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Dan's Take on Whatever

Turd Ferguson said:
Obviously no inside info but I agree about ND. I think it is one of a handful of schools that Clawson would want to go.

I don't think he'd last very long there FWIW.
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I don't think he'd make it past two years at notre Dame. Theyd have no patience for six win regular seasons and a porous defense.
 
A lot of college students work on the weekends. Plenty have families. I’m sure that factors into attendance too.
 
I think Dave Clawson is a perfect fit for Wake Forest in pretty much every way possible. The only ways Wake Forest might not be a perfect fit for Dave Clawson are based on factors that are virtually certain not to change. Wake is a small school, with a small local alumni base, and a local population that is largely supportive of three nearby state universities (U*NC, State, and App). In that way, we are what we are.

The overall downturn in game attendance that is going on across college and pro sports will affect us more than other places. Again, not much we can do about that.

However, Wake offers a coach an arguably better quality of life—more patience and less pressure from the fanbase being foremost. He said just yesterday that he enjoys coaching at a school that isn’t a football factory, in spite of the challenges that come with it. There are only a handful of programs in the country that offer Wake’s benefits without our deficiencies, and it doesn’t appear that any of those jobs are likely to be open this offseason. He may go at some point, but I don’t see him leaving just to leave—it will be for the right opportunity, and based on what will be available in the next few months, I don’t see it happening. I hope he’s at Wake for a long while yet.
 
Several people have correctly said that there are only about 10 jobs where you can actually compete for a national championship and I doubt any of those schools want Clawson. It's like Grobe to Arkansas, it would be about money and a bigger crowd but never actually winning anything. There are maybe 2 or 3 schools that would maybe hire Clawson and he could have a shot at a title. A couple of Big10 schools and ND. Sure, the Miss St. job may open up, but he'll never sniff a new years day bowl there. Illinois would hire him but they'll never beat tOsu or Michigan. He fits in well in the ACC and quite frankly, if he could coach coastal he would make it regularly to the championship game.
 
Atlanta Deacon said:
Several people have correctly said that there are only about 10 jobs where you can actually compete for a national championship and I doubt any of those schools want Clawson. It's like Grobe to Arkansas, it would be about money and a bigger crowd but never actually winning anything. There are maybe 2 or 3 schools that would maybe hire Clawson and he could have a shot at a title. A couple of Big10 schools and ND. Sure, the Miss St. job may open up, but he'll never sniff a new years day bowl there. Illinois would hire him but they'll never beat tOsu or Michigan. He fits in well in the ACC and quite frankly, if he could coach coastal he would make it regularly to the championship game.
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I think it just depends on what he wants and if he's okay fighting the disadvantages Wake has and will probably always have. I know right now Clemson looks like too big a hill to climb for an ACC title, but things seem to run in cycles and Clemson may be in a different place 5 or 10 years from now. I mean look at programs like USC, there was a time not all that long ago where they were the premier program in the country and at the time looked like they would be for a long time. Tennessee was one of the nation's premier programs for a long time, but they haven't been for a long time now. Just like everything there as pros and cons to coaching at Wake. Pros are you're not going to get fired after a 6-6 season or even a 4-8 season if it isn't a trend. You can still make really good money, I'm sure Clawson is pretty much set at this point, I don't think he's reckless with his money. Cons are you're kind of always going to be behind the 8 ball in recruiting, you have to hit on a lot of players that are more of the project type coming out of high school. You're never going to have the rabid fan support of a Clemson or even an NC State. Not in numbers anyway. We have fans including myself that are just as rabid for Wake football as any Clemson fan is for them. However, facilities wise we're probably in the best shape there than ever before. He can stay here and go to bowl games most years, maybe win an ACC title down the road and he's a legend or he can go elsewhere to chase something more and take his shot. Whatever he does I wish him well, he's worked and hard and done a heck of a job for Wake Forest.
 
WF still must work to develop more local support and attendance using all means possible regardless of and, more importantly because of, the impact of:
1. Declining attendance nationwide
2. ACCN/ESPN/CBS (which charge a fee spectators pay) make not attending very attractive
3. Barely 20 percent of WF students are from around here
4. WF's local alumni footprint is a fraction of that of other local state schools and shrinking more quickly than ever before
5. Excessive amounts of time spent by officials replaying video thus lengthening games to the dissatisfaction of spectators

If WF doesn't figure out better ways to increase attendance in a stadium less than half the size of most state schools then it will continue to be difficult to justify everything that goes into achieving success on the field. Just saying WF does better than Duke doesn't cut it.
 
qcdeac said:
Didn't Notre Dame just have their 1st non-sellout in about 40 years. Both they and Navy were ranked, so it wasn't like it was a shit game.

