• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Wake Forest Ability to Compete in Football

WakeForestRanger

WakeForestRanger

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 17, 2011
Messages
22,959
Reaction score
1,169
I get a little tired of reading about how challenging the Wake Forest job is. Personally, I think it's lazy analysis on the part of those writers. While it's true that we have our issues to overcome, I believe that there has never been a better time to be the coach of Wake Forest Football.

Here's a few reason why I think Wake can succeed.

1. There has never been a bigger gap between the power conference teams and the non-power conference teams. This is going to show up in everything from money (20 million per year in tv money alone) to bowl deals. We have a real advantage over the SMU's, and Cincinnati's of the world now.

2. Expansion has given us the opportunity to compete in conference that we never had before. Instead of facing one private school (Duke) in conference every year, we now face three (Duke, Syracuse and BC). Duke and BC operate under the same academic restraints that we do.

3. We play four non-conference games per year. Schedule them against the appropriate level of competition facing the Army's, Liberty's and Elon's of the world and we could win at least three if not four of those games every single year.

4. You only need six wins to be bowl eligible. Perform well in the non-conference slate and against the private schools in the ACC and we could be bowl eligible every single season. If Tom O-Brien can take BC on a decade long bowl streak, there's no reason that can't be done here.

5. Private school success has been proven. Whether you point to our own ACC championship in 2006, Duke winning the Coastal division this year, Stanford's performance in the PAC 12, or Vanderbilt in the SEC, it has been proven that winning at private school in a BCS conference is possible.
 
Agree. I think there are lots of important qualities we should look for in a coach, but the idea that we shouldn't hire someone with experience in big time, public university programs is just stupid. Look at Duke. Cut was in some big-time programs and has done well. The hope would be that a good coach who builds a solid program would lead to increased attendance, giving, etc. I just think it's a dumb thing to judge a coach on. And totally agree about the $$$ stuff. We may not be Alabama, but we are much better funded than the non-BCS conference schools out there. We have as much potential to build a successful program now as we ever did or anyone else out there. We need a good coach who excites the fans, recruits much better, and wins.
 
Turd Ferguson said:
Agree. I think there are lots of important qualities we should look for in a coach, but the idea that we shouldn't hire someone with experience in big time, public university programs is just stupid. Look at Duke. Cut was in some big-time programs and has done well. The hope would be that a good coach who builds a solid program would lead to increased attendance, giving, etc. I just think it's a dumb thing to judge a coach on. And totally agree about the $$$ stuff. We may not be Alabama, but we are much better funded than the non-BCS conference schools out there. We have as much potential to build a successful program now as we ever did or anyone else out there. We need a good coach who excites the fans, recruits much better, and wins.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but Cut got a raw deal at Ole Miss and I think that is why he is very appreciative of the Duke atmosphere. The potential problem with hiring someone from a big problem is what happens when they get here and realize they don't have this and they don't have that like they did at the big school. It really depends on the person, I'm sure there are assistants at the big schools that could come here and do well and adjust, but there are probably many others that would get here and wouldn't be able to adjust.
 
liveanddiedeac said:
Yeah, but Cut got a raw deal at Ole Miss and I think that is why he is very appreciative of the Duke atmosphere. The potential problem with hiring someone from a big problem is what happens when they get here and realize they don't have this and they don't have that like they did at the big school. It really depends on the person, I'm sure there are assistants at the big schools that could come here and do well and adjust, but there are probably many others that would get here and wouldn't be able to adjust.
Click to expand...

I get it. Narduzzi and Morris are not really my top choices anyway. Have just heard so many people out there (allegedly RW himself) talk about finding a coach from a school like Wake so he knows what it's all about. I would rather someone come in and push for serious upgrades of everything, especially expectations. With all the TV money we should be acting like a big time program. Instead of using that money to grow our programs Ron is using it to mask the huge losses due to Buzzfuckhead. But that's another issue...
 
WakeForestRanger said:
I get a little tired of reading about how challenging the Wake Forest job is. Personally, I think it's lazy analysis on the part of those writers. While it's true that we have our issues to overcome, I believe that there has never been a better time to be the coach of Wake Forest Football.

Here's a few reason why I think Wake can succeed.

1. There has never been a bigger gap between the power conference teams and the non-power conference teams. This is going to show up in everything from money (20 million per year in tv money alone) to bowl deals. We have a real advantage over the SMU's, and Cincinnati's of the world now.

2. Expansion has given us the opportunity to compete in conference that we never had before. Instead of facing one private school (Duke) in conference every year, we now face three (Duke, Syracuse and BC). Duke and BC operate under the same academic restraints that we do.

3. We play four non-conference games per year. Schedule them against the appropriate level of competition facing the Army's, Liberty's and Elon's of the world and we could win at least three if not four of those games every single year.

4. You only need six wins to be bowl eligible. Perform well in the non-conference slate and against the private schools in the ACC and we could be bowl eligible every single season. If Tom O-Brien can take BC on a decade long bowl streak, there's no reason that can't be done here.

