bstrickland@heraldsun.com; 419-6671
DURHAM — When it came time to decide his football future, people person David Cutcliffe isolated himself.
As Cutcliffe pondered whether to stay on as Duke’s football coach or answer Tennessee’s advances, he kept his Duke team out of the loop. He didn’t contact his longtime mentor at Tennessee, former Volunteers head coach Phillip Fulmer.
“I felt like I needed a little space from most everybody,” Cutcliffe said, “on both sides of the ledger.”
Yet when Cutcliffe finally made his decision to remain at Duke, in the wee hours of Friday morning, it was all about people.
It was about his family, from his wife, Karen, to his 9-year-old daughter Emily, who wanted her father to remain in Durham and wanted him to tell her he would before her bedtime, not before Cutcliffe’s belated one.
It was about people he once knew, the words of his deceased father still telling him to “finish the job.”
It was about people he doesn’t know, in the form of countless e-mails from supporters hoping that he would stay.
And ultimately, it was about Cutcliffe and Duke, not Cutcliffe and Tennessee.
“I wasn’t looking for a job, and when you like the job you’ve got, you evaluate that first,” Cutcliffe said. “Can we win here? Yes. Can we build a program here? Yes. It just kept coming back ‘Yes.’
“Do I like the people are involved in our program? Yes. Do I like our fans, the university administration and the athletic administration? I couldn’t find a ‘No.’”
Publicly, most indications Thursday pointed toward Cutcliffe leaving. Even his Duke players feared the worst.
“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little bit disheartening all day yesterday,” tight end Brett Huffman said. “As soon as we woke up yesterday for lifting, we started hearing the buzz.
“It just continued and got even more heavy through the night. To be honest, it sounded like a done deal going to bed last night.”
But out of public view, Cutcliffe was seeing all sorts of signs that he should stay. He kept flashing back to the sight of his players the day before and the obvious progress they had made since his arrival. He thought about the two football freshmen and one junior college recruit who enrolled in school a semester early, saying he “felt a little dirty even thinking about” leaving them in the lurch.
And Cutcliffe certainly didn’t want to turn his back on his staff. Reports out of Knoxville indicated that Cutcliffe decided against going to Tennessee because he would have been forced to retain some of former coach Lane Kiffin’s assistants, which would have forced him to leave some of his assistants behind.
“One of the things that I can tell you is that if we were going to matriculate there, we were taking our entire staff,” Cutcliffe said, neither confirming nor denying the reports.
Then a reporter asked him if he’d have gone to Tennessee if he had been told he could take his entire staff with him.
“That’s very difficult to answer. It’s a great question,” he said. “It’s easy to say because I am standing here, but in following my heart, I had just too many indicators to be here, too many people that I have great respect for.
“So my answer probably would be, ‘Yes, I’d be standing right here.’”
Everyone associated with the Duke program couldn’t have been happier to find Cutcliffe still standing Friday. He hasn’t yet turned the corner at Duke, but a 9-15 record in two seasons sure beats the 10 victories in eight seasons that preceded him.
“In just two years, David and his stellar coaching staff have made a significant impact on the department, the university and the Durham community,” Duke athletics director Kevin White said in a statement released by the school. “Together, we look forward to building on that great work for many years to come.”
Cutcliffe’s decision to turn down an opportunity to head up the program where he spent 19 years certainly seems to indicate he’s at Duke for the long haul. The 55-year-old, in fact, joked that his next big decision might be whether to “pull the plug.”
Despite the gallows humor, Cutcliffe said his health was as good as it’s ever been, saying that his past heart problems (he had triple bypass surgery nearly five years ago) weren’t a factor in his decision to stay put.
Besides, Cutcliffe isn’t really that old, at least not compared to a couple of his critical sources for this crucial decision.
“I’ve got a pen pal. He’s 86 years old, and we were in heart rehab together,” Cutcliffe said. “He was up far too late last night because of this stuff, and he provided some very, very valuable insight and very valuable advice.
“Ultimately, you have indicators, and I had plenty of those through prayer, and then you just follow your heart. Someone sent me a Bible verse in regard to that. I think it’s Matthew 6, Verse 21, about finding your treasure where your heart is. We believe we have found our treasure at Duke University.”
