Closing the gap

Franks on ACC Expansion and its effects on the football program

It concerned me specific[ally] to Duke University more than anything else. I agreed with President Keohane and Joe Alleva that I don't think it was in the best interest of our student athletes, as there are certain concerns as travel, concerns as far as how rivalries will be effected, how scheduling will be effected, how other leagues would be effected. We just didn't feel like it was the appropriate thing to do. But the conference voted, and we will move forward and support it. What is important for Duke football is that we continue on the path that we started several years ago....

Back when Florida State joined the ACC, Duke football remained the same, made no adjustments. Everybody in the league made adjustments to rise up to be able to compete with Florida State, and Duke just stayed flat - we didn't do anything.

We've started making some improvements, and we've put ourselves in the position to be competitive in the conference. And now hopefully in this coming year we've put ourselves in the position to win several games in the conference. But we can't just stand back and watch everybody of other teams come into the league and not do anything, we have to remain proactive; we have to continue to have a vision and look to see what's next for Duke football. Every successful business does that, Duke University in general does that, and I think as long as we continue with that philosophy as what do we need to do next, and how can we keep improving Duke football, then we'll be in good shape....

Certainly, in the long run I believe it's going to be good for our conference. It's certainly going to help football, as far as reputation of this conference.

Well I think we'll be able to compete very well down the road because of some of the changes that we've made in the program, in the facilities. I think now that Duke has shown that it's making a commitment to the football program. And commitment to me is what you do. Your actions, actions that you take, Duke is taking action of placing a new building here that's $25 million, is supported by our alumni, friends of Duke, and show that they want Duke football to get back.

I think the guys that we have on the team right now, especially our fifth-year seniors, which is the bulk of the leadership on our football team, know what kind of chance they have.

They came in here at a time that was pretty tough for Duke football. They came in here knowing that they were coming to help build a program, and that's kind of how we recruited them. I think it's special to be part of building something, everybody wants to do something different.... I know that they want to leave here knowing they built that foundation. There have been a lot of classes that have wanted to do that, and this is a year that they certainly have the opportunity to finally achieve that.

I'm tremendously excited about the season, I'm excited about the players that are going to be fifth-year seniors and have gone through a lot of adversity and tough times.... I think adversity probably reveals your character more than it builds your character. I think our team has had great character and that's in part by our players being able to abide to a philosophy or a plan of how we're going to build Duke football, and I think that these guys now have Duke football on the verge of really making a strong statement in this conference.

Now it's going to be a tough season, because everybody is very good in this conference. People have made big commitments to their programs.... and we have been catching up, we have been slowly closing the gap. And if we continue along the path of what we've started the last couple of years, I think that gap will close more and more significantly. And this is the year that it needs to show some big, big decrease in the gap.