A Year for the Record Books

Last Saturday against N.C. State, Duke had the chance to win its seventh game of the season and secure the program's first winning record since 1994.

Thanks to late-game heroics from DeVon Edwards, and a more subtle, but equally important, performance by Brandon Connette, the 7-2 Blue Devils edged out the Wolfpack by scoring three touchdowns in less than 30 seconds in the fourth quarter.

Duke heads into Saturday's matchup against Miami with the chance to win their eighth game of the season.

The Blue Devils are on pace to have a season unlike any the program has seen in recent history. To find precedent for what Duke has done, and could potentially do, this year, one has to dig deep into the archives of Blue Devil football.

The first important historical date is 1994. That year Fred Goldsmith's team won eight games and finished tied for third in the ACC final standings. Duke has won eight or more games in a season 14 times, but all but two of those seasons occurred before 1962.

It has been even longer since the Blue Devils had a nine-win season, but of Duke's three remaining opponents, two have losing records and all three are without their best offensive player for the remainder of the season. The Blue Devils could very well take two of their final three games, finishing the season 9-3 and with five wins in the ACC.

Typically I am not one to speculate about where a team could end up at the end of a season or start marking games down as automatic wins or losses. But the magnitude of what Duke could do with its remaining three games has to be noted, and it's important to understand the potentially historic season the Blue Devils are putting together this year.

It's been a few years since Duke won nine games in a season. Oh did I say years? I meant decades. The Blue Devils last finished the season with nine victories in 1941, the same year the U.S. entered WWII and large crowds were banned on the West Coast for fear of a Japanese invasion. It was just that fear, and a great football season, that allowed Duke to host the Rose Bowl that year at Wallace Wade Stadium (it was called Duke Stadium until 1967) instead of at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Ca. In the only Rose Bowl ever played outside of Pasadena, the Blue Devils fell to Oregon State 20-16.

Duke has only won nine games four times in program history. After the Blue Devils started playing at least ten games a year in 1928, Duke secured all four of its nine-win seasons from 1933 to 1941, all with legendary coach Wallace Wade at the helm. The Blue Devils were a national powerhouse for roughly a decade, but have not reached the nine-win plateau since the 1941 season.

Nine wins would be a huge achievement for the 2013 Blue Devils. But if Duke wins out it will do something it has never done in program history—finish the regular season with 10 wins. Initial odds have Miami as a three point favorite this weekend, and the Hurricanes will present a tough test for the Blue Devils, but a win against the Hurricanes would make the 10-win mark a very attainable goal.

What's more, Duke controls its own destiny in the ACC as long as Clemson beats Georgia Tech this weekend—the Tigers are a 10.5-point favorite. Duke will play for the conference championship against Florida State if Clemson wins Saturday and the Blue Devils beat Miami, Wake Forest and North Carolina.

Prior to 2005, the ACC championship was crowned at the end of the regular season without a final matchup between the leading team in each of the conference's two divisions. Duke has never played in the conference championship game.

The Blue Devils have been ACC champions several times, though. But it has similarly been a long time.

With eight wins on the year, Duke tied for first place in 1989 under head coach Steve Spurrier, but that was before Miami, Florida State and Virginia Tech joined the conference. The Blue Devils haven't won the ACC outright since 1962, before even Georgia Tech was a member of the conference.

Of course all this talk of precedents and the potentially historic implications of Duke's season is speculation. But even if the Blue Devils lose all three of their final games—unlikely—this year has already been one for the record books. For the freshman class—many of whom were born after the magical 1994 season—this is the best year Duke has had in their entire lifetimes. Only a handful of upperclassmen might have been old enough to remember the Blue Devils' last winning season.

Regardless of where Duke finishes at the end of November, the Blue Devils have already made 2013 a historic season—Duke will play in a bowl game for the second year in a row, something no other Blue Devil squad has done. The final three weeks of the season will determine if Duke can achieve other program firsts. For Blue Devil fans everywhere, 2013 will certainly be a year for the record books, no matter how it all ends up.