A critical point or two before we get into the analysis of the status of Wake Forest football. This is not an endorsement of Dave Clawson as head coach of Wake Forest. That is not our job. Nor is it our job to go in the other direction on the topic. Our role in the media world surrounding the Demon Deacons is to analyze, highlight the truths, call out the nonsense, and go on. This is where Dave Clawson’s case at Wake Forest comes front and center.
In the ever-evolving media landscape, there are different ways to stay informed about Wake Forest athletics. There are fan blog sites with rooting interests that will always be able to cite that had it not been for one injury or one missed play, the entire season would have been better. Some sites do objective analytical breakdowns of what they see. And there are, thankfully, still old-school TV, radio, and newspaper outlets. The point in bringing that up is to set expectations for what is to come, a deep dive analysis of the current status, and what it may mean going forward. We have spent weeks reviewing this and asking questions for a bigger purpose. This time last year we correctly wrote that the 4-8 season was on him because of personnel choices, particularly at quarterback. This 5-7/4-8 season has some asterisks which we address here.
Clawson’s Resume
As he closes out his 11th season at Wake Forest, Clawson is 67-67. That includes a 32-53 conference record. He is also on the verge of back-to-back losing seasons, which has not happened since his first two years at the helm in 2014 and 2015. Nestled into those years was a stretch of seven straight years with bowl game appearances, and a record of 5-2 in those postseason games. There was also one year of playing in the ACC championship game.
As happens at most schools, when the team loses, certain elements of the fan base become dissatisfied with the head coach. It even happens at schools with modest expectations like Wake Forest.
And while remembering that this is neither an endorsement nor an indictment of Clawson, the warning is fair to Wake Forest fans. Remember one thing as you call for changes or consider new faces at the top. This job is not all some of you think it is cracked up to be. That’s not meant to insult the legions of proud Wake Forest alums. But it is the reality in today’s college football landscape. The Wake Forest football coaching has limits on its upside.
The Conference Quagmire
The ACC has its collective backs up against the wall. In the expanded playoff format for this football season, the ACC is likely to get its conference champion in and possibly no one else. A two-loss ACC runner-up will not get favored school status like a three-loss SEC likely will.
The conference is being sued by two of its highest-profile members who want to go elsewhere for more money. While some have said Florida State and Clemson are embarrassing themselves with the lawsuits, when you bother to drill down to the granular, you see that both have some valid complaints to be heard.
ACC schools make 60 cents on the media dollar compared to their brethren in the Big 10 and SEC. Purdue makes more conference money than does Miami. And the gap will widen when the Big 10 gets to negotiate new media deals in a few years while the ACC is still mired in a 20-year-long deal.
The ACC landscape is messy.
College Football Free Agency
The transfer portal, like it or hate it, is here to stay. And it shall be unregulated for a significant amount of time to come. Anything the NCAA tries in terms of putting in guard rails has been and will continue to be shot down by courts as an anti-trust violation.
So then how to best use the portal is a question. The athletic department needs two things; a partner in the university and cash to lure players. Wake Forest football appears to have those in only a very limited fashion.
The University
Wake Forest is a highly valued academic institution. It is currently 42nd in the annual US News and World Report rankings, a position that proud alums find to be too low. Regardless of analytics, it is a widely regarded institution. It is also not transfer student-friendly.
To achieve a degree from Wake Forest, a minimum of 50% of your credits must come from the school. It is an effort to uphold the high academic standards upon which the school is built. However, the admissions department is an obstacle for Wake to participate in the football portal at the same level as other schools do. That 50% credit barometer means Wake football is generally limited to grad transfers or anyone who has not been at another school beyond their redshirt freshman year. The likelihood of finding a sophomore or junior football player willing to give up half their college credits to go to Wake Forest for football is negligible.
On top of that, the heads of the academic schools at Wake get months to review the transcripts of a potential transfer. They can drill down on the syllabus from classes at previous schools and they can examine coursework. And they have two to three months to render their recommendation. Good luck getting an undergrad portal transfer in late December and having him ready for Spring camp.
