In a college football world that is in constant change mode, Wake Forest goes into the 2023 season swimming against the tide. Call it stability. Call it sameness or familiarity. Whatever label you give to it, Dave Clawson’s comfort factor with his 2023 Demon Deacons was on display at ACC Kickoff this week in Charlotte.
Clawson enters his 10th season in Winston-Salem. And while he lost 11 starters from last year’s 8-5 team, he is quick to tell you he has a wealth of players who have been biding their time waiting for their opportunity this season. “We lost 11 starters, but we’re not young,” Clawson told the assembled media Thursday. “A great example is at left tackle we lost a seventh-year player, Je’Vionte’ Nash. Well, Wake is going to be young again. The guy that’s starting left tackle for us now is a seventh-year senior, Spencer Clapp.” He emphasized, “There’s still a maturity of our team. We’re not as experienced, but we’ll get that experience, and I think we’ll be in really good shape.”
Change in the Pocket
Of course, the most obvious case in point is at quarterback. Sam Hartman is gone after what seems like a generation leading the Wake Forest offense. It is Mitch Griffis’ offense to run now. He only has one start under his belt, (the season opener against VMI last year), but this is his fourth year in the program. He is the epitome of working and waiting for his turn.
Clawson ordained this to be Griffis’ offense to run before Hartman had even hit the ground in South Bend. He was so confident that he did not even shop for another quarterback in the transfer portal during the off-season.
“I think just having that experience of being the starter will help him this year. He’s smart. He knows doing it for one game and doing it for 12 consecutive games is a completely different challenge, but I think he’s ready to go. He just has a great work ethic,” Clawson said. “ And he is extremely accurate. He has good arm strength. He is athletic. And he has really good instincts, great work ethic, super teammate, and he is genuine.”
Competitive Advantages…and Disadvantages
That’s not to say Clawson could have gotten much out of the portal even if he had wanted to. He is working with an admissions department that does not have a history of making it easy to get undergrad transfers in the door. Since the portal began three years ago, Clawson has had to rely primarily on grad transfers coming to Wake Forest.
And then there is the issue of NIL money. Or in the case of Wake Forest, the lack of it, compared to other schools. With an alumni base that is among the smallest of all Power Five schools in the country, the donation dollars don’t flow quite as easily. This week the school opened the $40 million McCreary Football Complex, a new state-of-the-art training facility. But with so much money needed for that completion, the Roll The Quad Collective does not have the donations to compete with some of the bigger NIL programs in the ACC or elsewhere around the country.
Clawson alleged Thursday that as a result, he has had, “six to eight players,” who were tampered with during the off-season. That is, they were offered money by other schools to go into the portal and then transfer elsewhere. Clawson would not give out details as to the schools who allegedly made the offers or the players that were offered the money. He would only say that they all stayed at Wake and then told him about the proposed transactions after they made their decisions.
The Way It Is
“It’s just college football in 2023,” Clawson said in a rather matter-of-fact tone. He went on to make it clear that he does not like that schools are playing with different rules depending on their ability to have more money or exist in states that have their own NIL rules. He fatalistically and somewhat sarcastically suggested that all the rules can just be dropped and every school operate however they want.
When pressed further about the schools, he would only say that they were not in the ACC and that they were, “Repeat offenders.” He said one school went after three Wake players.
Clawson said Wake has some players getting some money from the collective and had theories on how much it was. If he is even close to accurate, the amounts pale in comparison to other schools, even when discounting the absurd social media rumors about some football players and their new income.
“I give our players credit,” Clawson said of the tampering allegations. “They let us know after the fact. None of them came to me and said, ‘Coach, I have this offer to go here. What can the collective do?’ They didn’t do that. They all chose to stay.” He said that while Wake lost high-profile starters Rondell Bothroyd and Hartman to the portal, he wants the narrative to be about how many players stayed when the opportunity was there to go elsewhere.
The Long Off-Season Is About To End
As he is prone to doing, Clawson pointed out the monetary value of the Wake Forest scholarships the players are getting. He called staying there a long-term decision for them. He was unapologetic about Wake Forest not being able to play in the high-stakes shell game of NIL and collectives. “I don’t have to fight my conscience going to work every day. That’s a great feeling as a football coach that when you go to work every day at a school that your value system aligns with the institution,” he said.
As the NCAA’s enforcement authority has been all but neutered in recent months by the state NIL laws, there is a definitive push for Congress to come up with nationally binding solutions. Every conference commissioner has pushed for it at their media events over the last three weeks. Clawson did not jump on board that train Thursday. “I think that there are things that are going on in our country quite frankly that are more important for our national well-being than Name, Image, and Likeness. Is this really what you want our national government doing?”
While the big picture issues of the portal, NIL, and conference realignment dominated the news cycle over the last five months, for Clawson it is about training camp opening on Monday. It is about making sure the new starting quarterback in whom he has so much faith is ready to go for the season opener against Elon on August 31st.
Photo courtesy: Jim Dedmon-USA TODAY Sports
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