Where are Duke's past championships?
Yesterday, we looked at the 10 times in Duke football history that the Blue Devils have entered the season as either the reigning ACC conference champion or a bowl champion (or both).
Using typical combat sports rules—where a champion keeps its title for as long as it keeps posting wins—Duke has never made it past Halloween with its title intact.
Assuming that the first team to beat Duke took the Blue Devils’ title and held it until that team lost it to someone else, we’re faced with an interesting question: What happened to those nine titles.
For instance, Duke won the 1944 Sugar Bowl. It won its first two games of the 1945 season before losing the title belt to Navy on Oct. 6, 1945.
Navy defended the Sugar Bowl title six times, winning five of its next six games and tying the other, before losing to Army on Dec. 1, 1945. Army went undefeated in 1946, then started 1947 3-0-1 before dropping the title to Columbia.
That was in 1947. Over the last 71 years, that title has continued to bounce from team to team.
The title has changed hands 198 times and has been held by 74 different teams. Every current team in the SEC has held it, as have eleven ACC teams (everyone except Wake, Louisville and BC).
Duke has actually played for that title several times. The Blue Devils lost to then champion Tennessee, 33-20 in 1956, to LSU, 50-18, in 1958 and to Georgia Tech, 48-7, in 1966.
The Blue Devils next shot was Oct. 5, 1974, when the Blue Devils—after a 29-year drought—once again won the at 1944 Sugar Bowl title.
Duke beat Purdue, 16-14, at Wallace Wade.
Here’s where things start to get fun.
In that game, Duke ALSO regained its 1953, 1954, 1955, 1960, 1961 and 1962 ACC titles, as well as the 1956 Orange Bowl title and the 1960 Cotton Bowl. All of those titles, after some initial separate bouncing around, ended up in the hands of Purdue prior to that game.
Duke defended those titles successfully once, against Army, before the Blue Devils lost to Clemson on Oct. 19, 1974, 17-13.
Duke would play for the title one more time, on Oct. 2, 1999, when the Blue Devils lost to FSU, 51-23.
Since then, the Duke titles have had an interesting, Forrest Gump type, ride through college football’s biggest moments. The epic Miami-Ohio State BCS championship game in 2002? The Duke titles were up for grabs as well. They were also there for the Texas-USC Rose Bowl title game in 2005.
And now? The titles bounced between Pitt, Penn State, Ohio State, Purdue and Michigan State last year before ending up with … The Ohio State Buckeyes, who enter the season as the 1944 Sugar Bowl champions, as well as champions of the 1954 Orange Bowl, 1960 Cotton Bowl and 1953, 54, 55, 60, 61 and 62 ACC.
That leaves three other Duke titles:
2015 Pinstripe (photo at top courtesy Duke Athletics)—which has gone from Duke to Wake Forest to NC State to Clemson to Pitt (Duke lost a chance to regain the title from the Panthers on Nov. 19, 2016) to Northwestern. Duke then regained the title from the Wildcats on Sept. 9, 2017 and defended it twice before losing to Miami on Sept. 29, 2017. Miami would go on to beat Syracuse three weeks later and win all of Duke’s previous titles as well, and the current 2015 Pinstripe Bowl champion is also Ohio State. (The Buckeyes also hold just about every year’s major bowl and conference titles.)
2017 Quick Lane—The Buckeyes don’t have this one. Duke lost it to Virginia Tech, and the title then went to Notre Dame and then Clemson, who enters the season as the 2017 Quick Lane champs (as well as a few other more notable titles).
2018 Independence—Duke enters the season as champion, having won the title in its last game.
So, with the season about to start, we'll begin tracking who will be playing for Duke's old titles each week.
Quick Lane: Clemson, Aug 29 vs. Georgia Tech
Independence: Duke, Aug 31 vs. Alabama in Atlanta
Everything else: Ohio State, Aug. 31 vs. Florida Atlantic
