Duke Taps Fuqua B-School to Aid Football

You are the owner of the current longest losing streak in college football at 20 games and counting. You have the lowest attendance of any school in a BCS Conference and you have started canceling series with certain other BCS schools because, well, you just got beat too bad. What do you do?

Well, if you're Duke, you stroll across campus to Fuqua Business School, home of the nation's 12th ranked business school, according to the most recent US News & World Report rankings,and you asked for help. A group from Fuqua working with the Director of Football Operations is preparing a full blown strategic plan for the football program, addressing all football, developmental and financial operations of the program. It's taking the best of corporate analysis and strategic thinking and applying it to the football operations, something that everyone involved with the Blue Devil program agrees is sorely needed.

Will it work? Who knows, but it can't do anything but help. The folks putting the plan together have interviewed individuals involved with 30 different athletic programs to glean best practices to bring them back to Durham. The plan and an accompanying commitment to increase spending have to be taken by Blue Devil fans as bright lights at the end of a very long tunnel of Blue Devil football.

Whether that means the Devils will break that losing streak in 2007 or 2008, I don't think the Fuqua team can tell you, but one look at the Blue Devils 2007 schedule tells me that 2008 is more likely. There are no easy games on the 2007 schedule, as the non-conference schedule features Navy, Notre Dame, much improved Northwestern and perhaps Duke's best chance for a win - the opener home against UConn.