Kentucky Fact 62: Duke Football once avoided Louisville game by arguing they were the worst team in the country, judge agrees

“To say that one thing is “of a similar stature” to another is to say that the two are on the same level. Nothing in the language of the agreement suggests that it is necessary or appropriate to conduct an in-depth analysis of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the breaching team and its potential replacements. Nor does the agreement specify that replacement teams must be from a particular major athletic conference or even a particular division of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

The term “team of similar stature” simply means any team that competes at the same level of athletic performance as the Duke football team. At oral argument, Duke (with a candor perhaps more attributable to good legal strategy than to institutional modesty) persuasively asserted that this is a threshold that could not be any lower. Duke’s argument on this point cannot be reasonably disputed by Louisville.”

Judge Phillip J. Shepherd