College football conference realignment has caused an odd circumstance for Manny Diaz and his Duke Blue Devils, meaning the team will rest well in October.
Duke Head Coach Manny Diaz Breaks Down Schedule
Diaz and Duke open their slate against Elon, then host Illinois the following week. The Fighting Illini are projected to be ranked to begin the season, and the difficulty isn’t isolated to that contest.
“If you look at our opening, Illinois, a 10-win team, then we have to go down to Tulane,” Diaz said last month on ESPN’s “College GameDay Podcast.”. “That’s gonna be a spicy game. That’s a 10-win team. Then we get our local rival. We get NC State here to start off ACC play, so a real big deal. Then we gotta go to Syracuse, another 10-win team from last year.
“And then we have the rare thing now in college football. We’ve gotta go to Syracuse, and next we’ve gotta turn around and go to Cal (on Oct. 4).”
Cal joined the ACC ahead of last season after the Pac-12 fell apart due to conference realignment. The Blue Devils will play just one game between their clash with the Golden Bears and the start of November.
“Something I’ve almost have never heard of before in my time in this profession — and I think there’s three teams in our league that have the same thing — we go bye, which makes sense coming back from the West Coast … (then) Georgia Tech at home, who beat us a year ago, and then another bye. We have one game in three weeks. It’s very, very unusual.”
Following those three weeks, the Blue Devils visit Clemson and UConn. The rhythms of Duke’s season will be unique to this period in the sport, with the travel and off-weeks it will have.
It’s not easy to predict this year’s successes based on last one’s results. In typical head coach fashion, Diaz didn’t even try.
“If we looked at it last year, we recognize what a fool’s errand that is anyway because who would’ve thought this time last year Florida State wins two?” Diaz said.
“We are definitely in the most volatile time year-to-year in terms of what can happen. Somebody said this past week (about) our Vegas win-loss deal, and I was like, ‘Does anybody remember what our win-loss number a year ago? … I’m sure it wasn’t nine.”
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Bookmakers had Duke’s over/under win total at 5.5 games last season, podcast co-host Pete Thamel said. That figure has increased by a game ahead of the upcoming go-round.
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