At the Wednesday weekly ACC coaches news conference, both Duke coach David Cutcliffe and Coach Jim Grobe had similar answers to this question. How would you characterize the Duke-Wake football rivalry (which renews this weekend)?

COACH CUTCLIFFE: I think it’s two teams that obviously come from similar universities that makes it a rivalry, geographic location make it’s a rivalry. Circumstances, like I said, that most universities are faced with. I think the thing is right now our programs are very similar. You have two teams that are going to play extremely hard, two teams that are going to be disciplined. They’re going to compete like crazy. Since I’ve been at Duke, and really quite often in recent times even before we came, a very hotly contested game, and it’s going to always be an exciting, good football game for the fans.

COACH GROBE: Well, I think it’s a great rivalry because the games have been really, really close. That’s what you look for in a rivalry, and our schools are so similar. We’re academic schools playing in a big-time football league. I think we’ve got both of us have a bunch of kids from North Carolina. A lot of our kids have played against each other in high school, so they’ve probably
developed a little bit of competitiveness going against each other at the high school level, and they get up here and it continues for four years. Our universities are very similar. Every year our games have been really, really close. We’ve had some barn burners playing each other since I’ve been at Wake Forest, and I would expect that that will continue Saturday.