Call it a mission statement.

According to the Duke athletics department strategic plan that the school's Board of Trustees approved Friday, the No. 1 priority for Duke football is to "change the culture" so everyone has a "winning attitude."

Duke will attempt to bolster a program that has lost 25 straight games against ACC opponents by working harder to identify gifted football players who can graduate from Duke, as well as add to and improve facilities and pay competitive salaries to its coaches.

"When we started to do the [athletics] strategic plan, a couple of things were serious problems that we needed to address," Duke President Richard H. Brodhead said. "One was how to turn the football program around. One was how to provide solid footing for the financing of athletics."

The genesis for Duke's assessment of the overall athletic program came in 2007, when former Duke football coach Ted Roof began looking for ways to improve the Blue Devils' performance on the field.

It seems obvious that Duke would want to fix football at the school. It is one of the few programs within the athletics department that has struggled in recent years.

It has been 19 seasons since Duke last won or shared an ACC title. It has been 14 years since the Blue Devils last played in a bowl.

Duke also went 13-89 under its last two head coaches. Both were hired by outgoing Duke athletic director Joe Alleva.

Alleva, who officially begins his duties as the athletic director at Louisiana State on July 1, recently told the Baton Rouge (La.) Advocate that it was "frustrating" that Duke lacked the "university commitment" to football during his time at Duke, although he didn't cite specific reasons.

Alleva agreed that Duke showed a bigger commitment when David Cutcliffe, a successful Southeastern Conference assistant and head coach, was hired to succeed Ted Roof in December.

But Alleva also said, "At Duke, without that being a university priority, there's only so much an athletic director can do."

The strategic plan acknowledged the university's support of Duke athletics "has not taken into account the cost of the changing landscape" of college sports.

But Duke now has a new plan for football and will soon have a new leader to implement it. The university is in the process of searching for Alleva's successor.

Two men -- Tom Butters, who hired basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, and Alleva, who oversaw widespread facilities improvements -- have guided Duke athletics in the past 31 years.

Duke's new commitment will start with money.

While reviewing the strategic plan, Brodhead said Duke learned a lot from the research the football program originally did on other Division I universities such as Stanford, Michigan, Wake Forest and North Carolina.

For now, Duke will double the annual subsidy, from $7.5 million to $15 million, it currently gives to athletics. Spending will not increase, Brodhead said.

"The whole point is we've been operating on what was increasingly an antiquated funding model," Brodhead said. "This is just an acknowledgement of the fact that athletics requires a different level of investment."

The Duke athletics department currently operates 26 sports on a $50-million annual budget.

"What we're trying to do is put the finances of athletics on solid footing, in the short term," Brodhead said. "Then, long term, we're looking to raise the endowment to cover the costs of athletics scholarships."

Duke already has endowed 61 of its 245.2 scholarships. The goal is to endow all of them.

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