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The Legacy of Riley Skinner: Deacons' record-setting quarterback helped turn sagging program around
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Published: November 26, 2009
A fitting project for Wake Forest's Calloway School of Business and Accountancy might be to measure the rate of return that the Deacons' football program received from the final scholarship handed out in 2005.
Has there ever been a recruit who has yielded more for Wake Forest football than Riley Skinner, the senior quarterback who will play his final college game on Saturday at Duke?
The answer can be found in the numbers -- 30 victories, three bowl games and an ACC championship foremost among them -- and in the way Skinner has led a long downtrodden program to respectability and even prominence. It would slight Ron Wellman, the director of athletics, and Jim Grobe, the head coach, to call Deacon Tower at BB&T Field the "Party Palace that Skinner Built," but Wellman and Grobe would agree that Skinner, who received his scholarship only after the other 21 players in his class were in the fold, played his part.
And he played it about as well as it can be played, both as a field general and as a representative and spokesman for the program and school. The mark he will leave is best quantified not by his 22 school records but rather by the number of jerseys that Wake Forest's retail markets have sold bearing his No. 11.
Totaled just this week, the count is about 2,500. Many of them are worn by children who dream of growing up to be the next Riley Skinner.
Good luck with that. If there has never been one like him in the 107 seasons Wake Forest has played football, why should anyone expect another?
"He's the All-American kid," teammate John Russell said. "He has that look and that attitude and the confidence. You know he's a quarterback, just in the way he carries himself.
"He would be the quarterback on the football team, the point guard on the basketball team and the pitcher on the baseball team. That's just the kind of guy he is."
Skinner isn't perfect. Roommates say his fastidiousness borders on obsession, and it would probably be unreasonable to expect a well-heeled young man with his abilities and agreeable looks not to be, upon occasion, a little full of himself.
But what makes Skinner special in the eyes of his coach is that he never carries himself that way around his team.
"Riley is a selfless player," Grobe said. "He really talks more about his team. He's always been this way. You don't hear him talk about himself a lot. Generally when he talks about himself, it's kind of self-deprecating -- ‘Blame me, I didn't get the job done, I can play better.' It's not patting himself on the back all the time.
"The team really responds to guys who care more about the good of their teammates than they do themselves, and he's the ultimate guy."
And what has made Skinner special to the media that has covered his storybook career from unknown scout-team quarterback pressed into action by an injury to starter Benjamin Mauk to the best quarterback Wake Forest has had has been his unfailing accessibility and cooperation.
Many college-football players -- especially star quarterbacks -- have increasingly seen the demands of the media as something to endure. Skinner, conversely, has embraced his role as spokesman.
"My freshman year, I might have been a little nervous," Skinner said. "I don't remember ever being too nervous. I guess I'm never really nervous talking in front of people.
"When you're asked to represent your team, you don't want to be stumbling or saying the wrong things or to come across as rude. You want to represent the team the way they deserve to be represented."
Natural speaker
Wellman marveled at Skinner's natural loquacity as a spokesman for a program.
"He's as good as I've ever seen in my career -- not only at Wake Forest and not only in football, but in any sport at any school where I have been," Wellman said. "You see him in any situation and he's the same.
"If it was an act or if he was just doing it for show, in the locker room he would be a different person, or when we would see him on the plane, he would be a different person. He's the same way all the time."
In that, he's like his great, great grandfather Richard Green Skinner, who moved to Jacksonville, Fla., from across the Georgia line at the turn of the 20th century to acquire the acreage of pine trees stretching southeast of the St. John's River that he needed to fuel his naval-stores business.
In an article called the "Piney Woods Miracle" printed in the Florida Times-Union, Brightman Skinner, Richard Green's son and Riley's great uncle, remembers the patriarch of the family as follows:
"He liked people, he was a great talker, had few secrets, and was always aboveboard in his dealings. Therefore nearly all liked him. He had a knack of making friends. Action was his makeup."
