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Jim Grobe to Illinois?

bobknightfan said:
LOL. At some point everyone on this board will be dead and gone....and WF still will not have ever had another 3-year period with 28 wins & 3 bowl games like Jim Grobe had from 2006-08.

And if you know anything at all about WF football, you know that just as well as I.
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Grobe will go into the Wake HOF at some point, but looking back on 2006-2008, we beat a total of 4 ranked teams for those 28 wins. We beat 16th ranked BC during 2006 and then of course 22nd ranked GaTech in the ACC championship game. In 2007, the only ranked team we beat was 21st ranked FSU. Our bowl victory was over powerhouse UConn. In 2008, we again beat FSU who was ranked 25th at the time.
We were ranked at the end of the 2006 Orange Bowl season and started 2008 ranked but dropped out after week 6 26-0 loss at Maryland. We were unranked the entire 2007 season.
It was a fun time and was definitely successful compared to our past performance but I think Clawson can get us to consistently making bowl appearances, especially given how many bowl games there are now.
 
Illinois has a worse and more disliked Athletic Director than Wake and that is really saying something. They fired their coach one week before the season and the fan base has given up on the program. Beckman was a horrible hire to begin with. The AD is currently fighting off three lawsuits and will have a fourth from Beckmann as they are saying he was fired for cause. Plus most of Illinois' football talent leaves the state and there is a decent amount of talent. The Illinois football job is definitely at the bottom of the Big Ten and their entire athletic program is currently a toxic waste dump. Plus the President and Chancellor of the university just resigned over different scandals unrelated to athletics. That program is in worse shape than any other I know In the P5. Plus Mike Thomas is still the AD and has shown that he has no clue how to hire a good coach.

Actually Grobe to Illinois would be a good hire. They are going to suck anyways for the next couple of years and no one with any modicum of a good coaching resume who has a chance to get another job will want to enter into trying to fix the situation there. I hope Grobe gets the job, at least for a couple years. They will not win regardless and they need to clean things up.
 
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I said many times how much I admired what Coach Grobe did for Wake Forest Football. There should be no argument. BUT, he actually only did great things for about 4-5 years of his entire career at Wake. His last 5 years were honestly forgettable, and I would hope even he would admit it. The big question will always be why and how did he let the program decline after 2008. Anywhere he might land as a head coach now must face that unknown answer. Schools showing any interest have to be more appreciative of his reputation publicly and with the media as opposed to his true ability to turn around a failing program permanently.
 
Clawson is a good coach. I feel confident he will have success at Wake. Will he win 28 games over a 3 year period? Probably not. That was a confluence of many events. Grobe never had two top 10-15 programs in his division.

Grobe deserves our respect. He took Wake to levels that we had never been to before. And the reality is most coaching tenures end with a whimper.

Judging Clawson now based on the complete lack of offensive talent he was left with is pointless.
 
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bobknightfan said:
As the 3-9 & 4-8 seasons continue to roll by during the coming years, more people are going to remember those 28 wins & 3 bowls from 2006-08 with an ever growing fondness....and grudging appreciation. You won't ever see a 3-year period like that again.
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A Jim Grobe fan here, who agrees with you. I also acknowledge that the problem was Grobe hasn't been able to even sniff at one-third of those 28 wins (or a six-win bowl) in any season since. The AD can only afford so many seasons of empty seats. I have no problem with Wellman keeping Grobe as long as he did, and I have no problem with him making the change when he did. When Grobe and Wellman announced at the end of Grobe's next-to-last season that the following year would be a winning season, Grobe and Wellman knew that Wellman had to pull the plug when the following year wasn't any better, much less winning.
 
Grobe was facing the same rebuilding process that he left Clawson. Our offense was awful in 2013, and that was with a senior QB an NFL quality receiver and more OL depth.
 
I don't really care if he gets the Illinois job or how he does when he does get it. Wake made a huge commitment to him but he never made a commitment to leading a big time football program through the needed staff changes and recruiting effort. And then he blamed his failures on Wake on his way out. The only plus side will be if his contract has a buyout offset clause.
 
Absolutely no reason Wake cannot do what Duke has been doing the last few years on a consistent basis. Yes we may have to schedule a cream puff ooc schedulebut that is exactly what Duke does.
 
bobknightfan said:
Wake Forest was never going to be a "big time football program", no matter who the coach was, who was on the staff, or how much money was spent in recruiting. Anyone who believes otherwise is delusional.

Jim Grobe was National Coach of the Year in 2006. National Coach of the Year.....at Wake Forest. That includes schools like Alabama, Ohio State, Texas, Notre Dame, Southern Cal, Oklahoma, LSU, Auburn & Florida State, etc. Just think about that for a minute. Do you have any idea what the odds against that happening would have been? About a million to one.
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Hasn't Cutliffe won it once now as well. I seriously doubt million to one odds. Take historically bad team or a team coming off a few years get a bunch of seniors have a nice turnaround season and bam coach of the year.
 
jamesda3 said:
Absolutely no reason Wake cannot do what Duke has been doing the last few years on a consistent basis. Yes we may have to schedule a cream puff ooc schedulebut that is exactly what Duke does.
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Let's see how long Duke can sustain. They have had a very favorable division just like we did. These things run in cycles.
 
Why do people still respond to bobknightfan? Obvious gimmick poster
 
bobknightfan said:
Wake Forest isn't even Duke when it comes to football. Duke has more resources...and far more football tradition. Even though Duke went thru an extended down period until a few years ago (while with a few scattered exceptions, WF has had basically nothing but down periods for the last 60 years)....Duke has been to 2 Rose Bowls, 2 Orange Bowls, a Sugar Bowl & a Cotton Bowl, among others. Duke had a stretch where they only had 1 losing season over a period of 28 years.
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Dude, you are living in the distant past. WF beat Duke 12 straight years. Duke hadnt been competitive from Spurrier until 2 years ago.
 
You must be a glass is half empty kind of guy. Optimism much?
 
bobknightfan said:
The truth remains the truth....whether you happen to like it or not. Stick your head in the sand, if it makes you feel better....but the situation isn't going to go away just because you wish it would. I went to my first WF football game 57 years ago. I've seen a lot of WF coaches come & go....12 of them now since Peahead left in 1950. And he was the last one to leave with a winning record.

The bottom line is simply that WF is overmatched in the ACC....now more than ever before. In the right situation, a school like WF can compete occasionally in the ACC in basketball....though even that has become much more problematical....but not in football, where WF is in way over its head in today's ACC. After beating his head against the wall for a few years Clawson will eventually figure that out, too....and leave for greener pastures somewhere else.....with a losing record, just like the 12 coaches who preceded him.
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BKF may be wrong 90% of the time but this isn't one of them
 
When a coach signs a 25m contract to lead a football program he damn well try his hardest to make that program 'big time'. That doesn't mean keeping a clearly incompetent offensive coordinator because he's related to you or spending more time on the golf course than the recruiting trail. Whether or not it works out is one thing, but Grobe was paid a whole hell of a lot of money to give it a go. I don't think he did. And then to do stupid stuff like say he should have taken other jobs or blaming Skinner for his failures. Well it doesn't leave a strong impression of his character.
 
VaDeac said:
An older guy with a brief stint of success surrounded by lots of losses, coming in billed as the agent of positive cultural change.
It almost sounds like...
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This is by far the worst thing I have ever seen written about Grobe.
 
qcdeac said:
This is by far the worst thing I have ever seen written about Grobe.
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Not meant as a shot at Grobe, but just a glance from the Illinois perspective. Don't hear me say he's anywhere close to that other guy.
 
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