WFU players say national acclaim makes them uneasy

By: By Dan Collins | JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: August 28, 2008

Wake Forest, coming off the two most successful football seasons in school history, will roll into its 2008 opener in a different role.

That's No. 23 Wake Forest that will play at Baylor tonight, for those who haven't been paying attention. Kickoff is scheduled for 8:10 (EDT).

Ranked in the preseason for the first time in a poll conducted weekly by coaches or media, the Deacons will be on unfamiliar turf at Baylor's Floyd Casey Stadium. Players so used to being told what they can't do are now hearing all about what they can.

Almost everyone is picking the Deacons to either win the ACC championship or be serious contenders. They're certainly expected by most to beat Baylor, a program that hasn't managed a winning season since 1995.

And it's disconcerting, to say the least.

"The scary thing is that everybody is saying we can compete for the title," senior linebacker Aaron Curry said. "I'm not comfortable with that. It puts me a little uneasy.

"Everybody's going to be shooting for us now."

The Deacons put themselves in the new position with a 10-3 season in 2006 that included an ACC championship and a 9-4 season in 2007 that included a bowl victory over Connecticut. But some of the fuel that propelled Wake Forest to its first conference title in 36 years is gone.

Coach Jim Grobe, like his players, reveled in the underdog role so natural for a school of about 4,000 undergraduates playing in a conference mostly made up of schools four, six and even eight times larger. The year that the Deacons won the championship, they were picked by the media to finish last in the Atlantic Division.

"We've ridden this underdog thing pretty well, for a while now," Grobe said. "It's been kind of fun to be under the radar. And I agree with (Curry).

"That's probably good for your old guys to feel that way. I'm sure the young guys are loving every second of it, but it makes the old guys nervous because they know that makes other teams play harder.

"You're going to take everybody's best shot and get their best effort every week."

Art Briles, in his first season as head coach, will try to make Baylor the Wake Forest of the Big 12, the traditionally downtrodden program that finally turns its fortunes around. The Bears have 15 starters back -- including nine on offense -- from a team that finished 3-9 in Guy Morriss' fifth and final season.

Briles said that the strength of the team will be an offensive line of two seniors and three juniors. Four of the linemen, seniors Jason Smith and Dan Gray and juniors J.D. Walton and James Barnard, started last season.

Briles has yet to announce a starting quarterback from among three candidates -- junior Blake Szymanski, senior Kirby Freeman and freshman Robert Griffin -- but Grobe said he expects his team to face all three.

The Deacons, meanwhile, have 14 returning starters, including nine on a defense that has the potential to be the best in school history. Grobe takes comfort in knowing that he'll have nine seniors and two juniors starting on defense, all of whom have started at least four games in college.

"By the time they've gotten through the school of hard knocks, if you've played four years and you're going into your fifth year, you've learned some lessons the hard way," Grobe said. "And I think they know that if you take anything for granted, you're not going to be very happy at the end."

Curry said that the man who has led Wake Forest to football prominence is the one who knows how to deal with the new set of challenges.

"Coach Grobe did a really good job of keeping us on our feet," Curry said. "He's not letting anybody get big-headed.

"He has this knack for sensing when somebody is being ‘I' oriented, and he knows how to put a stop to that kind of stuff.

"We realize that everybody expects us to be really good, but we try not to heed all the hype. We really focus on being humble. We go out there and play like the same little ol' Wake Forest that has been there the last 100 years.

"We have that mentality that every down we have something to earn, nothing to lose."

■ Dan Collins can be reached at 727-7323 or at dcollins@wsjournal.com.