A History Of Duke Football Coaches Since Bill Murray Retired

Some bright spots, particularly recently, but it ain’t all pretty

For the third time in four years Duke has a different head football coach. Apparently the program hasn’t hit the right balance yet between being formidable on the field and retaining coaches who succeed.

Manny Diaz is the 12^th Blue Devil football coach since the days of Hall of Famer Bill Murray (1951-65). Murray ushered Duke from Wallace Wade’s powerhouse tenure into the ACC, joining Clemson and Maryland as the new league’s national profile football programs.

Diaz, 50, will be trying to become just the third man to build a winning record at Durham since Murray retired, after Steve Spurrier in the 1980s and Mike Elko the last two years.

The majority of Duke coaches won their openers, sometimes surprisingly, as in 2023 when Elko’s squad decisively dropped ninth-ranked Clemson at Durham. Of those men who lost their first time out as Duke coach, all fell on the road.

This summer Diaz’s Devils open at Wallace Wade Stadium this coming Friday with Elon, a member of the Coastal Athletic Conference, formerly the Colonial Athletic Association.

Following Murray’s tenure Dick Harp and Mike McGee each won their first ACC games but never got untracked. McGee was a master of boring, ineffective offense – off-tackle rushes were a staple. Shirley “Red” Wilson won his opener against ECU, then went on to triumph just once more during the 1979 season and was gone by 1983. Wilson’ best feature as coach was an offense directed by coordinator Steve Spurrier that, enabled by quarterback Ben Bennett, lived up to its marketing slogan, “Red Means Go”.

Steve Sloan, once a winner at Alabama, dropped his first 7 games at Duke and sometimes seemed stunned by his teams’ low aptitude for executing fundamental football plays. Sloan had been an SEC Coach of the Year with the Crimson Tide. He was followed by Spurrier, a rare offensive practitioner and the only Duke coach in a 28-year span to lead the Devils to a bowl game (1989).

Barry Wilson, a member of Spurrier’s Duke staff, stepped into the head role when Spurrier returned to Florida, where he won the Heisman as a senior quarterback in 1966.

Wilson’s teams didn’t win more than four times in any season and at times seemed lost on the field. Fred Goldsmith, seemingly a savior, made an 8-4 splash in 1994 after prospering at Rice. But his charges spiraled to a humiliating 0-11 record in 1996, 2-20 over two years, and he was gone after the ’98 season.

Carl Franks, a former Duke tight end and offensive assistant under Spurrier, extended the era of gloom. He posted consecutive winless marks in 2000 and 2001 and went 7-45 overall, one more win than achieved by Ted Roof, his Duke successor. Between them Franks and Roof lost 90 games and won 13, cementing Duke’s also-ran reputation.

The Devils’ fortunes improved under Alabama alum David Cutcliffe; in his sixth year at the helm Duke won 10 games and its ACC division. From 2013 through 2015 Cutcliffe’s squads won 27 times, including the Pinstripe Bowl, Duke’s first postseason victory since 1961, and lost only 13.

Cutcliffe left after the 2021 season and was replaced by Elko, who unexpectedly posted a pair of winning records in two tries, then left for Texas A&M. Now it’s up to Diaz, a winner overall in three years at Miami (21-15).

Little noted, Diaz was also head coach at Temple — for two weeks — before returning to Miami, where he’d been the defensive coordinator under Mark Richt.