Chapter 1: What breaking news about Darian Mensah is discussed?
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Hey there, Duke fans. Welcome to episode 135 of DPR Bites. This one is an episode that I did not think we were going to be recording. It's Donald Wine here. I'm just here by myself on this because we have obviously some breaking news that we're going to quickly discuss at least over the next 10 minutes.
Darian Mensah, Duke quarterback, has decided to, at the very last minute, with just under six hours left before the transfer portal window closes, he has decided to enter the transfer portal. And sources are telling, widely reported, that... Miami is the team that is likely to secure his services for next year. Obviously, I'd love to have Scott on here.
Chapter 2: How does Donald feel about Darian Mensah's decision to transfer?
Scott is busy doing things. Jason is still in Africa and will be back at some point, I believe, this weekend. I tried to get a couple other people on here, but it just didn't work out with this late entry. And, of course, nobody was expecting this news, myself included. I just want to put this out there.
Uh, as we kind of just talk about this for a couple of minutes and we will have more coverage of this story later this weekend. Of course, a full episode is coming with the recap as we play Stanford and basketball tomorrow, but let's talk about this very quickly. Uh, Derry Mensah entering the portal is just an absolute gut punch. It really is.
Chapter 3: What implications does Mensah's transfer have for Duke's football program?
And I know there's been people out there who have already emailed our show or DBR podcast at gmail.com, but they're already emailing out of the emotion. And a lot of it has been directed at me personally, because as you all know, I am a graduate of Duke University. I'm also a graduate of the University of Miami School of Law. This doesn't sit well with me.
And I would just like people to not email me out of emotion because this is something, obviously, that I have a unique perspective as someone who works for the football team at Duke, who has been a fan of Duke since I arrived on campus and have always rooted for Duke over Miami ever since.
But yet my alma mater for law school is in the national championship game and has now poached one of our players. It's something that I don't like. And I just want to put out there that. The emotion part of this is going to have to subside at some point, and we have to kind of look at what this means for Duke football.
And, you know, I'm going to spend all weekend trying to figure out that answer.
Chapter 4: Why is the timing of Mensah's transfer significant for Duke?
And so will Scott, and so will all of you out there as we just figure out how we recover from this. Because... With just under six hours left before the transfer portal closes and with the second semester at Duke starting and a last chance for a lot of players to enroll in class, this sets up a very wild predicament for Duke. It's one that is a position that we didn't think we would be in.
I'm sure the coaching staff is kind of scrambling at this point because it didn't feel like this was something that was going to happen until just a couple hours ago when some news started trickling out that this was a possibility. And it just kind of, I'm sure for a lot of you, after the high of the second half of the season, the four-game win streak,
Winning against UNC, winning the state championship, winning the ACC championship, winning the Sun Bowl, and doing at this point very, very well in the transfer portal and getting some guys that we thought were going to be present next year and getting Darian Mensah, not two weeks ago, said himself that he was coming back. Cooper Barkay said he was coming back.
Nate Shepard said he was coming back.
Chapter 5: What challenges does Duke face in the transfer portal now?
And all three of those guys were expected to be kind of the linchpins, the cornerstones of a Duke offense with Darian Mensah as early Heisman candidate. And now... we're scrambling here and it, it doesn't sit right with me. The tampering portion of this is, is not unique to college football.
And unfortunately, as we kind of experienced a couple of years ago, when Mike Elko decided to leave for Texas A&M in the middle of night, after telling his team, he was coming back. We kind of have to go through this again. And unfortunately, being a part of this college football landscape, this is the ugly side of things.
And this is the part that we don't like, but we have to figure out as a team to, to get past the emotion and figure out what they're going to do and how they're going to proceed with the building an offense around another quarterback, and also in these last six hours before the transfer portal window closes, figuring out how to keep a hold of everybody else.
Chapter 6: How does Darian Mensah's contract affect his transfer?
who might now be questioning whether they stay at Duke because Darian Mensah left.
And maybe Darian Mensah, I know there's been obviously some rumors out there about other guys who might be considering this because they wanted to stay in part to play with Darian Mensah and to be a part of an offense that would be hopefully prolific and to defend the ACC championship, maybe even win one again and get back into and get into the college football playoff next year.
Instead, Derry Mensah, who had a contract, and that's another thing that we'll talk about in a second, has entered the transfer portal where Duke really doesn't have an opportunity to counter and to find someone to replace him. And going to Miami, a team in the conference who Duke will go to play next year, there's a lot that doesn't sit right with this. And
For me, I'm just kind of trying to parse my thoughts because I'm going to have more lucid thoughts later this weekend when Scott joins me and we talk about this together.
Obviously, as a Duke alum, as a Miami Law alum, nobody really knows what I'm going through with this other than the people out there that I know that are both alums of both universities who really just don't... There's no way to parse what I'm feeling right now. But the personal emails, let's leave those in the drafts, please. I just want to put that out there.
I've already received a couple about...
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Chapter 7: What are the next steps for Duke football after this news?
people wanting me to disavow my allegiance to Miami. That's not happening. That's my school. Duke is my school. Duke is my home. And I hope people would consider that before they, again, email out of emotion or act out of emotion. Yes, this is an emotional time, but we have to figure out
as Duke, how we build from this, what this means for Duke football, what this means for college football and what the next steps are. And part of those next steps could be enforcing a contract, but that's not always a clear option here. And with this contract and the contract I'm talking about is of course, when Derry Minson, when we got him in the transfer portal last year from Tulane,
Part of the deal was that he signed a two-year contract worth up to $4 million each year for a total of $8 million. In that contract, according to numerous reports, including on three, Pete Thamel from ESPN has also reported this. There was apparently a clause in this contract that Duke owns the exclusive rights to Derry Mintz's NIL rights. And that can't be bought out.
But now, Darian Minson apparently doesn't care about that because he's moving to another school, likely Miami. And again, this is not set in stone. I've also heard reports that there are other schools that are trying to poach the poachers. And I mean, for us, that doesn't matter. But now there are calls to enforce whatever contract there is. And I'm sure Duke is working on that right now.
So I'm not going to speculate on what the contract may or may not say. And I'm not going to speculate on what Duke may or may not do.
But I will say that what hinges in this decision by Darian Mensah, similar to Washington, when DeMond Williams agreed to a contract and then decided to enter the transfer portal, was in the transfer portal for a couple of days, flirted with LSU and a couple other schools, and then went back after... You know, basically saying, oh, I can't really get out of this deal.
And Washington deciding with the Big Ten to try and enforce that deal through legal measures necessary. That is something that Duke has to consider. And I'm not sure what that may mean.
It obviously could set up something where it affects, no matter what, the reputation of Duke University's football team and their program and what players may think of it if Duke does try to enforce this deal to try and get a guy who clearly doesn't want to be at Duke to stay. There's a lot of angles here that we can take, but we're not going to do that right now.
We're going to hopefully gather more information over the coming hours and days. Scott will jump back on here at some point this weekend. I know we have a basketball game tomorrow night. We are going to recap that at some point this weekend as well. It's going to be a busy weekend.
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