Why Duke Cancelled the Wake Forest Game
Duke chose not to play the Wake Forest game, originally scheduled for last Saturday, on Dec. 19, pointing out that it would mean an addition two weeks on campus for the players.
David Cutcliffe went into detail on the decision.
“Certainly, I talked with our team about what was lying in front of us,” Cutcliffe said. “As I looked at this—out of school. We’re at a point to where these guys have been in single rooms. I just didn’t feel it was a healthy thing to do, to have two weeks, again, coming off after sitting three weeks, that it would be the right thing to do to our staff, to our squad. I told our players when we started this year that their well-being, their safety would be at the forefront of everything we did. I think that made it pretty clear that the best decision we could make was to forgo playing on December 19.”
Cutcliffe pushed for the game to be moved to December 12.
“All along, I asked if we could find some way to move to the twelfth,” he said, “which would be more appropriate for a team that’s done what we’ve been asked to do all year, and we got a no on that. With that, we decided that it was in the best interest of everybody in Duke Football just to go ahead and let the game not be played.”
Duke also looked at finding a replacement opponent to play on the twelfth.
“We looked at all those options, and it wasn’t an option,” Cutcliffe said. “It is what it is. Players do love to play. When you get all the way to December 19, when your whole schedule says you’re finishing on the fifth, it just didn’t fit. We looked at every option, tried to work every angle and option we could. It just didn’t work out.”
