The road to resurrection

The big man with the frying pan hands and the baby face is sure Duke Football is going places.

Vince Oghobaase says this two days after the Blue Devils reached yet another low-water mark with a loss to Richmond. And you want to tell him that he's wrong, but you just can't.

You want to look at him and say, "Hey Vince, you know we're talking about Duke, right? Don't you remember that shutout on Saturday?" But you can't say that--and not only because his upper arms are about the size of your thighs, and it looks like he could probably throw you into orbit without breaking a sweat.

You can't say it because you kind of believe him. Because you think that maybe this guy knows something that you don't. Maybe he's big enough and good enough to will this program's turnaround on his own. After frequently tearing through Richmond's offensive line in his first collegiate game (a year later than he expected), he just shrugged when asked if he thought the transition to college ball would be this easy.

"I put it like this," he says, "Football is football. Once you've played on any level, it's just football."

Plus, he's here-isn't he?-when he could be at Miami or Oklahoma winning bowl games and playing on national TV. Why the hell would he be here, if he didn't know he could make things better?

"I've always wanted to do something different in my life," the 6-foot-6, 310-pound defensive tackle says. "I've always wanted to do the unthinkable, and my coming to a school that had a losing program was. People didn't think I would actually do it. The Miamis, the Oklahomas, the Georgias, the top-notch schools, they didn't think that I would come to a school like this. But I took a step of faith forward coming to this school. I wanted to see what would happen. The team was on the rise, and I could make a big impact here. We're gonna do it. We're gonna do it."

To say that Oghobaase's decision was unusual would be an understatement. His friends back home were bewildered. "I got a lot of talk about, 'Oh, you're going to Duke? Are you going to play basketball there?'" Oghobaase says with a laugh.

One of those shocked friends was Michael Tauiliili, a 5-foot-11 linebacker who played for Alief Hastings' biggest rival, Alief Taylor. Tauiliili, a middle linebacker who had played directly behind Oghobaase in middle school, was also being recruited by Duke, and the two had joked about going to school together. But Tauiliili thought the big man was just kidding. So when Oghobaase returned from his visit and told his friend he was actually going to Duke, Tauiliili says he was "as shocked as anyone" but excited, too.

"It's a luxury. You don't get a chance to play behind a guy like that, with that kind of talent," says Tauiliili, Duke's starting middle linebacker. "He's going to draw a double-team almost every time, and that frees up the linebackers. We joke around. We tell each other we're going to take it back to middle school, because in middle school, I was right behind him, and we were wreaking havoc."

But the two friends would have to wait to turn back the clock. Oghobaase graduated from high school a semester early and enrolled at Duke in time for spring practice in January 2005. Five days into practice, however, Oghobaase tore a ligament in his right knee. At the time, Roof said he expected the big tackle to be back by the start of the season, but the recovery took longer than expected, and he wound up missing the entire year.

In what should have been his freshman season, the big man was less Duke's savior than he was Duke's oversized cheerleader. He came out of the tunnel with the team on gameday, but he wasn't dressed to play. He stood powerless on the sidelines as his teammates finished the year 1-10, with no wins against Division I-A opponents. Meanwhile, Tauiliili, his boy from back in fifth grade, was a Freshman All-American.

"He might've felt the worst out of anybody, even the guys out there playing," Tauiliili says. "Losing hit him the hardest, because he knew that he could be out there helping."

Oghobaase should have been fuming-mad at his knee, mad at himself, mad at Duke-but the funny thing is, he wasn't. There should have been some dark nights when he should have decided to scrap the pressure of the whole "program savior" thing and just become some cog in the winning machine at Miami or Oklahoma or pretty much anywhere else-but there weren't. "I've never regretted my decision to come to Duke," he says. "Never."

Which, when it comes down to it, is why you believe Oghobaase when he tells you that Duke Football is going places. "Right now we're just in the process-it's not going to happen overnight," he says. "You've got to establish a winner, then you can get more and more and more and more fans to come along with you. That's what we're trying to do here."

You believe he can take it somewhere. He of the gigantic body, the desire to make his own decisions and the drive and intelligence to carry out any plan. Maybe turning Duke Football into a winner is damn near impossible, but if anyone can do it, the big man will.