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A Long Season: Grobe, Deacons will can only wait to find out if they will get to play in bowl game for third straight season
Journal Photo by Lauren Carroll
Jeff Jennings of Vanderbilt is taken down by the Wake Forest defense.
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Published: December 1, 2008
By the end of Saturday night's regular-season finale, Wake Forest was a football team that had been ridden hard and put up wet.
Nine of the 12 teams the Deacons played this season are eligible to play in bowls.
Their strength of schedule was rated by Sagarin as the third hardest in the nation.
Their next-to-last game, a bitter 24-21 loss to Boston College, dashed their hopes of playing in their second ACC championship game in three years.
Their last game, a 23-10 victory against Vanderbilt, was played in front of a cluster of die-hard fans who braved some of the most miserable conditions ever at BB&T Field, formerly known as Groves Stadium.
"It's been tough sledding this year," Coach Jim Grobe said. "I don't think anybody has an understanding of what it's like every week to know you've got to bring you're ‘A' game, and to know that every game you play is going to the fourth quarter.
"That's been a little bit of what's happened to us this year."
And not only had the Deacons survived, but they were smiling.
"It's one thing to play in the cold weather and not come out on top -- because you know it was just a waste," senior kicker Sam Swank said. "But the Deacs won and we're going to a bowl.
"That's what I love. It's great."
Athletics Director Ron Wellman said yesterday he didn't know what bowl will invite the Deacons, and may not for a week. A representative of the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, which has the first pick of any ACC team not in the Bowl Championship Series, told him Saturday night that it didn't plan to make a selection until after Saturday's conference championship between Virginia Tech and Boston College in Tampa, Fla.
And only then will the other seven bowls who have agreed to select ACC teams get their pick.
Wellman did say he fully expected the Deacons, at 7-5 with their third straight winning season, to have another game to play.
"I'd be shocked if we didn't," Wellman said. "We had the third strongest schedule in the country and we're 7-5. I know we're certainly deserving."
Grobe said Saturday night that his team just wants another game.
"I think seven wins is a pretty good season for us," Grobe said. "I wish we had one more. I wish we'd gotten Boston College. That would have made it fun to go play next week in Tampa.
"But I think our players are just excited to have an opportunity to play another game, have a chance to go to a bowl game. I'm not sure they really care much where or who."
Few Wake Forest fans would have been happy in August to settle for a 7-5 record, given that the Deacons had nine starters returning on defense, the two most recent ACC Rookies of the Year, quarterback Riley Skinner and running back Josh Adams, returning on offense, and the most successful kicker in school history, Swank, back for his senior season.
But along the way the offensive line was slow to jell, Adams sprained an ankle and Swank was sidelined for six games with a pulled quadriceps. Even with that, Maryland was the only team to beat the Deacons by more than seven points.
To pull out the victory against Vanderbilt and assure their third straight winning season, the Deacons had to overcome both the disappointment of back-to-back losses to N.C. State and BC and the dearth of fan support at raw and rainy BB&T Field.
"My concern was that we'd come out and be flat and not play very well," Grobe said. "I can't tell you how hard those two losses were for our football team. It's easy for a team to kind of fold the tent when they're discouraged.
"You had to be a pretty tough football team in that weather and I don't know if we've had a tougher loss than the Boston College loss last week. So you had to be pretty mentally tough to bounce back. I'm really proud of these guys."
For a reward, Grobe said he planned to stay up last night and watch Coach Dino Gaudio and the Deacons basketball team play Baylor in the championship of the 76 Classic in Anaheim.
"I might have to do that," Grobe said with a grin. "It will be a little easier to do now.
"I can't wait until I'm sitting there eating popcorn watching everybody boo him."
■ Dan Collins can be reached at 727-7323 or at dcollins@wsjournal.com.
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