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DURHAM - Rather than fidget or curse the falling rain, David Cutcliffe surfed Saturday night. On the Web, that is. The parking lot wasn't really that inundated.

"I have my laptop down there and I kept looking at the weather radar," Duke's coach said. "I knew it was going to be a while. I've become a pretty good weatherman after 32 years of coaching."

And so the Blue Devils waited 90 extra minutes for their new leader's era to start for real as lightning delayed the game with James Madison.

"It was kinda miserable," quarterback Thaddeus Lewis said.

Perhaps a slight exaggeration. Lewis and the Devils know misery, and in the end, this did not qualify. Their 31-7 victory over the Dukes captivated an impressive crowd and gave the constituency cause for smiles and hope.

Next up is Northwestern, the only FBS opponent Duke has beaten since Nov. 13, 2004. The Devils won in Evanston, Ill., last season, and they're above .500 for the first time since a win over Rice made them 2-1 on Sept. 13, 2003.

That was the ACC's good news from Saturday.

 
You can expect the national media to go off on ACC football after the league's teams went 2-4 against other FBS members and sustained the losses by an average score of 34-10. That, appropriately enough, was the verdict in ninth-ranked Clemson's wire-to-wire domination at the hands of Alabama in the Georgia Dome.

Clemson hasn't won as a Top-10 team since the No. 5 Tigers beat North Carolina on Oct. 21, 2000. That was coach Tommy Bowden's first season.

Virginia' 52-7 home loss to USC was the program's most lopsided defeat anywhere since a 57-10 loss at South Carolina in 1987 that occurred less than 18 hours after one of the Cavaliers died of cancer. The Trojans administered the most thorough whipping of the Cavs in Scott Stadium since Clemson pasted them 55-0 in the 1984 season-opener.

Both of those UVa teams went on to bowl games. The current squad, thinned by various off-field screw-ups, is not expected to make that kind of charge.
Because of a schedule that includes Labor Day games, The Associated Press poll won't be released until Tuesday. When it is, might Wake Forest be the ACC's marquee representative?

The Tigers will take a serious tumble from No. 9 after their disaster, and 17th-rated Virginia Tech is likely to drop a few spots after losing to East Carolina. The Demon Deacons, who checked in at 23rd, more than upheld that distinction with a comfortable win at Baylor. (If anything in Waco, Texas in August can be considered comfortable.)

The AP has released more than 700 weekly surveys since the ACC's inception in 1953, and only five of them have had Wake as the highest rated ACC team. It happened three times in 2006 and twice in 1979.

What if the Deacs are the league's only representative? That would be a first.

Contact Rob Daniels at 373-7028 or rob.daniels@news-record.com