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If it's true that everyone loves a winner (just ask Mike Krzyzewski), and delights in knocking a loser (just ask a pre-2004 Red Sox fan), you might imagine that the Blue Devils gridiron gang would be in the doldrums. Last season's 0-12 record was painful for everyone involved. Duke is playing eight teams this season that went to bowl games last year (a postseason honor the program hasn't enjoyed in more than a decade). In November, they'll go helmet to helmet with Notre Dame, which has sent more players to the National Football League than any other program in the country. And so far this year, the Blue Devils are ranked dead last in what ESPN's Pat Forde calls a "meat-grinder conference full of enormous state universities."
But all that seems to matter to the 2007 squad as it embarks on the ninety-fifth season of Duke football is a fresh start, a clean slate, a scoreboard that is set, at the start of each game, to 0-0. "To this day, people ask me if I regret coming to Duke to play football," says senior Chris Davis, who plays safety. "And I always say no, because I know that we can and we will win.
"Every game is Christmas day. I can't sleep on Friday night."
Players like Davis will tell you that their main regret from last year is that their graduating teammates went out on such a low note. And then it's right back to the present, the matchups they are most psyched about, the fierce loyalty they feel toward the coaching staff and one another, the personal goals they're determined to achieve. It's as if they are immune to the negative remarks lobbed their way. They believe, with absolute conviction, that they are winners.
During the season, the players wake up before dawn five days a week for intense physical training and conditioning. They keep pace academically with their peers; Duke has consistently ranked at or near the top of schools that graduate the majority of its football players on time. (The university holds the record for winning the American Football Coaches Association/College Football Association's Academic Achievement Award: twelve times since 1981.)
They say that most of their classmates and professors know how hard they work, although they still encounter the "dumb jock" stereotype from time to time. "There are people who think I'm stupid because I'm a football player," says one. "I like to prove them wrong." And even though they come from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds, and are the most racially and ethnically diverse varsity athletic team at Duke, they have formed a cohesive bond. Devastating losses and harsh critics can't dampen the excitement and determination the players have for a sport that most have pursued single-mindedly since they were in elementary school.
"I guess you can learn a lot and grow as a person by going to a bowl game," says Richard Keefe, a sports psychologist and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke, "and that would certainly be great. But I've watched this group of student-athletes suffer heartbreaking defeats and then pick themselves back up and enter the next game with total commitment and enthusiasm."
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