Green Dukes Again End Season With Program-Threatening Controversy
5-Game Winless Streak, Missing Spirit Tree, Questionable Decisions Prompt Coach’s Firing, Team’s Disbanding

The Duqueswood University Green Dukes ended their promising 4th NCBB season with a 5-game winless streak and a slew of controversies that have shaken the program to its roots, resulting in the termination of the program. Since tying the UBC Chunderbeards and falling to the T-Roy Trojans, the Green Dukes were bested by 2-1 by the Air Force Falconorcs and the Marshall Thundering Herd, and struggled to a 1-1 tie with the Navy Midskeletonmen in a violent death-filled match.


The Green Dukes’ homefield, Uther J. Rune-Elf Athletic Field, which has grown each year with the team’s popularity on campus, now sits empty, closed until further notice

In addition to the late-season collapse, two developing controversies have prompted the university to fire Head Coach Gerric Smithson and disband the program following the Marshall loss. Months-long investigations into the disappearance of former wardancer Mirlin Spinleaf’s spirit tree and Coach Smithson’s decision to force his players to imbibe beer during halftime of the UBC game concluded with the finding of “gross wrongdoing” on Smithson’s part.

“With the assistance of esteemed parent donors Mirvis and Scyntia Spinleaf and VP of Student Safety Baerys Pondripple, Duqueswood University has found Gerric Smithson guilty of gross wrongdoing and negligence and dismissed him as head coach,” the university said in a recent statement. “All evidence indicates that Smithson desecrated the resting place of a former player and coerced members of his team into consuming beer. Though the university has been willing to look past the rampant maiming and deaths of over a dozen elven players in the past, these horrid crimes of uprooting a tree and making elves drink filthy dwarven beer have placed a stain on this program and cannot be overlooked.”


The Green Dukes treedia relations office sits vacant and vandalized, following the disbanding of the university’s blood bowl program

In light of this decision, the university destroyed all coverage of the final three games by the Duqueswood treedia relations department. Additionally, communications intern and Green Duke senior treeman Oakward Weatherborn was dismissed from his internship and suspended from the university when he reacted to these decisions by vandalizing the office in a very slow rampage and fracturing the skull of Baerys Pondripple when he tossed eh VP of Student Safety from the tree-office.
“See, sport is safe,” Weatherborn was heard to shout at Pondripple’s unconscious body. “You fall 20 feet, and you is not dead.”

Despite the purging of the game coverage, Duqueswoodian reporters were able to recover following mage-cast images and scraps of reporting from each game:


Orc blitzer Dust Devil Jr. stomps over the goal line for the winning score in the final seconds, after a key block from big ’un blocker Green Hornet opens a path by sending freshman Green Duke thrower Phaedry Featherwind to the pitch in an explosion of blood following a brutal head-butt


Navy anointed blitzer Skulland Crossbonies extends the Midskeletonmen’s 4-season murder streak vs. Duqueswood, killing senior co-captain Greeny Bullwind with a shoulder spike to the midsection


Shifty junior beastman Andre Sam dodges through a pair of Green Duke defenders before sprinting across the goal line for the 2-1 win just before final whistle

Thus, the end of the Green Dukes fourth season marks the end of an era at Duqueswood, as the blood bowl program, which seemed to always be teetering on the edge of collapse, is officially no more. Despite crowds of students gathering outside the university president’s treehouse and singing “For the Wood,” the team’s fight song in unison, the administration remains unmoved.


Duqueswood student protesters occupy the president’s treehouse, singing the Green Dukes’ fight song to demand the reinstatement of the school’s blood bowl program

Not only has the team been disbanded, but Gerric Smithson is being held by the Duqueswood Forest elven sentries to await potential execution following a trial later this week. The university will also hold its disciplinary hearing for Weatherborn at that time to determine whether the treeman will be permitted to graduate, and officially make the traditional walk through the university’s tree gate during Commencement.

The Duqueswoodian will provide extended coverage of the upcoming hearings, but for now, we leave you with this cryptic statement from Smithson, the only words we were able to get him to offer on the controversy and his upcoming trial.

“Look, they’ve tried to run me out of these woods from day one, and I’m still hanging on like the last leaf backlit by a glorious autumnal sunset. Sheesh, look at that, I’ve been here so long, you even got me talking like an elf. But anyway, I’m not out of options here. Let’s just say, I’ll be bringing a surprise witness to my hearing who can shed more than a little light on all this Tree-S, I mean, B.S. I just hope he can make it there on time. He’s not as fast as he used to be.”