Rivalry on the Move

DURHAM, N.C. – The 1938 Duke football team was undefeated, untied and unscored upon when the Blue Devils traveled to Chapel Hill for their annual rivalry game with once-beaten North Carolina.

It proved to be a good day for the Iron Dukes. Eric “The Red” Tipton scored on a short touchdown run early, then fullback Robert O'Mara added a third-period score that was set up by a Tipton interception. In all, the Devils intercepted five UNC passes and kept all their streaks alive with a 14-0 victory.

After the game, author Lewis Bowling reports, Carolina fans rushed the field to protect their goalposts. But the Duke fans didn't bother to fight for the tokens of victory. You see, the UNC victory — as sweet as it was — came just past the midpoint of the 1938 season, not at the end.

Duke left Kenan Stadium that October day with regular season games remaining against Syracuse, N.C. State and the defending national champion Pitt Panthers.

Only later would the Duke-UNC game come to be the traditional regular-season finale. That bit of “tradition” is less than 60 years old. And when Duke and UNC meet this season on Nov. 7, it will mark just another change in the positioning of the Blue Devils' top rivalry.

“I think the rivalry is always going to be there because we are, what, eight miles apart?” senior cornerback Leon Wright said. “There's always going to be a rivalry between us. I really don't have a lot to say about it not being our last game. I was kind of shocked that it's not. But you have to approach it like it's our last game.”

Duke coach David Cutcliffe doesn't think it diminishes the rivalry to play the game in early November instead of at the end of the regular season.

“For years, Tennessee and Alabama played on the third Saturday in October,” he pointed out. “The Florida-Tennessee game is the first conference game for both teams and you can't get a bigger rivalry than that. So I don't think that when you play a rivalry has anything to do with it.”

Of course, a lot of famous rivalries do usually end the season — Army-Navy, Michigan-Ohio State, Auburn-Alabama, UCLA-Southern Cal. Back in the 1930s and 1940s, UNC always played its last game against Virginia — a big rival from the first two decades of the 20th century, when Duke (then known as Trinity College) didn't play football.

Wallace Wade made Duke-UNC relevant again. His 1935 upset of the unbeaten Tar Heels — a defeat that cost the Tar Heels a bid to the Rose Bowl — moved Duke to the top of the UNC hate list. For the next quarter-century (until the rise of ACC basketball), the annual Duke-Carolina game was probably the biggest annual sporting event in the state. The game itself was surrounded by parades, concerts, dances — and even the Friday meeting of the two freshman teams was a big event that raised thousands of dollars for the Lenox Baker Children's Hospital.

When Charlie “Choo Choo” Justice led his Sugar Bowl-bound Tar Heels into Duke Stadium in 1949, the game drew a crowd of 57,500 — which would remain the largest crowd to see a college football game in the state until the mid-1970s.

The schedule soon reflected the reality of the rivalry. Duke made UNC its normal regular-season finale starting in 1943 (the year the Devils beat UNC twice!). UNC still ended the season with Virginia until 1951.

Since then, there have been a few exceptions to the Duke-UNC finale. In 1960 and 1961, Duke scheduled national TV games in December (losing to UCLA in 1960, beating Notre Dame in 1961). In 1991, the Devils closed the season with a late game against Clemson in Japan. And on two occasions, circumstances forced a game scheduled for earlier in the season to be moved late: in 1964, a hurricane delayed the Duke at Tulane game from Oct. 23 to the week after the UNC game, and in 2001, both Duke and UNC rescheduled games postponed by the 9/11 tragedy.

Still, for almost 60 years, Duke-UNC has been the traditional season ender for both teams. It won't be this season — and probably not in the near future.

Stan Wilcox, Duke's deputy director of athletes, oversees football scheduling. He said the change was due to a change in the staff's priorities.

“Each school within the ACC is afforded one (scheduling) request that the conference office will try to adhere to,” Wilcox said. “Our priority used to be that the North Carolina game be played on Thanksgiving weekend. The priority now is having a bye week in the middle of the season. The current staff thinks that's important to give our team a chance to regroup and let injuries heal midway through the season.”

Wilcox said that a school can make additional requests, but after the first one, which the ACC bends over backwards to accommodate, additional desires are at the mercy of the conference schedule. Sometimes those requests are granted (for instance, Duke wanted a home game on Sept. 26 for Homecoming Weekend) and sometimes they are not (again, as an example, Duke didn't want a home game on Oct. 3, when students were on Fall Break).

