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Such a short time ago, four years back, Wake Forest football elevated itself to a national power – yes that’s right – and made it all the way to the ACC Championship Game.
That was quite a night in Charlotte. Half a pro football stadium packed with Wake Forest fans from all over the place gathered to root for the team riding a several-year string of winning seasons.
The man at the center of this rather unthinkable ascent was head coach Dave Clawson. I became fascinated with everything about the guy: his erudition, clever offensive scheme, five-and-six-year player strategy, and honest belief he could make Wake Forest an ACC title contender. He was audacious and visionary.
This guy was unique, and an inspiration to me in every way. An avid reader of books, classy in press interviews, everything we would all want in our Wake Forest football coach – and more, actually. Better than we could have hoped for, a Wake Forest kind of guy to his core.
But college football changed in ways none of us could have ever imagined, so radically that we have situations where players can leave every year for any team and usually that’s the one that offers them the most money. A complete deviation from the system Clawson thrived in where players didn’t run to other teams for more money and had to sit out a year if they wanted to transfer.
A strategy is a tightly interwoven house of cards. It can work well but if any one of those cards gets pulled the entire house can crumble. Strategies are delicate.
Crumble is exactly what happened to Dave Clawson’s enlightened college football strategy. He built a system and set of beliefs and practices set up for success and that system got obliterated by what we all know to be NIL – paying players more and more money to play college football.
The past two seasons Wake Forest grasped in any way it could to find money to keep its best players and pay to acquire new and better ones. The problem was pretty simple: the university didn’t have enough money to compete for the best players and lost several of the best on its roster. The result was a depletion of overall talent with no real solution in sight right now.
It’s so much darker around the Wake Forest football program now than it was that night in Charlotte. And today it got even darker with the news that Clawson has decided to resign, or been asked to resign instead of being dismissed.
Whatever the real decision was, we know Dave Clawson spent a lot of time during press conferences the past two years complaining about how disadvantaged his program was because it didn’t have enough money to attract better players. He said he liked about half of his job, coaching players, and didn’t like the rest of it which was negotiating with current and potential players about how much Wake Forest could pay them.
I watched these press conferences and thought to myself: If I went public that I didn’t like my job, I’m pretty sure my boss would want to have a meeting with me to discuss it and find out why I felt the need to gripe to the world. The next thing that would happen is my boss would probably say something like “Hey, you obviously are not too happy in your job. Maybe we need to make a change or you should go find work that you’ll enjoy more.”
I don’t know if Clawson realized how risky it was to be complaining about his job in public. Maybe it was all calculated and he wanted to let his athletic director and president know how he felt and figured they would either find more money for his program or arrange for a settlement for his exit.
I don’t know what happened, of course. But if I were the president of Wake Forest I would have told Dave I wanted a meeting with him and at that meeting would have asked why he went public complaining about his job. I would have told him it was poor judgment and didn’t make Wake Forest look classy. It made the university look like it had a disgruntled coach who couldn’t stand losing in a new system he couldn’t control.
So he probably has known for months this would be his last year coaching the team.
The sad part about this it didn’t have to end this way. He could have stayed positive and not been so harsh about the lack of talent on his team which I don’t think helped his relationship with the players. He could have just kept all his frustrations to himself – like so many employees in corporations do every day and throughout their careers.
But he couldn’t. I guess when you make millions of dollars you’re not as worried about getting fired as when you make a lot less than that.
What I’m saying is I think Dave Clawson lost his way. Allowing his emotions and slightly holier-than-thou mindset get the best of him and he came across as a millionaire coaching football who was living a very tough life. It didn’t land well with me or a lot of other people.
Industries get blown up often. The business world is now amid an explosion fueled by artificial intelligence that will upend how and if people work for the next several decades. The commercial real estate industry got whacked by Covid and still hasn’t recovered.
Change is never-ending and it doesn’t seem fair and makes for discomfort when we’re directly affected. It just didn’t seem Clawson handled it well.
In a way you can’t blame him. His system was rolling along and then got torpedoed and blown to smithereens. It wasn’t his choice nor his fault.
But he made us all feel as if he had this huge problem when in reality we’re all dealing with huge problems.
This is a guy I like and respect and am appreciative for all the thrills he gave me personally watching Wake Forest football during his tenure.
I wish it hadn’t ended this way.
There is only one thing for us to do at this point: look ahead.
You know all about 72-year-old Bill Belichick announcing he’s coaching UNC next season. I think Wake Forest should get an older guy with a sterling football record. Unlike Belichick, who won six Super Bowls with one quarterback, this guy I’m thinking of one three Super Bowls with three different quarterbacks.
He showed he could win in different ways with different players and using different systems. This is what is needed: a man who can adapt and still win.
I saw him the other day in the Starbucks where I am typing this right now. I saw him on the Mall in Washington, D.C. after his team won its third Super Bowl.
He is a hero of mine for life. He is a hero in North Carolina. He could resurrect the Wake Forest football program from what are now its darkest days.
He is the man who can turn this around, the incomparable, respectable, and ultra-competitive Joe Gibbs.
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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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