Appearances: N/A
• New Year’s Six Bowl Games: 7 (Rose: 2 - 1939, 1942 Sugar: 1, 1945 Orange: 2, 1955, 1958 Cotton: 1, 1961 Peach: 1, 2013)
• Conference Championships: 17 — (Southern: 1933, 1935, 1936, 1938, 1939, 1941, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1952 ACC: 1953, 1954, 1955, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1989)
• Division Championships: 1 — 2013
• 2018 Season Record: 8 - 5 (3 - 5 ACC)

Past Results:

• Team Head-to-Head Record: 51-34-1 (.600)
• Recent Meetings:
  2015 - 34-20 Duke (Durham, NC)
  2016 - 38-35 Georgia Tech (Atlanta, GA)
  2017 - 43-20 Duke (Durham, NC)
  2018 - 28-14 Duke (Atlanta, GA)
• Coach Head-to-Head Record: 0-0-0 (N/A)
• Tech record in this week’s venue: 22-20-0 (.524)

For the 87th Year in a Row:

Duke traces its football history back further than the name Duke itself. First organized as the Trinity Blue and White in 1888, the squad played its first game against North Carolina that year. After a few years of disorganized competition, the Blue and White disbanded in 1895. They would not reappear until 1919, still known as the Trinity College Blue and White. Between then and the start of the 1924 season, both names changed and the team became known as the Duke University Blue Devils. They were an independent at this time, and were simply okay most years before joining the Southern Conference in 1928, despite a rip-roaring start in their first year back of 1919. The conference was growing rapidly, quickly becoming too unwieldy for the plethora of teams it supported. When the top programs left to form their own conference, the Southeastern Conference, Duke, like all of its Tobacco Row peers, was left in what was left of the SoCon.

Duke’s first real brush with destiny when, seemingly out of nowhere, they hired Wallace Wade from Alabama, who was already a titan of the game. He submitted his Alabama resignation in the spring, but demanded he coach one more season at Alabama before he left. Naturally, he won his third national championship at the helm of the Tide. Duke, being a private school, offered him more flexibility and fit more closely with his educational philosophy, or so he stated. Wade spent two decades in charge in Durham, amassing six Southern Conference championships and two trips to the Rose Bowl, one of which Duke hosted due to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Though he left for a few seasons to serve his country, the team kept rolling with Eddie Cameron as the interim head coach, who tacked on another three conference titles and a Sugar Bowl win over Alabama. Cameron was out of a job, but don’t cry for him, he became the athletic director and now has a basketball arena named after him. Yeah, that one. Wade never made it all the way to the peaks of glory with the Blue Devils, though, saving all of his national championships for the Crimson Tide.

Once Wade was out of the picture, Bill Murray took over as head coach, who won six of the first ten ACC football titles. This would be the last success Duke would see for quite some time as they wandered in the wilderness for more than two decades until they found a man called Steve Spurrier to lead them back to the promised land. If you’re uncertain who this is, simply ask the nearest fan of the schools in Athens or Knoxville. I’m sure you’ll get unbiased facts about his wonderful shenanigans. Or, if that’s not your speed, try Columbia and Gainesville. Immediately, visor sales were through the roof in the Research Triangle. Anyways, when he was hired, the Blue Devils were far and away the worst team in the conference. Within three years, he had led them to a slice of the 1989 ACC title and their first bowl appearance since the 1960 Cotton Bowl. Then the Head Ball Coach left for his alma mater, Florida. That share of the title is still the second most recent conference football championship amongst the four schools from the state of North Carolina.

The Blue Devils, without Spurrier, returned to being, for all intents and purposes, terrible. The nadir of this was probably hiring one particular Georgia Tech alum known for employing a “bend, don’t break” defense. His record in his four-plus seasons in Durham was a scalding 6-45. That man is Nate Woody’s predecessor at defensive coordinator here on the Flats. Oh joy. Anyways, after Ted Roof left, Duke hired their current coach, David Cutcliffe, who has brought about what can reasonably be described as Duke’s best stretch of football since John Kennedy was elected president. In the past decade, he has lead them to a division title and victories in both the Pinstripe and Quick Lane bowls over noted powerhouses Indiana and Northern Illinois. Oh, and they beat a Collins-less Temple last year. How dominating. He has a passion for running the triple option, or something like that.

As far as Tech football history goes, From the Rumble Seat has been taking a look at it since May 2018 over at Rearview Mirror. The short version is that Tech football began ignominiously in 1892. A game up in Athens in 1893, which Tech won, set the stage for one of the fiercest rivalries in the sport and also is one of the mythic origins of the Ramblin’ Wreck nickname. If that wasn’t enough, it’s also how Tech got its colors. Apparently gold is a color for cowards, if the residents of Athens are to be trusted. Tech was pitiful, to put it nicely, for quite some time until one man, Frank Turner, started an initiative to hire a bonafide legend as a football coach. That resulted in John Heisman. Heisman, innovator and champion, saw much success on the Flats until he dramatically left town as part of his divorce. The old man was replaced by William Alexander, who was known for his team’s strong academics and his own 1928 national championship.

Coach Alex was, in turn, replaced by his own protegé, Bobby Dodd. By the end of Dodd’s tenure, Tech had amassed three national championships, twelve conference championships, including five in the Southeastern Conference, which just mean more. What’s more, Dodd and Institute president Edwin Harrison had decided to go independent to make a stand not only for football principles, but its intrinsic academic ideals as well. Dodd and Tech would not sacrifice student-athlete education and well-being. The independent years were lean for Tech and did not result in the dream of a “Notre Dame of the South” status.

Eventually, Tech joined the Atlantic Coast Conference. By the end of the decade, coach Bobby Ross brought the Jackets from the utter depths of football irrelevance to win a national championship, Tech’s fourth. It is hard to overstate just how terrible Tech was at its nadir. Since then, the Jackets have seen average-to-great years, the most recent excellent year being 2014, when Tech was a few plays from the inaugural College Football Playoff. Tech’s years of triple option play - the heights of an Orange Bowl win to the lows of a three win season - would come to an end following the 2018 season. The Jackets have an all-time record of 737-505-43.

Tomorrow, Tech heads up to Durham to play one of its most storied opponents. And yet, much like their baby blue brethren to the east, it seems as if most people don’t add much vitriol to a matchup that we’ve played more than Clemson. Toe meets leather at 12:00 pm. The game will be shown on ACC Network Extra (RSNs) and can be heard over the radio in the usual suspects, 680 AM / 93.7 FM and the Georgia Tech IMG Sports Radio Network, featuring the voice of the Yellow Jackets, Andy Demetra, as always.

With the appearance of the historical matchup preview, that means it’s after Friday at 10:00 AM and that concludes From the Rumble Seat’s regularly scheduled pregame content. Tune in tomorrow starting at 6:00 AM for How to Watch continuing through the gameday thread and the postgame recap. Less than 36 hours until toe meets leather! As always, go Jackets!