Note: The following appears in the Duke football gameday program.
On more than one occasion, Head Coach Dabo Swinney has stated publicly that he would be in favor of the NCAA allowing teams to play an exhibition game during the spring. In all cases, it would be against a team that would not be on the schedule in the fall.
Many coaches have proposed a Spring Game be played as a fundraiser like some Division I basketball teams have done in recent years as a preseason exhibition game.
I know Swinney would be in favor of a Clemson vs. Furman Spring Game in Death Valley that raises money for breast cancer awareness, one of the main benefactors of Dabo’s All In Team Foundation. It would easily raise $1 million in one day for the cause he and his wife, Kathleen, are most passionate about.
Believe it or not, there is precedent in Clemson and Duke history for a Spring Game, as the two schools met each spring in March 1937, 1938 and 1939. They were the combined idea of Duke Head Coach Wallace Wade and Clemson Head Coach Jess Neely.
Do you think ACC Network would love to see exhibition Spring Games between conference schools, giving them significant inventory in March, April and May?
Clemson playing against Duke in this era, even in the spring, was a big deal, because both teams were led by Hall of Fame head coaches and featured All-Americans.
While both schools were in the Southern Conference, they did not play in the regular seasons of 1937, 1938 or 1939. All three of these Spring Games were played at Duke Stadium, now known as Wallace Wade Stadium.
When the two teams met in March 1938, Duke was coming off a 9-1 season in which it shut out every opponent during the regular season, then lost in the Rose Bowl 7-3 when Southern California scored a touchdown with under a minute left in the game. Duke finished No. 3 in the AP poll. Clemson was 7-1-1 in 1938, with the only loss coming to a Tennessee team that would finish No. 2 in the AP poll.
Duke won that March 1938 Spring Game by a score of 30-24 in what was a scoring fest in those days, as nine touchdowns were scored. (No extra points were attempted.)
Duke won the 1939 game by a score of 26-20 in an entertaining game that came down to the last play.
This game was a showcase for Clemson’s Banks McFadden and Duke’s George McAfee. Both would go on to make the AP All-America team during the 1939 season and be top-four overall picks in the NFL draft, McAfee No. 2 and McFadden No. 4.
Both had outstanding all-around games on this March 17 day. McFadden threw two touchdown passes to Shad Bryant, including one for 55 yards. He had a 55-yard punt “against the wind” that set up another score, and he added a 30-yard run. It was an amazing performance considering McFadden had just led the Clemson basketball team to the Southern Conference championship two weeks earlier.
McAfee scored three touchdowns for Duke, including a 55-yard run, and had a punt return that set up what proved to be the winning score. That winning touchdown was a one-yard run on a fourth-down play with just six seconds left in the contest.
Both coaches believed this “exhibition game” benefitted both teams for many reasons, including it gave freshmen, who were not eligible to play with the varsity in those days, some experience before they could play in varsity games in the fall.
The benefits of this Spring Game showed in the fall for both teams, as both finished in the top 12 of the AP poll and were a combined 17-2.
Clemson finished 9-1 in 1939 and defeated Boston College and Head Coach Frank Leahy (second-winningest coach in college football history on a percentage basis) in the Cotton Bowl for the school’s first bowl victory and first top-20 final ranking (No. 12). Duke went on to an 8-1 mark with a No. 8 final AP ranking. The Blue Devils’ only loss was against Pittsburgh by one point.
