By Bob Markus



The time is long past when a man's word was his bond and his handshake his troth. We are now living in an age when even a signed contract, as I once was told by my boss at the Chicago Tribune, "isn't worth the paper it's printed on." Nowhere is this more evident than in college sports, where football and basketball coaches have been known to jump ship more readily than a Shanghaied sailor. There is more loyalty in a street gang than in the play pens of academe. That, of course, is a two-way street. For every coach who leaves his team in the lurch to take his "dream job" there is one who is summarily axed with years left on his contract. In most cases, the fired coach at least gets his money. The jilted school gets to hijack some other school's coach.



That's why I think that, with the year less than three weeks old, David Cutcliffe has already locked up the Sportsman of the Year trophy. There are those, of course, who feel that Cutclifffe himself should be locked up. What sane man would turn down the head coaching job at Tennessee to remain in the same capacity at Duke? We're talking football here, not basketball. Duke football has been mainly irrelevant for the past 45 years, dating to Bill Murray's departure in 1965. Cutcliffe is the 10th Blue Devil head coach since then and only one of the previous nine--Steve Spurrier--posted a winning record. At some point in his three-year tenure, I visited with Spurrier in his office to do a story on the Duke revival and found him a little arrogant and brimming with self confidence. He probably could not be blamed for jumping at the Florida job when it became available. He was, after all, a Heisman trophy winner for the Gators.

Of course, Cutcliffe had some valid reasons to skip to Tennessee after Lane Kiffin's abrupt departure. He was a Vols' assistant coach twice and had the distinction of coaching both Peyton Manning, while at Tennessee, and Eli Manning, during his six years as head coach at Ole Miss. He also mentored Brady Quinn during a brief stint at Notre Dame. As a head coach at Mississippi, Cutcliffe had five winning seasons, culminating in a 10-3 season and a victory in the Cotton Bowl. But after a 4-7 season in 2004 he was told to get rid of his assistants and, in a move foreshadowing his recent decision, refused and was fired. After a stint with Notre Dame he went back to Tennessee and it was from there that Duke plucked him two years ago. He has family in Knoxville and knowledge of the program. He would have been a natural; his hiring would have gone a long way towards salving the wounded feelings of the Rocky Top faithful.

But he turned down Tennessee, one of the top coaching jobs in the country, to remain at Duke, where he went 4-8 and 5-7 in his first two seasons. "The job is not finished here," he explained. In a recent interview with McClatchy newspapers, he referred to Spurrier's three and out: "He came in, threw the ball around, and went on to a job at his alma mater. We're not trying to be a flash in the pan and go on to something else. We're trying to commit to this thing and make it a way of life."

Cutcliffe's approach was 180 degrees from that of Kiffin, who, after going 7-6 in his lone season at Tennessee, stunned the Volunteer nation with his mad dash to the West Coast. The USC job opening, of course, came because Pete Carroll unexpectedly left after nine highly successful seasons to become head coach with the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL. While some Trojan fans may be upset that Carroll left, most of them are pretty sanguine about it. After all, the man left them two national championships, three Heisman winners, and a lifetime of memories. All Kiffin left the folks in Tennessee was the bitter taste of ashes.