![Cutcliffe had to deal with, among other things, a sea of red in Wallace Wade Saturday and a team that “overreacted to [Alabama’s] reputation.”](https://snworksceo.imgix.net/dtc/9b9dc687-0142-48de-ad42-62bedf2dffe7.sized-1000x1000.jpg?w=1000)
Saturday’s matchup between Duke and Alabama was billed as the biggest game in Blue Devil history. Seats were added to Wallace Wade Stadium—which Alabama fans haughtily dubbed “tiny”—to fit the overwhelming amount of people who wanted to see the defending national champions. Duke rented out a closed Durham supermarket’s parking lot to fit the RVs of visiting Crimson Tide fans.
T-shirts were also sold for weeks beforehand and given out at the game, hyping it as the “Wallace Wade Showdown.”
But once the ball was snapped, the game turned into the “Wallace Wade Beat-down.”
In what was supposed to be a chance for the Duke football program to show it was back on the road to respectability, the Blue Devils instead ended up with egg all over their faces. And instead of re-energizing Duke, this game depressed its fans.
Now, if we were to judge the Crimson Tide’s visit to Durham solely on the hype and pregame atmosphere, then the experience could be considered a rousing success. Wallace Wade was truly full for the first time since I’ve been on campus—including the student section, which for once was filled more than five minutes before game time and actually had to turn many prospective fans away.
For the first time in recent memory, students and Duke fans alike were legitimately excited for a football game.
David Cutcliffe and his team said all the right things, too—they were going to give it their all and compete with the defending national champions. Alabama coach Nick Saban even sounded mildly concerned about the Blue Devil offense, giving Duke fans some hope they could keep this game competitive.
After the opening kickoff, though, that abundant optimism quickly transformed into overwhelming discouragement. After all the hoopla and energy—much of which can probably be accounted for by the fancy pom-poms distributed to students—the Crimson Tide’s first snap was a 48-yard run by Heisman-winner Mark Ingram.
Alabama went on to score 28 points in the next 10 minutes, put up 45 in the first half alone, and average more than a first down each play during the game.
That shouldn’t happen to any ACC school, no matter who the opponent is.
“It was pretty simple. We had a better matchup than anybody thought,” Cutcliffe said Sunday. “I thought we overreacted to the reputation.”
The blowout was so jarring that almost half the student section had left even before halftime. During the second half of the game, ABC’s shots from its blimp showed a stadium that was sparsely populated, with a large majority of the remaining fans in Crimson rather than Royal Blue.
So what, you may say—Duke fans should’ve expected this outcome. And yes, they should have. But they didn’t expect 62-13.
Losing by almost 50 points in front of your home crowd, in a game that was supposed to reintroduce your program to the nation, can be thoroughly debilitating for any football team, let alone one with Duke’s rather depressing recent football history.
Contrast that with the Blue Devils’ relative success in their first two contests this season—a solid victory over Elon and very nearly beating ACC rival Wake Forest on the road—and Duke’s complete failure Saturday becomes even more jarring.
And forget how the players and coaches must feel—imagine how the student body is feeling now. A fan base that could be generally described as apathetic towards its football program—and that’s at the best of times—had to witness Duke’s worst loss in 10 years Saturday, just as support for the football team was its strongest in years.
For Blue Devil fans, this weekend was analogous to a weekend of hard partying—full of anticipation, fun while it lasted, but ultimately greeted with a massive hangover of depression and regret Sunday morning.
It remains to be seen whether Duke will be able to recover from its hangover during the rest of this season, starting Saturday against Army. But if it can’t, the Wallace Wade Beat-down could prove to be a huge hurdle for this program to overcome.
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