THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 4, 1994 TAG: 9410040570
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM ROBINSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DURHAM, N.C. LENGTH: Long : 118 lines
Got a challenge? Call Fred Goldsmith. Duke University did, and its football program might never be the same.
Remember, Goldsmith won at Rice. They said even Uncle Ben couldn't win at Rice, regarded as one of the worst college coaching situations for its combination of stringent academic requirements and stiff football competition.
Floundering Duke just about fit that same tag last December when Goldsmith hired on after consecutive 6-5 seasons at Rice. That school had lost 18 consecutive games and hadn't had a winning season since 1963 before Goldsmith showed up in 1989.
It so happened that '89 also ended Duke's two-year blip of success under Steve Spurrier. Duke was 8-4 that season, 7-3-1 the year before, and Spurrier bolted for the University of Florida. That left the Blue Devils to settle into four more years of mediocrity and worse, their standard modus operandi since the early '60s, under Barry Wilson.
That's the history lesson. Goldsmith is in charge of forging futures, and let nobody say he doesn't know what he's doing.
The confluence of a soft schedule, experienced, injury-free players and injections of Goldsmith-style enthusiasm has Duke - pegged by preseason visionaries as poor - 5-0 and in a national Top 25 ranking for the first time in five years.
Magic has been worked, too, across Duke's stone-built campus, where the word ``football'' no longer crinkles noses. Where basketball still rules but football is a spunky newcomer to the neighborhood. Where every freshman arrived this semester and received a letter, personally signed by Goldsmith, asking for his or her presence at home games.
``I never thought I'd see football be a big sport here,'' said senior John Tolsma, president of Duke's student government. ``Coach Goldsmith's marketed Duke football to the students, and they've responded in a big way.
``It's a snowball, and they're going to keep the momentum going. Well, when we get closer to Florida State (Oct. 29) it might drag a little. But this is great.''
Featured in this week's Sports Illustrated for its remarkable resurgence, Duke is 24th in the USA Today/CNN coaches poll and lost out for the final spot in the Associated Press Top 25 by two votes to Utah.
The Blue Devils, largely the same bunch who went 3-8 last season, are off this week but face Clemson on Oct. 15 at Duke's Wallace Wade Stadium, which suddenly crackles with electricity on game days.
Cameron Indoor Stadium has its Crazies, and now Wade has its Wackos - the student cheering section named and otherwise encouraged by none other than Duke president Nan Keohane.
``You walk around campus and people are actually talking about the football program, 5-0, being ranked,'' said Chris Collins, a junior guard on Duke's basketball team. ``I think that'll lead into basketball and be great for us.''
It's great for Goldsmith and his boys, that's for sure. Thanks to Goldsmith's relentless public relations assault, Duke began the season at an all-time high in season ticket sales, according to promotions director Mike Sobb. About 60 percent of Duke's total enrollment of 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students, Sobb said, attended the 13-10 victory over East Carolina three weeks ago and helped fill 34,000-seat Wade Stadium to overflowing.
Time out amongst the panting, though, for one more piece of history. The last time Duke was 5-0, in 1988 under Spurrier, it also met Clemson in its sixth game. The Tigers thrashed the upstart Devils, 49-17.
Clemson today isn't what it was then, and a Clemson victory might actually be considered an upset. Say might because, although Duke's players don't want to hear it, it's hard to tell how good the Devils - one of seven Division I-A teams to open 5-0 - really are. Whether or not they owe their record and average 39-12 margin of victory to the fact that Maryland, East Carolina, Army, Georgia Tech and Navy are a combined 6-15.
Goldsmith or a member of his staff visited every high school coach in North Carolina in the last year to reach out, and remind them Duke still plays football.
They have Duke playing an entertaining, hell-bent defense and exciting offense keyed by junior quarterback Spence Fischer, who has completed 65 percent of his passes, and senior running back Robert Baldwin, who has gained 701 yards and scored 11 touchdowns.
Goldsmith, 50, discusses it all with a contented smile and soft, Southern twang.
``Everything's a matter of timing, taking over a program,'' said Goldsmith, a former assistant at Arkansas, Florida A&M and the Air Force Academy. ``I think the players were ready to be a little more open-minded, especially the leadership of the team, to whatever (coaches) were telling them.
``Sometimes you inherit a team where everything went well and anything you try to do that's different, boom, the mind closes. It was easier for me than it was for Barry Wilson.''
In a way, it's almost been too easy, Goldsmith said, in that Duke's ``team'' is ahead of its ``program.''
``I think to really get a program going you need three or four good years of recruiting, getting guys in place, coaches being familiar with the opponents, stability, continuity,'' he said. ``That's a program to me, where you're feeling like you'll have a full stadium every week. Right now, at the halfway point of 1994, our team is better than the actual program. But the team doing that accelerates the program.''
As far as athletic director Tom Butters is concerned, it also puts the lie to the notion that Duke is too academically restrictive to play good football.
``Good people, good coaches, produce good results,'' Butters said. ``So it's not Duke University that has disallowed our success. It is not academics that have disallowed our success. I am so tired of hearing that quote, academic institutions, cannot be successful in football. It's absolutely absurd.
``I've been here a long time, I'm an old man. And in the 27 years I've been here, at times the things said about football have also been said about basketball.''
At Duke, at least for now, football and basketball can be mentioned in the same breath. A breath of anticipation. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Duke running back Robert Baldwin broke through the Navy line during
the Blue Devils' 47-14 victory Saturday. Duke is idle this week.
by CNB