“Having the North Carolina game on Thanksgiving is no longer a priority,” Wilcox said. “I think the rivalry will still be there. Miami and Florida State play early in the season. I don't think that does much to diminish that rivalry.”

Without the request from Duke (or UNC, which could also make playing Duke late a priority), the ACC has no reason to give the Duke-UNC game a special place on the schedule.

“What's more disappointing is the reasons for it not being the last game,” former Duke standout Wes Chesson said recently. “Probably one of the most compelling reasons is that Duke hasn't been as competitive. Yeah, we've been competitive on the field, but not in the win-loss category. I think that has allowed the movement of the game as much as anything. It became somewhat of a kind of lackluster finish to both teams' seasons. The problem was, we weren't filling the stands.”

Chesson was the hero of Duke's 1969 victory over North Carolina. The wide receiver from Edenton, N.C., scored the game's decisive touchdown on a trick play. While quarterback Leo Hart kneeled to tie his shoe, Chesson and the rest of his team lined up far to the left (in front of the UNC bench). Wide receiver Marcel Courtillet shoveled the ball to Chesson, who streaked 53 yards down the sideline for what proved to be the winning touchdown in Duke's 17-13 victory.

What's interesting about that game was the attendance. Even though Duke entered the contest with a dismal 2-6-1 record and UNC came in at a mediocre 5-4, the game drew an overflow crowd of 44,000 fans.

“Back then, it was always full,” Chesson said. “It didn't matter what the records were. People came to the games.”

One reason was the makeup of the two teams.

“When I was playing we started more boys from North Carolina on our team than Carolina did,” Chesson said. “So we had North Carolina kids playing on both teams and it was, traditionally, the place to be.”

Although that changed in the last 20 years, Cutcliffe is starting to restore some of the North Carolina flavor to the Duke roster. His first full recruiting class included nine in-state recruits and it looks as if his 2010 class will also be heavy on North Carolina prep products too.

“I think it improves the rivalry not just because those kids are from North Carolina, but because they're from North Carolina and they're pretty good football players,” Chesson said. “Hopefully, the quality of the talent will allow you to be much more competitive in the win-loss column ... both programs are improving the quality of their football programs.”

That's significant. One reason for the greatness of the Duke-UNC basketball rivalry has been the national significance of both teams. Almost every year one or the other — and often both — are national championship contenders.

In contrast, neither Duke nor UNC has been much of a national factor in football for a long, long time. The Blue Devils last played in a major bowl in 1961. UNC's last big bowl came in 1950. Duke's last ACC title was in 1989. UNC hasn't won one since 1980.

“The quality of football at both schools has suffered,” Chesson said. “There's just no excitement left at the end of the season — on either side — to make that game relevant. Because of that, when you're not filling the stadium for the Duke-Carolina game, that's not a good sign.”

Indeed, attendance, especially in Durham, has declined drastically since the era when Duke-UNC was always a sellout. The 1971 game at Wade Stadium drew 51,500, but by the 1979 game, that figure fell below 40,000 for the first time. By the early 1990s, the game drew less than 30,000 fans and in 2006, attendance hit rock bottom at just 24,478.

While Cutcliffe's success last season got the Wade crowd back over 30,000 fans again, there were still a lot of empty seats at an event that used to be the region's premier sporting event. That's not going to change until Duke starts beating the Tar Heels again.

After all, the Blue Devils have won just one of the last 19 meetings. Many of the UNC wins in that stretch have been very close (two by one point, two by two points, three by three points, one by four points, one by six points). Even last year's 28-20 Tar Heel win wasn't decided until UNC stopped Duke QB Thaddeus Lewis inside the Tar Heel 20 in the game's final minute.

“It's still a great rivalry every time we go up against them,” senior defensive tackle Vince Oghobaase said. “I don't think it's going to be much of a difference when we play them. Any time we play them, it's still going to be that same hard-nosed rivalry.”

Lewis feels the same way.

“It doesn't bother me at all (that the UNC game is not last),” he said. “I just know that it's still going to be a rivalry, no matter if it's the first game, second game or the last game.”

Players Mentioned

Thaddeus Lewis

Vince Oghobaase

Leon Wright

Duke information