Whoever was in charge of the hiring process must be ignorant of what has happened over the past few years in Durham.

http://www.thenewsstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080404/UPDATES02/80404041/1006/SPORTS

4/4/2008 5:43:12 PM

Their football program will now become worthless......oh wait

4/4/2008 6:19:58 PM

duke sports as a whole is not to shabby ?

4/4/2008 6:38:05 PM

fuck I wish they would have taken Fowler

4/4/2008 6:40:00 PM

fowler wont be taken by anyone

4/4/2008 6:43:45 PM

I know right .. sigh

4/4/2008 7:32:44 PM

we couldn't give that fucking guy away.

4/4/2008 7:41:23 PM

^ to add to that, I would doubt we could pay somebody to take him

4/4/2008 7:59:04 PM

Fowler is to AD's as carp is to fishing for dinner.

Feel free to add your own analogies....

4/4/2008 8:47:05 PM

maybe we can trade him and cash to someone

4/4/2008 8:48:58 PM

this hire makes no sense to me

4/4/2008 11:28:26 PM

if this hire doesn't make sense to you then you have no idea how athletic directors work

4/5/2008 12:58:26 AM

after the way he handled duke lax im surprised hes hireable especially at a prestiguos program such as lsu.... dumb hire

4/5/2008 1:53:35 AM

Can you imagine the criticism Alleva will get when football needs a major decision done and he botches it? I seriously doubt most LSU fans care about anything else other than football, and that's what Alleva will be graded on.

Here's a Duke blog's take.

Quote :

"If you haven’t heard, Joe Alleva has taken the job at LSU, thus ending a 32 year run at Duke which saw, on the bright side, multiple national championships in various sports, and on the negative side, the total collapse of football and the lacrosse hoax. Alleva had also gone after the Miami job when it was open, and perhaps it’s understandable that he might be ready for a change. In many ways, he had become a lightning rod at Duke. Some of the criticism was perfectly valid, and some was probably unfair. If he deserved criticism for the state of the football program - and we think he does - he deserves credit for the continued competitive state of programs like golf, tennis, and lacrosse, sports in which Duke’s men and women’s teams compete annually for national titles. Duke has continued to raise money for athletics and dramatically expanded facilities under his watch. If you hadn’t been on campus in quite some time, you’d be shocked to see the new buildings which have gone up. Koskinen Stadium, the Yoh football building, the new IM building, the Schwartz-Butters building, the brand spanking new practice facility for basketball - like the programs previously mentioned, these are real and credible accomplishments. And, one might add, Duke has done a fairly good job in dealing with Title IX requirements. There are, in other words, solid reasons why LSU was interested in Alleva (we should also add that they are under the gun, and whoever their A.D. was to be needed to be in San Antonio for the Final Four, because if you miss the coaches convention which coincides with the Final Four, you complicate your hiring process for a new coach immensely).Yet he will have a mixed bag as a legacy at Duke. The primary reasons for this are the football hires and allowing the program to drift into disastrous waters, and the handling of the lacrosse situation. Football can and should be largely laid at Alleva’s feet. He made the decision to hire Carl Franks, a Duke grad and a good man but not someone ready to be a head coach. He also made the decision to hire Ted Roof, which wasn’t as horrible a hire, but Roof had to compete with significant handicaps, many of which have been either corrected or are being corrected now. Too late for Roof, of course. Third time around, of course, he hired David Cutcliffe, who has managed to bring some swagger to the job, and some excitement as well. Time will tell if he leaves Durham muttering, as too many of his predecessors have, of the impossibility of his job. Certainly we hope not. A great hire would be a great legacy, but only time can validate the buzz this hire has brought. A couple of other notes before we forget: The baseball situation, where Alleva’s hire, Bill Hiller, was let go after steroid use was discovered, and after some players said they felt pressured to use them by their coach. The boating DWI, where Alleva and his son had a fairly serious accident in a powerboat, where Alleva ended up with 42 stitches and his son ended up with the DWI. The handling of Gail Goestenkors departure and the subsequent search, where Alleva made some unfortunate comments which may have affected Goestenkors’ decision. The accident, in isolation, would have been embarrassing but not a huge problem necessarily, but coming during the lacrosse case, with the intense media coverage and the furious debates over alcohol on campus, it was, basically, a dung bomb. Very, very unfortunate, to say the least. Most of this stuff will be forgotten relatively soon, with the exception of football hires and possibly the Coach G stuff. If women’s basketball continues to thrive, then no one will worry too much about that, either. The lacrosse case is a different matter. As one of the three former defendants said at one point, when he dies, this will be in his obituary. That’s going to be true of Alleva as well: his handling of this case, whether it’s fair or not, will be the most remembered part of his career, barring something more sensational, in a good or bad way, at LSU. If LSU wins ten football titles in a row, it’ll still be there. We have no desire to back up and run over Alleva over this. For one thing, we’ve heard from more than one person that he doesnt’ express himself very well publicly, and that that has undermined his image as well. We’ll accept that as likely. However, the phrase that will follow him around, for the rest of his life, his Albatross if you will, is what he said to former lacrosse coach Pressler when he said “it’s not about the truth anymore.” We can understand (we think) what he was trying to say, but if you get to the point where the truth is no longer relevant to the process at hand, you might as well toss the rope over the tree branch yourself. Alleva’s legacy will sort itself out over time. We didn’t agree with everything he did, but we do think he tried hard and he sincerely cared about Duke. Whatever anyone thought, he’s leaving, and generally speaking, graciousness is the best thing when possible. The much more interesting question is about his successor. If we had to pick a guy who would be ideal, with our limited knowledge of potential candidates, we’d probably pick Ron Wellman. He’s pretty happy at Wake, though, and presumably wouldn’t be that hyped about a move to Durham. He’s done an incredible job at Wake, though, and it can’t hurt to ask. Barring that unlikely scenario, our wish list would include the following qualities: A creative thinker Someone with immense energy A proven administrator who can delegate effectively A solid fundraiser Someone with experience at a similar university (i.e., Notre Dame, Stanford, etc) Someone young and a rising star in the profession Someone willing to commit for the long haul We have absolutely no idea who could come closest to those qualities, but given his track record in hiring, and his visionary approach to his school’s athletics, the first guy we’d call for advice would be Ron Wellman. "

[Edited on April 5, 2008 at 8:04 AM. Reason : ./]

4/5/2008 7:58:05 AM

this really doesent matter...

outside of basketball Duke isnt sh!t. When K dies or leaves that program will fall into obscurity.
Obviously the AD made a good move .

