Is it possible for unexpected news to also be anticipated? Dave Clawson resigned Monday afternoon as head coach of Wake Forest football after 11 years running the program in Winston-Salem. Depending on whom you ask, the news was either stunning or expected. The reality is in between. And it leads to the question of what’s next for Wake Forest football.
Clawson’s departure cannot come as a total surprise. Anyone who has followed the season has seen the toll the losses took on him. That’s not to say they didn’t always take a toll on him. Clawson is one of those guys who will recall the details of a specific drive in the fourth quarter of a game from six years ago. There are a few games that he acknowledges will follow him to his end days.
What’s Next for Wake Forest Football
The Parts We Could See
But this season was different. The Demon Deacons went 4-8 for a second consecutive year. Last year there was a little more annoyance and displeasure. As he has said this year when comparing the two seasons, last year’s team had moments of a lack of effort or fire to win when things went south. He felt certain that the 2024 version fought hard in every game. That made the losses tougher to swallow.
It was visible in a few post-game press conferences in the last quarter of the season. Not being able to close the deal in the one-score losses cost his team bowl eligibility and the season, for some, was just another 4-8 year. But as for Clawson, the emotion on his face was clear to many of us who follow the program up close and personal on a daily basis. This was eating at him.
The Part We Didn’t See
The surprising part came in the timing. Those who thought he might have had enough thought the end would come within days after the end of the season. Once we got to the two-week mark past the end of the season, some, or even most of us, came off “Clawson-watch,” and assumed he would return for the 2024 season. The meetings with the current players to discuss their roles and their financial arrangements for next year had been completed and it was on to managing the comings and goings via the portal.
So when it came out Monday afternoon that Clawson, and athletic director John Currie, had held a team meeting at approximately 3:45 pm to announce that Clawson would be stepping down, the surprise factor came into play.
We continue to use the words, “Stepped down.” Officially the school’s statement says he has resigned. And technically that is true. He will no longer be coaching Wake Forest. But he will, for now, maintain a role as a senior advisor to Currie. So for the time being he is not even really gone from Wake Forest. His role, purpose, and work schedule for sure have changed. And we are not going to say he has retired. That would imply he will never coach again. We cannot say that with certainty. At age 57 he is young enough to take on another coaching assignment, although something in us doesn’t think he will. Using the term “Stepping down” is intended to imply this is not his last job in college football.
What’s Next for Clawson
Clawson has frequently joked with a reporter or two that he would have a campaign to become the commissioner of football. All joking aside, something of that magnitude would be in line with his bigger-picture purpose. He is an advocate for players getting paid. But he rails against the pay-for-play system that has been created outside of pure NIL.
He has been an advocate of players being free to go to other schools without punishment like sitting out a year. But he vents about what the unmonitored and open-ended portal has done in creating tampering scenarios.
He understands the importance of high school recruiting but dislikes what the signing day schedule, mixed with the portal window opening, and post-season schedule does to coaching staffs and players in December.
The big picture seems to be in his future. In recent years, he has become friends with former Stanford coach David Shaw, who himself was considered one of the big thinkers of the industry prior to stepping down, in part to watch his son play college ball, and in part because of the way the system was not working at Stanford, much in the same way it doesn’t at Wake. We covered some of those reasons a few weeks ago.
Is Clawson Quixotic enough to believe he can work within the system to change the system? It is logical to believe we will know in a relatively short period of time. He is already on the Board of Trustees of the American Football Coaches Association. He has one foot in the door.
The Current Roster
Clawson had already met with the team after the season to discuss their future at Wake Forest and what the financial deliveries could be for them based on the forthcoming revenue-sharing plans. Since that day, six Wake players have hit the transfer portal, with two of them being impact or potential impact players.
But there have also been several players who openly announced their intent to stay. It has become the trend that players now take to social media with cool graphics to say they are not leaving. Starting running back Demond Claiborne did that over the weekend. And while he did not go to social media with the announcement, we have confirmed that receiver Donavon Greene told the staff he intends to return next season.
But with Clawson stepping down, the transfer portal window has changed for Wake Forest. The current roster has 30 days, starting Tuesday, to make up their mind. The portal for everyone else closes on December 28th. There could be more departures.
There was one departure of a player who never even actually made it to Wake. Northern Illinois quarterback Ethan Hampton committed to transfer to Wake Forest over the weekend. After Clawson’s announcement Monday, Hampton went to social media (where else), to announce he was re-opening his portal recruitment.
The Search for Who’s Next
Wake Forest has already enlisted the services of a search firm to vet potential candidates to replace Clawson.
We do not expect the process to take long. Certainly, if some mopes in the media could see what was going on with Clawson during the season, those in the administration who cared to pay attention also saw it. A short list had to be in place already, “just in case.”
Wake fans would do well to disabuse themselves of the idea of getting a brand-name P4 conference coach. And do not look for any of the current staff to get promoted. It has been John Currie’s process that the revenue sports are not on-the-job training for a first-time head coach. The next prospect will likely be someone from a Group of Five school who is already a head coach. Someone like Dave Clawson…or like Dave Clawson when he came from Bowling Green.
Wake Forest is having a formal press conference Tuesday morning and we will have coverage from that. We expect a lot of statements to be made with a minimal amount of details about what is next for the program. After that, it is Celebrate Dave Clawson Day at Wake Forest with a special reception at the football facilities
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