When Duke and #23 Northwestern face off against one another on Saturday afternoon, the teams may feel as if they are looking into a mirror. Both schools are known for their academic reputations (the latest in academic rankings, US News, have Duke at #8 with Northwestern at #12. Their institutions are both more known for championships in other sports (Duke, of course, for men's basketball while the Wildcat women's lacrosse team captured seven national championships from 2005-2012). Yet a quick peek at history demonstrates how similar the teams are.

1) During eras of football futility, both teams pondered moves outside of major conferences - There is a slight chance that if others had gotten their ways that Saturday's game could have been a rather meaningless contest between two Ivy League teams as opposed to a battle between two up and coming BCS teams. In the 1980s, when NU struggled mightily with football, their athletic department strongly considered moving to the Ivy League. And as late as 2010, Duke alumni and well known columnist and author John Feinstein was calling for Duke to leave the ACC in football and join a less rigorous conference.

2) The winner of Saturday's game will get a one game advantage in the overall series record (currently tied at 8-8). Northwestern has been the more dominant team of late, winning five out of the last six games, yet taking all 16 games into account, the average score is Northwestern 23.5 and Duke 22.4

3) Both teams have appeared in 11 bowl games throughout their histories, with little success at winning their final game of the year - Duke is 3-8 while NU is 2-9. They both also have had recent streaks of consecutive bowl appearances (NU appeared in five bowl games from 2007-2012 while Duke's streak is still active at three bowl games)

4) Both teams have played in the Rose Bowl twice - Duke's appearances, of course, came much earlier in the team's history, losing the 1939 game 7-3 against Southern California and then falling to Oregon State 20-16 in January of 1942 in the only Rose Bowl to be played outside of California. Northwestern won the 1948 Rose Bowl and then more recently lost the 1995 game.

5) Both teams have been lead by a mixture of recognizable names along with relative unknowns - Many people know that before finding fame at Florida, the NFL and South Carolina that Steve Spurrier began his ascension in coaching strolling the sidelines in Durham. Similarly Dennis Green, famous for his "They are who they thought they were" post-game comments as head coach of the Arizona Cardinals, spent five years in Chicago.

6) Both teams current coaches are known as much for their off field character as their on-field success: In many ways Pat Fitzgerald could be seen as a younger version of David Cutcliffe. Both men know that their jobs have involved rebuilding football programs, and while Cutcliffe had a harder road in terms of football wins and loses, Fitzgerald had the daunting task of taking over a program after the death of its head coach, Randy Walker. Both men are known for being men of character both on and off the field, ones that seem to believe that a head football coach is responsible for not only creating good football players, but also good young men. And so far, while both of them have been on the list of sought after coaches for new openings, they have turned down other jobs to stay at their current positions.

Saturday's game will add another chapter to the history of both programs. NU will have a chance to demonstrate that it's win against Stanford was a sign that the program can return to its recent success. And Duke will have an opportunity to knock off a top-25 team at home for the first time since 1994 and maybe sneak back into the national rankings.