Duke steps back into spotlight
Blue Devils will benefit from experience earlier this month, but still relatively new to this
DURHAM – There isn’t much sense in trying to insulate a team of 18-to-23-year-olds these days.
Duke is hosting ESPN’s College GameDay for the first time on Saturday, the culmination of an undefeated start and highest national ranking for Duke’s football team (17th) in nearly 30 years.
With that comes increased attention and noise — all of those periphery distractions ahead of Saturday night’s primetime showdown against No. 11 Notre Dame.
“In this day and age, you can’t insulate them aside from locking them in a closet somewhere,” coach Mike Elko said on Monday afternoon.
To be clear: Nobody is actually getting locked in a closet.
“It’s not necessarily about insulating, it’s more about educating,” Elko continued. “And we have smart kids. So … it’s not that I’m worried about it, it’s not like we have an overconfident group or a big-headed group.
“It’s just kind of educating them on how to get through the week.”
The good news here is that’s not all that dissimilar to what Duke has been doing for the last three weeks.
Elko has been encouraged by how mature the Blue Devils have been when approaching the past three games, all of which were won by at least three touchdowns.
“Just trying to stay focused on the task at hand, right?” Elko said. “And that’s going out and having really good practices, getting the game plan down and knowing what we’re trying to execute and knowing the things that are going to be important for us to go out and have success.”
Duke was on college football’s main stage earlier this month, playing the lone and last game of the opening weekend.
The Blue Devils handled that well by handing Clemson a 28-7 defeat; but that was still just one time in the spotlight, instead of a Notre Dame team that you’ve got to go all the way back to … two days ago when it hosted GameDay and played Ohio State in the primetime ABC slot.
“We still don’t have the volume of it that the teams that we’re playing on this stage do,” Elko said. “So, that’s still an area that concerns us. First time hosting GameDay with all of the noise and the buzz that’s around that.”
It’s education over insulation that will alleviate that concern — and in the coming days, it’ll be Duke’s preparation level.
“I told the guys this morning, you know, ‘We’re getting a lot of congratulations for GameDay coming here. I’d rather wait and get some congratulations for how we play a football game on Saturday night,’” Elko said.