But please, Duke, stop the football masquerade. Just stop it.

Stop pretending that football matters. It's transparent. It's also agonizing. It's like watching a trapped animal gnaw off a foot.

It's important to understand that unlike at most colleges, even those in the private sector, there's no motivation at Duke to become competitive in football. Other than the coaches and the players, no one even cares enough to press the issue.

During much of the past decade, Duke football has been alternately frustrating and depressing.

Now it's simply irrelevant. It might as well be a moon over Pluto.

Where football is concerned, Duke has become a place completely different from Northwestern, Stanford, Rice, Navy, Vanderbilt, Boston College and Wake Forest. Each of those schools has a desire, maybe a need, to stay within shouting distance of the football mainstream.

Duke could not care less, but it doesn't yet have the courage -- nor the intelligence -- to say so.

The program has become nothing more than an excuse to spend lots of money on facilities, scholarships, coaching salaries, support staff, travel, stadium upkeep and many other related areas. In college football, losing is an expensive ordeal, and that's especially the case at private schools.

The good news is Duke doesn't care about the steady financial drain. There's that much money in the endowment fund. Most schools try to raise donations by the millions. Duke rakes it in by the billions. The football program can be compared to owners of some professional sports franchises. It's an expensive hobby, but so what?

But should the time come that Duke wants a more competitive football team, odds are that Roof is not the coach to achieve it. What's more, athletics director Joe Alleva isn't the person to find a better coach.

Counting Saturday's 37-0 loss to Virginia at Wallace Wade Stadium, the two coaches hired by Alleva have a combined 12-71 record. Carl Franks, in nearly five seasons, went 7-45. Roof, almost midway through his third full season, is 5-26. During the same stretch, the Blue Devils have gone 6-53 in ACC games.

Through four games this season, Duke has scored one touchdown. Seven of 10 losses last season were by 25 or more points.

The performance against Virginia was the most stinging indictment yet about Roof's coaching ability. At home and coming off an open date, the Blue Devils struggled to execute the sport's most basic play -- snapping the ball from the center to the quarterback. At no time did it seem likely that the offense could produce so much as a field-goal attempt, much less a conversion.

Roof said the team is going through "growing pains." It would have made a lot more sense had he said "shrinking pains." Watching the game on television, I spent most of the afternoon in mortal fear that Duke's players, who frequently lost control of their tempers, would suffer serious injuries.

It's been proposed by some that the program should be dropped down to the NCAA's Division I-AA. If being more competitive becomes important, going I-AA makes some sense. At least it would be a reasonable refuge if Duke really wants to have a program.

Whether the 11 other ACC schools would allow Duke to play I-AA in football and remain a conference member for all other sports is debatable. But I wouldn't bet against it at this point. As long as Mike Krzyzewski is coaching, the ACC needs Duke basketball and the money it generates. A compromise could be worked out.

Besides, moving down in football probably would be the best move for everyone. It's obvious that Duke is hurting ACC football, and ACC football -- weak as it may be -- is is only putting Duke in a progressively more hopeless situation.

The league would have to find a 12th member for football-only purposes, but that could be done. Lots of schools would jump at the opportunity. Duke couldn't share in the football revenue, but it still could schedule nonconference games against North Carolina, N.C. State and Wake Forest.

Duke football, from 1930 through most of the 1960s, was good enough to beat any opponent in the country. But situations change. Attitudes change. Priorities change.

Since the late 1980s, the Blue Devils have been in full retreat on the field and in the offices of the program's management. It's all happened in the absence of strong objection on campus or off. Football just doesn't matter any longer, and there is nothing whatsoever wrong with that. But Duke, of all schools, should be smart enough to admit the obvious.