{"id":49560,"date":"2023-08-20T09:00:17","date_gmt":"2023-08-20T13:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=49560"},"modified":"2023-08-20T07:00:48","modified_gmt":"2023-08-20T11:00:48","slug":"49560-wake-forest-football-gets-a-new-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2023\/08\/20\/49560-wake-forest-football-gets-a-new-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Wake Forest Football Gets a New Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are times when being the smallest school in the Power Five is a detriment to Wake Forest. Having loyal donors committed to expanding the athletic facilities is not one of them. Wake Forest football gets a new home as a result, as they unveiled this last week.<\/p>\n

The ceremonial ribbon was cut on the new McCreary Football Complex, named after football alum Bob McCreary<\/strong>. The 60,000-square-foot addition is directly adjacent to the McCreary Football Field House. It took about a year and a half from the groundbreaking to the grand opening. It is now in full use as we head into the last week of Fall camp.<\/p>\n

Celebrating the Finished Product<\/h3>\n

McCreary, for his largesse when it comes to Wake Forest football, was a sort of guest of honor Thursday. Athletic director John Currie<\/strong>, football coach Dave Clawson<\/strong>, and university President Susan Wente<\/strong> hosted a couple of hundred donors in the dining area of the new facility. The team was represented by Michael Jurgens<\/strong>, Malik Mustapha<\/a>, Chase Jones<\/a>, and Taylor Morin<\/strong>. During his speech to the crowd, Clawson pointed out that there are already seven college degrees among the group of four. \u201cAt Wake Forest, we still run a college football program,\u201d Clawson told the crowd. \u201cOur players go to class. They graduate. They\u2019re integrated with the rest of the student body. And I think we should be proud of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Wake<\/p>\n

The new facility features expansive locker room space for 130 players. There is a nutrition station that looks like the best convenience store around. It has a barber shop, and a lounge with a pool table, ping pong table tables, oversized couches, and several large-screen TVs. There is a spa area. And then there are the hyperbaric sleep pods for napping needs. All of this came at a cost of $38 million dollars contributed by roughly 700 donors.<\/p>\n

\"Wake<\/p>\n

The Bigger Meaning<\/h3>\n

Clawson called the new complex a relationship space for players. \u201cThis is a space for our players to interact and hang out with each other and develop relationships. And I think at the end of the day that is probably the main reason why so many of players chose to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n

He talked about how in the age of the transfer portal and NIL he believes the football community at Wake has a significant relevance.<\/p>\n

By reasonable and informed estimates, Wake Forest has between 73,000 and 75,000 living alum. That is not even enough to fill many Big 10 or SEC football stadiums on a Saturday. Indeed, as the smallest of the Power Five schools, the alumni base is going to be proportionally smaller. That means there are limits to trying to do it all with facilities and<\/em> NIL opportunities. As one insider has told us, \u201cYou can only go to the same well [same donors] so many times in one year. That makes it a choice between giving to the facilities or giving to NIL.\u201d<\/p>\n

Impossible Spending Choices<\/h3>\n

Currie said the facility is completely paid for. When asked if the facility not carrying any debt means the same donor base can now be asked to give money to the NIL collective, Roll the Quad, Currie pointed out many NIL opportunities current athletes have. They were almost all pure NIL revenue sources with direct relationships between the sponsor and the athlete. Typically collectives are paying athletes just to suit up with few endorsement deliverables required.<\/p>\n

At SEC Kickoff, Clawson referenced some of the NIL collective revenue offered to some of his players<\/a> by other schools. Clawson did not pull punches in suggesting this would be clear violations of the NCAA\u2019s unenforced tampering rules. The range was from $150,000 to $500,000. \u201cWe certainly not at an advantage with it,\u201d Clawson said at the time. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think we’re the bottom of the league either.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Roll the Quad launched last Fall some called it a game changer because of the names at the top of the collective. Atlanta Hawks part-owner Mit Shah<\/strong> joined the likes of Bob McCreary<\/strong>, Ben Sutton<\/strong>, David Couch<\/strong>, Alan Fox<\/strong>, Robert McCreary<\/strong>, Don Flow<\/strong>, and Michael Drum<\/strong> are the public names behind the effort. Collectives in the state of North Carolina do not have permission to operate in direct conjunction with the universities. And Wake Forest is a private university where financial agreements are rarely discussed openly and willingly. The result is there is no firm figure on how much Roll the Quad has given out to athletes. But there is no indication from anyone we have talked to within NIL circles that it is near the middle to the top end of the range Clawson gave above in his example of tampering.<\/p>\n

Using the Room<\/h3>\n

That makes facilities like the new McCreary Complex play a bigger role in recruiting and retaining football players at Wake Forest. It gives the school a way to compete with bigger programs. \u201cPeople say facilities aren\u2019t as important today, and I don\u2019t buy that,\u201d Clawson told the media at the ceremony Thursday. \u201cIn some ways for us at Wake Forest, they\u2019re more important than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

With classes not yet underway at Wake, Clawson said he has experienced that players are spending their entire days in the now-larger facility. With practice, the film rooms, and the new complex all housed together, until classes start, they apparently don\u2019t feel a need, or a desire to leave.<\/p>\n

Clawson\u2019s role in the design concept was as he put it, \u201cReally what I wanted was one-stop shopping.\u201d He said in particular for the freshmen the facility is close to their dorms and nearly as close to their classrooms. \u201cThere\u2019s people [schools] that have great facilities but they\u2019re five, 10, 15 minutes away from where the players live and go to class,\u201d he said. He added that he thinks when putting the entire layout together, Wake Forest\u2019s new facilities rank in the top 10-15 in the country.<\/p>\n

\"Wake<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy: Tony Siracusa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are times when being the smallest school in the Power Five is a detriment to Wake Forest. Having loyal donors committed to expanding the athletic facilities is not one of them. Wake Forest football gets a new home as a result, as they unveiled this last week. The ceremonial ribbon was cut on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":49564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[4817,1135,2584,9188,10410,8964,1249],"class_list":["post-49560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-acc","tag-acc-football","tag-dave-clawson","tag-john-currie","tag-michael-jurgens","tag-mit-shah","tag-taylor-morin","tag-wake-forest-demon-deacons"],"modified_by":"Maggie Yarnell, Senior Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}