The Skinner family had two claims to fame around Jacksonville. The first was the tract of land that eventually swelled to as many as 40,000 acres that Richard Green Skinner's offspring managed to hold onto during their land-rich, cash-poor days of the Great Depression. The second was the ability to plays sports well.
Riley's great grandfather, Chester Skinner, played quarterback on the first football team fielded by Furman University. His grandfather, also named Chester, played on the offensive line for Georgia Tech. His father, Chip, played baseball and basketball at Georgia Tech. One uncle, David Skinner, played quarterback at Vanderbilt. His big brother, Chet, played basketball at the University of the South, a Division III school in Sewanee, Tenn.
Skinner's father, Chip, could tell from Riley's earliest days of tee ball that his son had a knack for sports. He remembers Riley at age 4 re-positioning himself in the infield depending upon who was at the plate and how they were swinging the bat.
"One time, a 6- or 7-year old girl hit one into the outfield and the kids were out there piddling around and weren't doing anything," Chip Skinner recalled. "So Riley turns, he runs to the outfield, picks up the ball and runs back in and tags the girl out a home. Four years old.
"That was a memory there."
Well-taught
Skinner benefitted from having an athletic brother six years older to compete against and alongside. He benefitted even more from having a legendary high-school coach at The Bolles School, the highly regarded private school that produced, among others, Chipper Jones of the Atlanta Braves, Dee Brown of the NBA and a number of swimmers who have won Olympics medals.
Chip Skinner attended The Bolles School, as did his father, Chester. The stadium in which the Bulldogs play is named Skinner-Barco Stadium.
Emerson noted that "Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can." That someone for Skinner was Corky Rogers, the no-nonsense taskmaster who entered the 2009 season with more victories (375) than any other coach in Florida high-school history.
"He's got great expectations for his players, and he doesn't cut them any slack," Chip Skinner said. "He didn't put anybody on a pedestal. When Riley would make a mistake in practice, he'd jump him. In fact, Riley would come home sometimes after practice and say, ‘Boy Dad, I just don't know that Coach Rogers really likes me.'
"He didn't get a lot of compliments until after the season was over. And then he was his biggest supporter. That's kind of what got him to Wake Forest."
The story has been told and retold of how Grobe really wasn't interested in signing another quarterback in the recruiting class of 2005 until assistants Tom Elrod and Jeff Mullins returned from a trip to recruit Russell, Skinner's teammate at Bolles, raving about the quarterback.
Skinner was not in demand by colleges because of his 6-1 height.
But he did have a coach in Rogers who, once he got Grobe in his office, wouldn't let him leave until he had sold him on all the wonderful qualities of Riley Skinner.
"To start with, that's probably the finest family we have here at The Bolles School," Rogers said in 2006. "So the genetics and the genes are there, no doubt about it.
"They're wonderful people who are well rounded in what they do and highly educated."
A story as inspiring as that of Riley Skinner at Wake Forest needed a more uplifting ending. The Deacons have stumbled to 4-7 this season and fallen short of a fourth straight bowl, and the concussion that Skinner had against Miami might well have led to subpar performances against Georgia Tech and Florida State.
On the other hand, no one in Wake Forest history has thrown more passes (1,311) for more completions (875) for more yards (9,390) and more touchdowns (55).
And with a vintage performance Saturday at Duke, Skinner could graduate in business in December as the most accurate passer in ACC history. Matt Schaub, who played for Virginia from 2000 through 2003, completed 716 of 1,069 passes for 66.978 percent. Skinner has completed 875 of 1,311 for 66.742 percent.
Skinner has averaged 33 passes this season. If he completes 26 of 33 against Duke, he will overtake Schaub.
Then what? Both Chip Skinner and Grobe have said that some NFL teams have shown interest in Riley, despite his less-than-prototypical stature.
"I would love to give it a try," Skinner said. "And if it works out, I would be more than happy."
dcollins@wsjournal.com.
727-7323
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