Duke’s path to the 2025 ACC Championship Game was a minor miracle wrapped in a series of perfectly timed results. The Blue Devils needed California to upset No. 21 SMU on Saturday night, and they did. When SMU’s Sam Keltner missed a 52-yard field goal wide right with three seconds remaining, Duke was headed to Charlotte. Cal’s interim head coach, Nick Rolovich, making his debut on the sidelines, didn’t let the opportunity slip to turn Duke’s good fortune into something meaningful.​

Rolovich took to social media with a pointed but light-hearted suggestion. He wrote, “Congratulations to @DukeFOOTBALL for making it to the @ACCFootball championship game. In this season of gratitude, I think it would be a fine gesture for Coach Diaz and all happy Duke fans to make a donation to a charity of the #Calgorithm’s choice. Calgorithm, do your thing.”

The tweet quickly went viral among college football fans. And Rolovich’s playful call to action struck a chord with Blue Devils supporters who recognized just how lucky their team had gotten.​ Turns out, Duke fans took the message to heart. 

Barstool Blue Devils, a popular fan account, confirmed on social media that “Duke fans have been donating to Cal for their help in sending Duke to the ACC Championship”. The Calgorithm Department of State fan account even jumped in to help direct donations, posting links for “thankful and generous @DukeFOOTBALL fans” looking for Berkeley-area charities to support. 

The fact that Duke is even in Charlotte wasn’t in anyone’s wildest dreams a few weeks ago, especially after Virginia absolutely demolished them 34-17 earlier this month. But the Blue Devils needed a confluence of events to fall perfectly, and they did. They picked up a 49-32 win over Wake Forest. What also helped was when Pitt lost to Miami 38-7.

While some may call it luck, head coach Manny Diaz wasted no time defending his team’s legitimacy on an ACC media call Sunday. “It’s not by accident,” Diaz said. “Everybody agreed to the rules of engagement, right? We play in a conference, and we all agreed to how we sort out who the top two teams are, and through the rules we ended up being one of the top two.”​

Diaz wasn’t backing down from critics who mocked the idea of a five-loss team either. “We lost to two 10-win teams, two 9-win teams and an 8-win team,” he explained. “Two of our losses were one-score games on the road to a Group of Five school.” 

The head coach even issued a warning about the precedent being set. He said, “If the whole argument is should a Group of Five school be in the playoff at the ACC’s expense, well, you can forget about ever booking home-and-home game and encouraging teams to go play good competition home and away. We could have just scheduled better and had nine wins.”  

Now Duke gets another crack at the Virginia Cavaliers on Saturday, December 6. Diaz knows his team needs to play infinitely better than they did two weeks ago. “By far our worst game and Virginia was outstanding,” Manny Diaz admitted about that November beatdown. Thanks to Cal’s upset, the Blue Devils now have a chance to win their first conference championship title since 1989.

And the charitable donations flowing from Durham to Berkeley prove that college football, for all its chaos and controversy, can still bring out the best in people.​