'A modest proposal' to save football

For all of us who consider ourselves Duke Football fans (and I know it's an increasingly dwindling number, but bear with me), it's really sad to see how awful they've looked this season. And it's even worse going to games and watching the team play in front of a nearly empty stadium.

I've thought in the past that anyone who could solve Duke Football's problems and return the team to its Glory Days would immediately become a hero on campus. Maybe the school would even erect a statue in his or her honor (I hear there's space on the quad in front of the Chapel).

So, figuring there would be a statue in the deal for me if I could figure it out, I gave this problem some thought. I thought about all those people that say Duke is just too small a school to support a nationally-ranked football squad as well as its top-notch basketball team. And after all of my thinking, I decided that those people are right. And it was then that I formulated my plan: I would fix Duke Football by firing Coach K, effective immediately.

Think about it. There are about a hundred thousand rich Duke alumni living somewhere in the country. Of those, only about nine thousand can fit into Cameron Indoor Stadium and pay exorbitant prices for basketball tickets to mid-week games they can't attend. And that number is unlikely to change without (God forbid!) tearing down Cameron. There is a significant amount of money that these rich alumni could spend on the athletic program that the University is effectively forbidding them from spending by having too small a venue.

Wallace Wade Stadium does hold 35,000 people, but what alumnus in his right mind would want to travel to Durham to watch a terrible football team, even if there's plenty of room in the stadium? Problem is, the football team is not going to improve until Ted Roof can sell recruits on the prospect of playing home games in front of more than several hundred drunk students, scattered Durhamites, the opposition's fans and thousands of assorted fans disguised as empty seats.

We're stuck at an impasse: the football team isn't going to get better until there are more people in the seats, but more people won't be in the seats until the team is better.

My solution to the problem dissolves this roadblock. Without Coach K, the basketball team would undoubtedly fall upon hard times and rich alumni would begin to question why they're paying such ridiculous sums of money when they can't attend all the games. Faced with a choice between two losing teams, the alumni will buy tickets for the games they have a greater chance of attending-and it's much easier to be in town for six Saturdays a year than 10 Wednesday and Thursday nights. Other alumni who don't currently have basketball tickets will see that Duke football is cool again and, following the crowd (hey, they were Duke students once), will buy football tickets.

Wallace Wade will be packed, the recruits will see a chance to play in a fuller stadium, and they will decide to come to Duke. In time, talented recruits would arrive in high numbers, and the fans would come in large packs to see a winning team-every Dukie loves a winner-that they would have to build a new 100,000-seat stadium to hold them all. Fans could have tailgates-huge campus-wide parties with girls in cocktail dresses!-that start Friday afternoon and end early Sunday morning like real football schools have. And they could name the sparkling, giant venue Michael W. Krzyzewski Stadium, in honor of the man whose termination got the ball rolling.