I see Duke in the upper half of a Conference USA-esque division in 35 years...
Or maybe they will play with the Ivy Leagers where they belong by then?

4/6/2008 12:27:45 PM

^ Yeah, if their basketball team goes to crap after Krzyzewski leaves, I can see the ACC kicking them out. The future is going to see further consolidation of the top colleges/programs for money. The bottom-ender programs in the big conferences are going to be left holding the bucket. This first occurred with the destruction of the Southwest Conference to make the Big 8 the Big 12, and again with the ACC taking the top football programs from the Big East.

Who knows though? That could allow for the formation of the Magnolia Conference first proposed in the 1960s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Ivies#Efforts_to_create_a_southern_Ivy_League

Quote :

"The effort to create a Southern Ivy League conference originated during the 1950s. Harvie Branscomb, then-chancellor at Vanderbilt University, originally attempted to establish a rivalry between Vanderbilt and traditional Ivy League schools to foster relationships with academically-oriented schools. The school followed through on this effort and played a game against Yale in October 1948. However, after Vanderbilt shut out the Bulldogs, 35-0, Yale said they no longer wanted to play Vanderbilt. This caused Branscomb to call a meeting with the presidents of other Southern private universities in the late 1950s — Southern Methodist University (SMU), Rice, Duke, and Tulane — where Branscomb suggested they try to establish a new sports conference where small, academically inclined private schools could compete.[2] In the early 1960s, the idea for the "Magnolia Conference" gained popularity. In 1963, Tulane, was frustrated by its enabling competition notwithstanding within the Southeastern Conference schools since many of the schools had lower academic expectations for football and they considered withdrawing from the SEC to compete with schools with similar aims.[3] According to the Rice student newspaper, it called the era a time when "the academic disparity between show-me-the-money schools and the schools less inclined to compromise academics was just beginning to become more evident".[citation needed] The "Magnolia Conference" had the vision to "maintain high-end Division 1 budgets and schedules, while avoiding some of the crasser extremes of the big business of college sports". However, the "Southern Ivy League" never got off the ground. Duke did not want to give up its rivalry with the University of North Carolina, and SMU and Rice were not willing to give up their share of the Cotton Bowl income.[4]"

[Edited on April 6, 2008 at 12:39 PM. Reason : /]

4/6/2008 12:33:21 PM

holy shit, and I was just trying to piss off any Duke fans here...

My roomate is a Duke fan that went to Vandy... I bet he would love a southern silver spoon league like that one to form.... But Vandy has a huge rivalry in Tennessee just like Duke...

I think that for Duke to be dropped from the ACC, UNC needs a new rival in basketball (for $$$)...
too bad we cant make more outtof that huge basketball court we got, eh?

4/6/2008 3:56:30 PM

I agree Duke will drop to a bottom tier ACC team after K leaves but they could finish last in the standings for the next 100 straight years and they would not be dropped from the ACC, that is crazy talk

4/6/2008 4:03:57 PM

Quote :

"I agree Duke will drop to a bottom tier ACC team after K leaves but they could finish last in the standings for the next 100 straight years and they would not be dropped from the ACC, that is crazy talk"

There's different forms of being dropped. College sports is all about the money. With football the be all and end all right now, you could see the top football teams in the conference leave and go merge with some other teams just for "survival". The BCS system has encouraged consolidation of the big hitters as a way to consolidate who the money goes to. When the Big East lost Miami, VT, and BC, everyone wanted their automatic bid to disappear. Who would've benefitted from that? The Pac-10, ACC, Big 10, SEC, and Big 12.

Look at the state of ACC football right now. Duke has no fans, Wake Forest has a tiny fanbase, Maryland has a small fanbase, Georgia Tech has a small fanbase, Boston College has a tiny fanbase, Miami only has a fanbase if they're contending for the national championship. So there's only six schools in this conference that can routinely fill a 50k stadium (which isn't exactly large by college football standards) - ourselves, Florida State, Clemson, North Carolina, Virginia Tech, and Virginia. You think these schools aren't going to look around someday, say 10 years from now, and say, "Let's see what else is out there to protect ourselves."?

It's what happened to the Southwest Conference in the 1990s (Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, and Baylor left SMU, Houston, Rice, and TCU to join the Big 8, which then became the Big 12). It's what happened to the Big East when the top three football schools there left to join the ACC, although that conference scraped the top C-USA football schools to survive.

I think that scenario is far more likely than Duke being told to unilaterally leave. Although my Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech friends moan every year that Duke should be kicked out (they only care about football).

4/6/2008 5:44:19 PM

i really dislike this hire for LSU

4/6/2008 6:14:36 PM

Quote :

"So there's only six schools in this conference that can routinely fill a 50k stadium North Carolina"

Does not compute....

4/7/2008 2:55:22 AM

they can fill 50k fine....its 65k thats the problem

4/7/2008 9:06:13 AM