Speaking of ND, I heard 3rd hand that Clawson loves Wake but ND is the one place Clawson would go if they wanted him.
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I would assume any head coach would leave for almost any school consistently ranked higher than us and who pays way more than us.

BiffTannen said:
I thought Dan said he wanted to compete for a national championship.
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Alabama or Clemson (7 of the last 10 nattys) aren't coming knocking for Clawson anytime soon. Neither are LSU, Florida, Auburn or OSU. Maybe FSU if we can somehow make it to and win the OB.

Notre Dame would be a dream job for probably 120+ of the 130 FBS coaches.
 
ChrisL68 said:
We have a small aging fanbase with younger alumni that are mostly out of state. There has never been a culture built that wake football is a can't miss event. It is what it is.
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Very true.
 
ChrisL68 said:
We have a small aging fanbase with younger alumni that are mostly out of state. There has never been a culture built that wake football is a can't miss event. It is what it is.
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This is reality. Part of the downside of being a small "national" university which has been the vision and plan since Tom Hearn took over in the 80s, is that Wake's already small student body has increasingly become national, not local, and alumni are consequently national, not local. Students who come to Wake from Connecticut, New Jersey, California, etc., don't grow up as Wake fans, they might become situational Wake fans while they're here, more for entertainment than from the deep emotional attachment of the lifetime fan, but then they go back to New York, DC or California for the jobs and never set foot in Groves Stadium (oops, sorry, "BB&T Field") after graduation unless they themselves send a legacy kid to Wake and they visit for Parent's Day.

And the local non-alumni in a declining mill town have for decades grown more and more estranged from an exclusive and obscenely expensive private university that they could never dream of affording to attend (or their kids, who are going to UNC, State or Appy State, which are far more accessible).

I don't really blame the students. Student apathy towards football is now a national phenomenon, even at football factories like Alabama, where Nick Saban was so enraged at students' leaving at halftime he ordered attendance monitoring. But at the Alabamas, unlike Wake, there is a huge non-alumni geographic fanbase who will fill the stadium. Wake does not have, and will never have, that sort of regional non-alumni fanbase.

I don't think Clawson would leave for a factory operation like an Alabama, but I could see him leaving for a Stanford, Notre Dame, Northwestern or even UVA, but unfortunately for him (and good for us), there are no vacancies in the near future at those schools. But when the opportunity arises, he is too ambitious to stay here. Sad but true.
 
Atlanta Deacon said:
Several people have correctly said that there are only about 10 jobs where you can actually compete for a national championship and I doubt any of those schools want Clawson. It's like Grobe to Arkansas, it would be about money and a bigger crowd but never actually winning anything. There are maybe 2 or 3 schools that would maybe hire Clawson and he could have a shot at a title. A couple of Big10 schools and ND. Sure, the Miss St. job may open up, but he'll never sniff a new years day bowl there. Illinois would hire him but they'll never beat tOsu or Michigan. He fits in well in the ACC and quite frankly, if he could coach coastal he would make it regularly to the championship game.
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great post
 
So, what if Manning is here next year and Clawson is not … and part of the reason that Clawson is not is because the destruction of the b-ball program lead to smaller Wake football crowds?
 
Penn State qb Clifford, who is having a very good season, has received numerous death threats for his Minnesota performance. We don't want fan "enthusiasm" to run that high or far.

Wake will never draw good crowds in football unless the opponent brings half the people. That's why home matchups with Va Tech, Appy, and ECU were worthwhile non-conference matchups despite being difficult wins. Some posters treat the games as a reunion and enjoy the social activity, as well as the football. For those who leave NC on graduation, it is pretty time consuming to drive hours each way to the game and then watch the Deacs lose as the team often did in my younger days.

I noticed on a MAC game last week that the home team was giving away free tuition in a lottery for students who attended the game. We could give away a semester's worth as a incentive to get more students in the stadium. Wake could certainly afford this giveaway 5 or 6 times each football season.
 