The Player Payroll
Here is where the rubber truly meets the road. First, we take our Quixotic stance that NIL and the collectives are not the same thing. NIL is what Ed O’Bannon spent years fighting for…a relationship between athlete and sponsor with payments in exchange for deliverables. Collectives, on the other hand, are money bundlers. They take undirected donations and dole out the money to athletes in exchange for them playing for their school. Sure sometimes there may be autographs here or there to give it the appearance of something more than pay-for-play.
Wake Forest offers athletes limited opportunities in both avenues. The local/regional business community steps up with NIL money, but not to the level of bigger programs in college towns.
At the Top of the Donor List
The Collective at Wake, Roll the Quad, is fine. Like most collectives, they are not in the habit of reporting how much they have in donations. It has school benefactors Mit Shah, Bob McCreary, and Ben Sutton among others on the board of directors. When the new collective was introduced in November of 2022, some pundits proclaimed it as a “Game changer.” It is not that. It never was. Unless the people at the top are writing the checks to the collective, it will not be.
Messer’s Shah, McCreary, Sutton, et al, have done more than their share for Wake Forest. Walk around the athletic facilities and their names are on numerous buildings. But their primary role with the collective is as the donation collectors. And that comes after Wake collected $38 million over two years to build the McCreary Football Complex. It is a beautiful facility with amazing amenities. And if this were 10 years ago when high school football players were still wooed by high-end facilities more than they are cash in their pocket, it would be more impactful. But the question has to be asked; could they have raised any or all of that money for the collective if they asked? Or was it the facility that drew the donors? And if so, how can the collective draw that level of interest?
Who’s Calling?
This gets us to the donors, and the phrase schools all across the country should get used to…donor fatigue.
Schools keep asking season ticket holders, donors, and others for more and more money. These people are already pumping thousands of dollars for tickets, merchandise, and team experiences. But the collective system has turned into a go-fund-me account for sports teams. When a coach doesn’t win enough, it is now that he doesn’t have the money to get the players he needs, instead of problems with his program-building acumen.
The best estimates available put the living Wake Forest alums at between 65,00-70,000. Wake is the smallest school in the Power Four world, thus the alumni and donor base, are small. Continuing to ask the same limited numbers of people for more money time and time again begins to draw limited returns. And getting a couple hundred dollars per month over an app from someone does little to make you competitive in the NIL/collective world. And that gets us to where Wake Forest lives right now.
The Clawson Factor
This gets us back to where we started, with the Wake Forest head coach. He gets to show off the cool facilities to recruits. But current and future players want to talk finances. Most even have agents at this point. And in that, Clawson is pretty hamstrung.
By reasonable estimates, with no confirmation from Roll the Quad, the collective provided between $2.5 and $3 million in funds. Much of that goes to keep current players happy and in place. Poaching is a daily occurrence in football, (more on that later this week). Even with two years of a losing record, Wake players are being wooed by other schools to enter the portal.
The other money is used to get players from the transfer portal (Hank Bachmeier as an example) and to get high school recruits. As a point of comparative reference, some programs spend $2.5-$3 million on a quarterback. It is the entire budget at Clawson’s disposal. It is allegedly in the bottom three of all ACC schools.
Making the Case
Clawson has not been shy about letting us know. At the midway point of the season, it had become a regular topic that the Wake defensive secondary, (the cornerbacks to be more specific), were getting feasted upon by opposing offenses. Clawson made it clear, he tried to go shopping in the portal during the Summer. But it was like looking in the window at Bloomingdale when you had a budget better suited for Target. There was not enough money in the cash register to get the players he wanted.
Clawson went for a stretch of five press conferences (weekly and post-game) out of six, where the subject of the play of the secondary was brought up. Reporter/publisher Conor O’Neill of Rivals/Deacons Illustrated wrote about it extensively last week. It is suggested reading as to why it was such a constant topic.
