David Cutcliffe

David Nelson Cutcliffe (born September 16, 1954) is the Special Assistant to the Commissioner for Football Relations at the Southeastern Conference and former college football coach, most recently head coach of the Duke University Blue Devils.

In 1976, Cutcliffe took a job at Banks High School where he served as an assistant and later as the head coach.

In 1982, he was hired as a part-time coach at the University of Tennessee.

A year later, he was promoted to full-time status as the tight ends and assistant offensive line coach.

By 1990, Cutcliffe was promoted to quarterbacks coach.

He became offensive coordinator as well in 1993.

As coordinator, Cutcliffe helped lead the Vols to two Southeastern Conference championships and a national championship.

He also helped groom Heath Shuler and future Super Bowl MVP and Pro Football Hall of Famer Peyton Manning, serving as their position coach.

On December 2, 1998, Cutcliffe was hired as the head football coach at Ole Miss after Tommy Tuberville left for Auburn.

Cutcliffe had success at Ole Miss, where he recruited Eli Manning, son of Ole Miss player Archie Manning, to play quarterback.

In 2003, Cutcliffe's Rebels tied LSU for the Southeastern Conference West Division title, and they won the Cotton Bowl Classic, the Rebels' most prestigious bowl game since the Johnny Vaught era.

The bowl victory capped off the Rebels' first 10-win season in 32 years, and only their second since Vaught's tenure.

Cutcliffe was fired by Ole Miss Athletic Director Pete Boone in December 2004 after his only losing season at Ole Miss.

Boone had asked Cutcliffe to fire some assistant coaches and provide a detailed plan for improving the program, specifically the defense and recruiting.

Cutcliffe refused to fire any staff members, and was subsequently fired along with his assistants.

After his stint at Ole Miss, Cutcliffe was hired by head coach Charlie Weis as the assistant head coach and quarterbacks coach at Notre Dame, but health problems forced him to resign before his first season there.

Cutcliffe next led Duke to its first ACC victory since 2004, with a 31–3 rout of Virginia.

In 2005, he underwent successful triple-bypass surgery to correct a 99-percent blocked artery.

After taking a year off he returned to Knoxville to coach Tennessee again and join his sons, Chris Cutcliffe and Marcus Hilliard, then Tennessee students, on campus (his oldest daughter, Katie Cutcliffe Kolls, would also attend Tennessee).

After Cutcliffe's successor as offensive coordinator at Tennessee, Randy Sanders, resigned, Phillip Fulmer rehired Cutcliffe to replace him.

Cutcliffe led a major turnaround of the Tennessee offense during the 2006 season.

Tennessee quarterback Erik Ainge ranked among the nation's top 25 passers by yardage, and wide receiver Robert Meachem had the third-most receiving yards of any player.

This was a complete turnaround from the team's 2006 game against UVA, in which the Blue Devils were shut out 37–0 in Wallace Wade.

Duke proceeded to lose to Georgia Tech and Miami before notching its first road win of the season, a 10–7 victory over SEC opponent Vanderbilt.

Next, on the road at Wake Forest, Duke lost in overtime, 33–30, missing what would have been a game-winning field goal at the end of regulation.

This was another in a string of such painful kicking miscues for the Blue Devils, including a miss at North Carolina in the previous season.

Cutcliffe was hired as the head football coach at Duke University on December 14, 2007, replacing Ted Roof, who had amassed a 4–42 win–loss record (1–31 in the ACC) over four years at the school.

Cutcliffe inherited a program that had tallied only three winning seasons in the last 25 years and, before the 2008 season, had not beaten an ACC opponent in over three seasons.

Cutcliffe immediately began a strength and conditioning program, challenging the team to collectively lose 1,000 pounds after finding the team in less than ideal physical shape.

On Saturday, August 30, 2008, Cutcliffe won his first game as Duke's head coach, defeating the James Madison Dukes 31–7, before a crowd of 32,571, the largest in Wallace Wade Stadium since 1994.

The game marked the introduction of a number of rituals that Cutcliffe hopes to turn into Duke traditions, including the Blue Devil Walk, which parades the players and coaching staff from Duke Chapel, through West Campus and past Cameron Indoor Stadium to Wallace Wade Stadium, and the "Blue Devil Rock", located in the stadium tunnel and mined from the same quarry used in the construction of Duke's West Campus.

In Cutcliffe's second game, Duke lost to Northwestern in a mirror image game of the previous season's matchup, twice falling short of a touchdown deep in Northwestern territory.

After the home loss against Northwestern, Duke hosted Navy, prevailing 41–31.

Under Cutcliffe, in 2012 the Blue Devils ended an 18-year bowl drought and also brought the Victory Bell back to Duke after beating arch-rival University of North Carolina.

The following season, Cutcliffe led the team to a second straight bowl appearance, another win over North Carolina, an Atlantic Coast Conference Coastal Division championship and the first 10-win season in school history.

He also earned multiple college football coach of the year awards from the Walter Camp Football Foundation, the Maxwell Football Club, and the Bobby Dodd Foundation.

Cutcliffe was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, which played a formative role in his development as a football coach.

He has two brothers (Charles "Paige" Cutcliffe, and Raymond Eugene "JR." Cutcliffe) and three sisters (Mary Marlyn Cutcliffe Sullivan, Margart Lynn Cutcliffe, and Elizabeth "Buff" Cutcliffe Easterly).

Cutcliffe attended Banks High School in Birmingham where he played football.

He attended the University of Alabama, where he worked as an assistant director of the athletic dormitory.