5. Private school success has been proven. Whether you point to our own ACC championship in 2006, Duke winning the Coastal division this year, Stanford's performance in the PAC 12, or Vanderbilt in the SEC, it has been proven that winning at private school in a BCS conference is possible.
Click to expand...

Agree with all your points. Also, going along with your point about $$$, it's worth noting that the new head coach would not be starting from scratch from a facilities perspective. The program is in a much better place than it was a decade ago with all of the upgrades to BB&T field (field turf, Deacon Tower, additional seating at Bridger, new scoreboard) and serviceable on-campus facilities, including the recent upgrades to weight room.
 
Duke is our permanent cross division partner. There's a reason I phrased it the way I did. From now on, Wake will play three private schools in the ACC every year (BC, Syracuse and Duke).
 
Got it. Sound logic. Vandy will always be our true rival in my heart (what with the same mascot and all), just like Myanmar will always be Burma to me.
 
Wake is a better job than it was 10 years ago, and with the expansion of the schedule to 12 games and the increase in number of bowls, it's easier to go bowling - I don't think anyone would argue that. But it's easier for every team in the BCS to go bowling than it used to be for those same reasons.

The problem is it's still a difficult job in comparison to most of our competition because of other factors about the school that make recruiting more challenging (size, demographics, enrollment requirements, lack of tradition, lack of resources, etc.) As I pointed out in another thread yesterday, even when you compare Wake to other "small" private schools, we're about half their size and have less name recognition.

This is not to say we can't win. 2006 proves that. But the Wake job is certainly more challenging than a lot of other jobs.
 
If your definition of compete is the same as mine, we should be able to compete. We should be recruiting below the big names, but better than we are. We should be able to win 3 non-conference games a year (one 1-AA team, one low level 1-A team, and one out of two BCS school teams). We should expect 6+ wins a year and hope to try to put together 10 win seasons every 3-5 years.

Our historical ineptitude really shouldn't matter in the BCS and TV money world of the last 10 years. There are so many mediocre teams in the ACC that it should not be that hard to compete like Duke this year or us in '06.
 
mattwfu99 said:
Wake is a better job than it was 10 years ago, and with the expansion of the schedule to 12 games and the increase in number of bowls, it's easier to go bowling - I don't think anyone would argue that. But it's easier for every team in the BCS to go bowling than it used to be for those same reasons.

The problem is it's still a difficult job in comparison to most of our competition because of other factors about the school that make recruiting more challenging (size, demographics, enrollment requirements, lack of tradition, lack of resources, etc.) As I pointed out in another thread yesterday, even when you compare Wake to other "small" private schools, we're about half their size and have less name recognition.

This is not to say we can't win. 2006 proves that. But the Wake job is certainly more challenging than a lot of other jobs.
Click to expand...

I think our facilities are much better too. Sure we're still behind a lot of places in that regard, but despite the small size, our stadium is gorgeous. Once the new Athletic Training facility is built that will make a big difference too. I mean the same challenges exist that existed 25 years ago, but I do think we've narrowed the gap a bit.
 
You're going to have the right guy recruiting for us. But I believe that we can look at a combination of what Skip did in basketball and what Grobe did in football for the answer to that. Skip turned our so called challenges on its head (small size, academics) and used them as a major selling point for our program. The experience of playing football at Wake Forest is different. We should embrace that and recruit accordingly. People said the same thing about Vanderbilt in the SEC and Franklin is turning that opinion on its head.

One of the things Grobe's staff did that I questioned at the time but now realize was a very good call was de-emphasizing North Carolina recruiting. Instead of relying on our home state for the majority of our talent, we ended up targeting 3-5 NC recruits per year and shifted the main effort to Florida. Personally if I were in charge of recruiting, I would aim for the following each year.

5-10 recruits from Florida
3-5 recruits from NC
3-5 recruits from Ga
3-5 recruits from Va
3-5 recruits from Tx
1-3 recruits from Ohio
1-3 recruits from SC
1-3 recruits from Tn
1-5 recruits from the rest
 
If we win a division title or a conference, that would be great. But my real goal would be to become an annual bowl team. Pull off a streak like BC did, and I think we shed a lot of our reputation for being a terrible place to try to win.
 
To me, the most important part is that Wake is in the ACC and firmly in the camp of the "haves" versus "have nots". Sure, we will never be Alabama, but only about ten schools have those kinds of silly resources. Wake should ALWAYS be better than the ULMs, CUSA, and Sun Belts of the world. We should consistently go to bowls and occasionally have 9 win seasons and compete for the league title in special years.
 
Why is the size of a school a detriment to football success? We have 85 scholarships, just like Alabama or Michigan does. Sure, I get that the fact that we're private with a high tuition is going to decrease the number of quality walk-ons we have, but does that really make that much of a difference in the end? Nobody in FBS plays walk-ons on Saturdays.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top