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Can you almost feel the Fall air in Winston-Salem, North Carolina? The sun shines bright and warms your skin. The tailgates with hot dogs and burgers, piles of Bojangles chicken breasts, and 12-packs of Dunkin Donuts, and refreshing drinks: Dunkin Donuts coffee with a splash of Bailey’s Irish Cream, an iced-down cold beer, or a bottle of cool water. Feels like football time in Wake Forest.
All these sensations are on the verge of coming our way in just a few weeks around and inside the Wake Forest football stadium. Hours before kickoff you’ll be able to buy a beverage and bag of chips and sit on comfortable sofas watching the 50-by-50-foot jumbotron showing other college game lubricating you for Wake’s game kicking off a few hours later.
Arrive early. Five hours early like I do. You’ll discover it’s a Saturday well lived. Do it for every home game.
Saturdays in the Fall. Saturdays at Wake Forest football games. Saturdays at the stadium, Saturdays watching the delayed run-pass option mesh offensive scheme befuddle defensive coordinators. Treasure that offensive brain teaser. It’s ours.
Saturdays in love.
The rest of the year we do other things, but when this season cycles around we are compelled to go to the games, party, connect again with Wake alumni friends, fantasize about the team’s realistic hopes for surprising everybody again and elevating into the nation’s Top 25.
We live for these seasons, these moments, these sensations, these feelings, the sun on our noses and foreheads then putting on a hat to avoid too much of it, later that night having whiffed fresh air for hours we sleep without disturbances. All that air relaxes our minds and hearts.
Inside the stadium, we sit as the Wake band parades around the field. A band member slams the drums with his stick. Black and gold outfits everywhere, a unified team. An all-afternoon Wake Forest celebration is on.
Next, music plays from the stadium jumbotron, usually good songs we’ve all heard that make us feel good inside our minds and hearts. During the game, the jumbotron shows kids dancing all around the stadium sporting their Wake Forest football attire.
Oh, look, over there by the endzone tunnel, it’s the Demon Deacon accelerating the motorcycle toward mid-field. The engine roars as do our hearts with anticipation for what will come next.
From that same tunnel the players all decked out in black uniforms with gold helmets adorned with the classic “WF” logo, some 90 football players sprint to mid-field, stoked. We roar.
Another football season, another Saturday, another Fall, another game. Life cycling around as it always does. This tradition will go on long after we’re gone.
Because it’s good. Because it holds humans together, gives our lives more substance and meaning and relief from life’s never-ending pressures, assures us we’re connected and there are constants we can cling to, reminds us we made a wise decision to attend Wake Forest where we learned and grew and made friends, and lost and won, and found out we could press on.
At the center of all of this is one person. There he is jogging out with all his players he loves.
The embodiment of hope and pride for all of us in all parts of our lives, the players, his assistants, the faculty, the administration, the current students, and the alumni. The man standing at the front of the line leads us in a way that makes us all feel not only proud about all the winning but also more enriched by what he says and what he stands for.
Look at Dave Clawson, the perfect fit to be the coach of our Wake Forest football team, the ideal guy to lead any organization of any type because he’s honest, humble, and principled.
This is a man who holds press conferences that are more like Master Classes in how to live life the right way rather than narrow X and O discussions. If he taught a class on any subject, we would all benefit from taking it because he knows so much about how to live life and understands how to connect with people and motivate them to be their best selves. His inspirational skills are transferable across universities, situations, demographics, and industries.
This guy’s words instill hope in all of us. He talks about values being the most important thing to a football program: love football; go to class; be a great football player and great student; accept who you are; and accentuate your strengths.
In a college football landscape mired in name image and likeness money grabs and transfer portal chaos, Clawson shows us his program isn’t caught up in all that and remains philosophically aligned with what Wake Forest stands for: education the student athlete emphasizing both, developing a human being to become better in all phases of life not just football.
He talks about the value of a Wake Forest degree being over the course of a lifetime more valuable than the hundreds of thousands of dollars college football players, including his, are getting offered to transfer to other schools to display their football talents.
He’s right.
He talks about relationships being the most important and lasting outcomes of a college football experience. The bonds he has with his players, the bonds we have with our alumni friends at tailgates and in the stands.
He’s right.
No one expects Wake’s football team to make much of a splash this season. We love that Clawson is a master psychologist in this underdog role. Shun his team. Ignore all the remarkable accomplishments during his tenure, the best run of wins in Wake Forest football history.
This Fall Clawson will work his magic like he always does, inspiring his team to overachieve. He’s got his talking points down and they’re persuasive:
Of the 14 teams in the ACC Wake ranks 14th on the list of high school players they recruit in terms of 3-star, 4-star, and 5-star rankings. And yet – he points out – Wake has gone to more consecutive bowl games than every team in the ACC besides 5-star-loaded Clemson.
He says you have to play to your university’s strengths in building a successful program. The strengths of Wake Forest, he says, are the world-class-quality education, a small size that helps players develop deeper and more lasting relationships with coaches, students, and professors.
He’s right.
As we move closer to the opening kickoff in a few weeks, everything feels right about Dave Clawson and Wake Forest football while the rest of college football feels flimsy and corrupt.
It’s mostly because we have a leader who will one day be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame more for his character and impact on people as his impressive number of wins.
Already we’re being disrespected. Good. We’ve got a quarterback, Mitch Griffis, who will be better than everyone expects. Word is the incoming class of freshmen players is the best during Clawson’s tenure, which means more winning celebrations for us and, more to the point, more years to watch Clawson lead and inspire all of us. He’s never leaving Wake to coach another college football team because he knows he’s in the perfect situation for him. He’s an intellectual at heart and that’s what Wake Forest is all about.
Counting down to kickoff.
A Fall festival of football in Winston-Salem for all of us – once again.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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