New business for Duke

Duke has one of the best business schools in the nation. Its football team is not quite as highly ranked.

So Duke has decided to use some of its business sense to resurrect its football program.

With one bowl appearance in the past 17 seasons, Duke football is re-evaluating every aspect of how it operates -- from the size of its support staff to the design of its stadium. Duke coach Ted Roof has decided to enlist some help from the business school in determining practical ways to reach his goals.

He'll rely on a group led by new Director of Football Relations B.J. Naedele, who is traveling to nearly 30 other universities to gather data on the best ways to bring Duke out of the doldrums.

Working with Naedele, a 2007 Fuqua School of Business graduate, is Travis Pearson, a Bayne consultant and former player, as well as two interns, one Fuqua student and one undergraduate economics student. Their mission is to create a comprehensive strategic business plan for Duke football.

A strategic plan is nothing new. Roof had a documented plan when he was hired as head coach in 2003, and he has updated it after each season.

What is new is that this plan will go far beyond recruiting and practice time, to encompass all football, developmental and financial operations of the program. The team is, as Naedele put it, "taking it to the MBA level."

Straight out of "Moneyball," Michael Lewis' book on baseball and business, the new plan will feature statistical regressions and cold, hard data about what exactly builds a winning program.

"Strategic plans have been around, but not with the rigor or discipline that we are doing here -- ours is very much based on comparative analytics and best practices," Naedele said.

The Blue Devils could use some outside-the-box thinking. Duke owns the nation's longest losing streak at 20 games. In addition, the football program, which brings in huge profits at most BCS schools, operated at a loss of nearly $1.7 million during the 2005-06 school year, according to the university's report under the federal Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act.

"The plan's focus is describing the gaps between Duke's program and where we would like it to be, and prioritizing those gaps," Pearson said.

The plan may also reflect corporate-level thinking catching up with corporate-level spending. Pearson said Duke's process was very similar to the ones he works on for some of the largest companies in the country.

Spending on college athletics across the country has grown astronomically in the past two decades, greatly outpacing expenditures in other collegiate areas. According to the EADA report, Duke spent $49.8 million on athletics in 2005-06, slightly above the ACC average of $48.5 million.

"The consensus, the vision is that this is a business, and there should be economic justification for the decisions made," Naedele said. "This is the future, and right now we're ahead of the curve."

The plan came about as a by-product of the Duke Football Summit, a gathering of more than 200 Duke football alumni this winter to discuss the state and future of the program.

The first step occurred this spring, when renowned marketing professor Gavan Fitzsimons led six of his students, including Naedele, in creating a comprehensive marketing and branding plan for Duke football, which had the lowest home attendance of all BCS schools.

"If you were to go out to corporate America and hire that level of consulting, that's a lot of dough," Roof said. "To be in a place like Duke and not tap into the resources on campus is not very smart, because there's some great resources here."