Playing for Meaning

Wade in Wade: a fullback at full force. Photo: Jon Gardiner.

Duke football has had its share of academic achievers, but, even for them, the road hasn’t been easy. Fifth-year senior Alex Wade, listed as the nation’s fourth-best fullback by The Sporting News, graduated in the top one percent of his high-school class and is a pre-medical student. He is considering a combined M.D.-J.D. degree program—which, depending on the course of the current season, could follow a stint in professional football.

Wade entered Duke with the intention of majoring in chemistry but he had to give up that plan as a sophomore, he says, because practice schedules conflicted with an afternoon physical-chemistry lab. He did elect a course on the history of science, largely because it was conveniently scheduled.

As it turned out, the subject matter fed into his passion for science. He ended up majoring in history and earning departmental honors. His honors thesis looked at the boundaries between science and pseudo-science through the example of investigators who, in the Fifties and Sixties, were focused on UFOs. In researching the thesis, he made visits to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia and the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago.

But for all of his academic achievements, Wade says that his curricular choices have been circumscribed. His theater-studies professor encouraged him to consider majoring in the department and trying out for a play. Wade was tempted, but football—and his football scholarship—would have been sacrificed.

Wade enters the 2003 season as a team captain for Duke. And he ranks fourth among active ACC players, with 1,294 career rushing yards.

For a college football player, he notes, “just trying to schedule your classes is hard work.”