Atlanta Deacon said:
Several people have correctly said that there are only about 10 jobs where you can actually compete for a national championship and I doubt any of those schools want Clawson. It's like Grobe to Arkansas, it would be about money and a bigger crowd but never actually winning anything. There are maybe 2 or 3 schools that would maybe hire Clawson and he could have a shot at a title. A couple of Big10 schools and ND. Sure, the Miss St. job may open up, but he'll never sniff a new years day bowl there. Illinois would hire him but they'll never beat tOsu or Michigan. He fits in well in the ACC and quite frankly, if he could coach coastal he would make it regularly to the championship game.
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Yeah but he's not going to Illinois. I'm thinking spots like Iowa or Michigan State. Why can't Mississippi State win a title? Michigan State made the playoffs a few years ago and Mississippi State was ranked number one in the country in the last five years. Similarly, with the right coach why can't Arkansas compete for a title?

Illinois isn't in the same area as those other schools.
 
Wakeforest22890 said:
Yeah but he's not going to Illinois. I'm thinking spots like Iowa or Michigan State. Why can't Mississippi State win a title? Michigan State made the playoffs a few years ago and Mississippi State was ranked number one in the country in the last five years. Similarly, with the right coach why can't Arkansas compete for a title?

Illinois isn't in the same area as those other schools.
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Mississippi St. can't win a title because the SEC has Alabama, LSU, Auburn, Georgia and Florida. You have to have 4 or 5 of those programs below their historical performance levels of the last 15 years which isn't going to happen with the SEC network money. Florida has been down, but since then UGA is a contender. Alabama isn't going away until Saban dies and LSU and Auburn are really good. And none of those 5 schools would ever hire Clawson. You have a better shot to win a national championship at NC State than Mississippi St.

His best shot would be one of the Big10 schools you mentioned because it's more reasonable that the Big10 powers have down years than expecting to get through the SEC.
 
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FreeStateDeac said:
This is reality. Part of the downside of being a small "national" university which has been the vision and plan since Tom Hearn took over in the 80s, is that Wake's already small student body has increasingly become national, not local, and alumni are consequently national, not local. Students who come to Wake from Connecticut, New Jersey, California, etc., don't grow up as Wake fans, they might become situational Wake fans while they're here, more for entertainment than from the deep emotional attachment of the lifetime fan, but then they go back to New York, DC or California for the jobs and never set foot in Groves Stadium (oops, sorry, "BB&T Field") after graduation unless they themselves send a legacy kid to Wake and they visit for Parent's Day.

And the local non-alumni in a declining mill town have for decades grown more and more estranged from an exclusive and obscenely expensive private university that they could never dream of affording to attend (or their kids, who are going to UNC, State or Appy State, which are far more accessible).

I don't really blame the students. Student apathy towards football is now a national phenomenon, even at football factories like Alabama, where Nick Saban was so enraged at students' leaving at halftime he ordered attendance monitoring. But at the Alabamas, unlike Wake, there is a huge non-alumni geographic fanbase who will fill the stadium. Wake does not have, and will never have, that sort of regional non-alumni fanbase.

I don't think Clawson would leave for a factory operation like an Alabama, but I could see him leaving for a Stanford, Notre Dame, Northwestern or even UVA, but unfortunately for him (and good for us), there are no vacancies in the near future at those schools. But when the opportunity arises, he is too ambitious to stay here. Sad but true.
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Good post but he wouldn’t leave for Northwestern or UVA. Those fit the profile the last time he was searching, and we can be grateful we got him instead. But now it would be something bigger.
 
Wake can go to the playoff and only have to beat one top program something that other ACC programs have actually done in Clemson’s prime. I don’t see Clawson at this point getting interest from and being interested in any job with a better chance than that.
 
Others might have mentioned this already, but the lack of a few nice hotel options around the stadium really hurts attendance for out of town guests (of which I’d assume there are many more alumni in Charlotte and the RDU area than WS and Greensboro).

If the University completely renovated everything within a .5 mile radius of Deacon Blvd. (good restaurants, bars, even a hotel like Georgia Tech’s in ATL, etc...) I think we would see a big bump in attendance overall, especially when our teams are good (like now in football).
 
SkyDivingDeacon said:
Others might have mentioned this already, but the lack of a few nice hotel options around the stadium really hurts attendance for out of town guests (of which I’d assume there are many more alumni in Charlotte and the RDU area than WS and Greensboro).

If the University completely renovated everything within a .5 mile radius of Deacon Blvd. (good restaurants, bars, even a hotel like Georgia Tech’s in ATL, etc...) I think we would see a big bump in attendance overall, especially when our teams are good (like now in football).
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There hasn’t been a bar which has done well there since Ziggy’s and Corbins closed years ago. The BBQ restaurant closed a couple of years ago. I agree that most hotels going north on University Parkway are sketchy.
 
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