Duke-Alabama football: the real story

Let’s put this game in proper context. In all the considerable, though somewhat ancient, lore of Duke football history, there has never been a bigger game in Wallace Wade Stadium. Yes, Roger Staubach and his Midshipmen played here in Staubach’s ‘63 Heisman Trophy year. And a Tony Dorsett-led Pittsburgh team played here in ‘76. But Alabama’s visit is of historic proportions for lots of reasons beyond the Tide’s current No. 1, national ranking.

Football programs of Alabama’s stature have generally shied from visiting Duke’s comparatively small stadium. In the run-up to Saturday’s tilt in Durham, there was talk of moving the game to Birmingham, Atlanta and even Charlotte. So the Crimson Tide’s playing here is a story in itself. Yet the real story is that eighty years ago, Duke shocked the college sports world by hiring legendary football coach Wallace Wade away from then-national champion Alabama and changed the course of athletic history at Duke.

Before coming to Duke, Wallace Wade, a Tennessee boy who played at and graduated from Brown, was Athletic Director at Vanderbilt and eventually the head football coach at the University of Alabama from 1923-30. In miraculous fashion, Wade brought the Alabama football program from obscurity to national prominence and secured its first-ever invitation to play in the nation’s only bowl game at the time, the Rose Bowl. In its first 20 years, the Rose Bowl had never invited a southern college football team to play on New Year’s Day in Pasadena, reportedly of the view that the brand of football played in the south was “inferior.” When the invitation finally came to Coach Wade and his Alabama team following the 1925 season, the Tide responded by winning back-to-back Rose Bowls—and the accompanying national championships—in 1925 and 1926. Wade’s legend at Alabama continued when his 1930 team went undefeated in the regular season and capped it with a 24-0 win over Washington State in the 1931 Rose Bowl. Three national titles in five years at a school that wasn’t on the college football radar screen when Coach Wade arrived at ‘Bama eight years before.

Enter Duke. Looking to compete athletically as well as academically among growing universities in the south, Duke’s then-Dean W. H. Wannamaker contacted Coach Wade for advice. At the time, only Notre Dame’s Knute Rockne was better known among the nation’s college football coaches. In short order, Duke made Wade what was considered an astronomical offer to become Duke’s head football coach: $12,500 per year plus a share of the gate. Wade stunned Alabama and took the job.

The rest is history. Wade picked up where he left off at Alabama, building Duke into a national football power. While Alabama was undefeated and won the Rose Bowl in ‘34, Duke, led by Wade, quietly went 9-1 in ‘33, 9-1 in ‘36 and played for the national championship in the 1939 and 1942 Rose Bowls (the latter, played at Duke). Coach Wade retired in 1950 to become the Commissioner of the ACC’s forerunner, the Southern Conference. And in ‘67, Duke named the stadium in which Saturday’s game will be played after Wade.

Duke really owes a debt of gratitude to its visitors from Alabama. First, for giving Wallace Wade to Duke. And for giving Duke its current head coach, David Cutcliffe. (Coach Cut graduated from Bama in ‘76 and served there as an assistant under Bear Bryant.) Fittingly, the University of Alabama in 1998 named the street running alongside Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa “Wade Avenue.”

So this is much more than another big, college football game. It commemorates college football history in the south like no other. And the game—along with the planned, $125 million Wallace Wade Stadium renovation led by Duke Trustees Board Chair Dan Blue—marks Duke’s renewed commitment to compete again in its conference and nationally, in the classroom and on the gridiron. Coach Wade might say it’s high time.

John Bussian, T '76 is a former walk-on football player and a Raleigh-based First Amendment lawyer. He also provides legal services for The Chronicle.