The secondary lost Malik Mustapha and Caelen Carson to the NFL in January. DaShawn Jones surprised everyone by leaving for Alabama at the end of Spring camp. That left the 2024 team with a mix of youth and players who spent significant time injured. It was a bad recipe, and we heard about it frequently.
But here is some of the reality. While he can say he was surprised by some of the talent drain, he knew in January that Mustapha and Carson were leaving for the NFL. Jones was a legitimate surprise, but that was in May. While he would have liked more talent from the Spring portal, the guys he did have, he had all Summer and Fall camp. Injuries aside, why weren’t they better prepared to play?
Less Money, More Challenges
Clawson regularly talked about how expensive it was to try and get other defensive backs out of the portal in time for this season. That had to be a hard message for his current cornerbacks to hear. Hey, we like you, but if we had more money from Roll the Quad, we would have gotten other guys to play instead.
At one point last month, we asked Clawson who his intended audience was when he repeated his issues about not having enough money from the collective for better defensive backs out of the portal. He was insistent that he was simply giving honest answers to our questions and had no ulterior motive. Say what you will about Clawson, but he does not shy away from media questions, even the ones he does not like.
But an audience was there. Starting in October, the Wake Forest athletic department started sending an associate athletic director to sit in on Clawson’s Tuesday press conferences, (and no, we will not tell you who it is). If they wanted to just check out his press conferences they could have sat in their office and logged on to Zoom. Intended or not, this was a message for all to see that they were monitoring things closely.
At one point two weeks ago, as the associate AD sat down in the front row of the football meeting room, one of the bloggers joked that we could now ask all sorts of NIL and portal questions. The associate AD turned and quietly said they wished we, the reporters, would let the subject go.
Naturally, a certain reporter took that as a sign that questions were to be asked at that press conference about NIL/collectives and the portal. Hey, Last Word does not hire stenographers to cover schools.
Future Finances
The subjects of NIL/the collective/the portal will not be going away any time soon. Next Summer, if all things hold steady, Wake Forest, along with every other FBS school, will enter the revenue-sharing phase of the House v. NCAA settlement. While no specifics are final, it is estimated that each school will have a cap of $20 million to disperse among its athletes however it wants. Most schools are likely to spend in the $15-$17 million range. Remember, it is already their revenue. The more they spend on athlete’s salaries, the less they have for their bottom line.
Last Word has spoken with athletic department officials at multiple schools. There is no uniform system for doing the above. Some will allocate the money proportionate to the revenue brought into the athletic department. If a football program brings in 70% of the revenue, they would get 70% of the salary cap money. Those scenarios would leave little to no money from the settlement for the Olympic sports. The relationship with the collectives would be used to help finance those sports and add to the football revenue sharing. The collectives with money, that is.
The Playing Field
But that new stream of spendable revenue does little to sweeten the football coaching job at Wake Forest. Every FBS school in the country will have the same ability to spend the same money. It puts Wake Forest at a financial level where it currently does not exist. But all the schools will be doing the same thing. There will be a need for the collective to help finance payroll agreements above and beyond the revenue sharing. Also to help finance the other sports. It allows Clawson to say yes to more players in the portal. But they are still going to have the same financial competitive challenges, the same university admissions challenges, and the same perception issues.
As the growing disgruntlement from the fan base grows on social media, we have reached the stage where replacement names for the head coaching job pop up. Barry Odom of UNLV has been floated. But one has to ask, in what world is that remotely realistic? Why would Odom, whose Rebels are currently 9-2, leave Las Vegas, with a large and wealthy donor base, and a very relaxed admissions policy for the school, for what Clawson faces every day at Wake Forest? Why would anyone who is in a similar position to Odom?
Clawson and other coaches are fond of saying that you are only as good as your record says you are. That’s fun when you’re winning. It’s a little tougher during a two-year slide. But for anyone who thinks Wake can treat coaching jobs like other schools do, there is a muddled reality to be dealt with. And it requires an understanding of Dave Clawson’s case.
