2011 Duke Blue Devils Football: Duke vs Stanford

The two schools whose football teams will meet this Saturday at Wallace Wade Stadium are both extremely credentialed and acclaimed.

On the gridiron, however, only one of them can claim any stature or cachet.

It’s going to be a long, long afternoon for Duke University when it hosts the Stanford Cardinal in Durham, North Carolina.

Duke and Stanford are both academic heavyweights, and actually, they both used to be very formidable in football. In the first half of the 20th century, when Stanford was coached by the legendary Glenn “Pop” Warner and Duke was led by the very same Wallace Wade whose name graces the university’s football stadium, the Cardinal and Blue Devils made a name for themselves in the province of pigskin. Stanford has revived itself thanks to its superstar quarterback Andrew Luck. The Cardinal thrashed San Jose State by 54 points in their season opener without breaking much of a sweat.

Duke, though, is a football program whose glories belong solely to yesteryear. There’s no such similar revival unfolding on Tobacco Road. One has to remain in the distant past to identify the last time Duke University won big on the gridiron.

> Check out our great selection of Duke Blue Devils Apparel & Merchandise!

Wallace Wade made the Blue Devil program his own. No football man has ever been able to deliver the goods at Duke the way Wade did. It’s true that a fellow named Steve Spurrier managed to win an ACC title in 1989, and other coaches kept the Blue Devils relevant in the 1950s as the modern-day Atlantic Coast Conference took shape, but it was Wade who – after a solid run at Alabama – flourished at a school now known only for its basketball. One of the best trivia questions in college football history has an answer connected to Wade and Duke. Durham is the only city other than Pasadena, California, to host the Rose Bowl game. The 1942 event against Oregon State was played on the Duke campus, a lasting testament to the centrality and primacy the Blue Devils made under Wade.

Today under coach David Cutcliffe, there’s no progress to point to… not after an embarrassing 23-21 home loss to FCS-based Richmond in the season opener. The Blue Devils missed a 28-yard field goal in the fourth quarter and were clearly not able to separate themselves from a lower-division team. Duke did come up with a stunning upset of Navy on the road last season, but that bit of pigskin prowess wasn’t replicated enough for the Blue Devils to amount to much of anything. Getting bitten by the Spiders of Richmond has the Duke program reeling. Stanford is licking its chops in a battle of academic superpowers which, when translated to the football field, shouldn’t be very much of a battle at all.

Duke Blue Devils vs Stanford Cardinal Football Preview