Wake Forest's Dave Clawson won big at the private university with one of the smallest enrollments in the Bowl Subdivision ranks. Now it's up to someone else to try to do the same.
Clawson resigned Monday, ending an 11-year run with an unexpected announcement that he had given ”everything I had" for the program and school.
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His tenure included guiding Wake Forest to 11 wins and a trip to the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game in 2021, as well as cracking the top 10 of the AP poll in 2021 and 2022 amid a run of six straight bowl appearances. But the Demon Deacons had gone just 4-8 in the past two seasons as the formula that had helped them sustain success became trickier to manage in today's era of free player movement through the transfer portal and players being able to cash in on their athletic fame through name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities.
In a statement released by the school, the 57-year-old coach said “the timing is right” after working 36 straight seasons in college football to step into a new advisory role to athletic director John Currie with an undergraduate enrollment of 5,471 students as of the 2023-24 academic year.
“Coaching at Wake Forest has been the honor of my career,” Clawson said. ”This is a special place with extraordinary people, and I am deeply grateful for the relationships I’ve built over the last 11 years. Together, we achieved things that many thought impossible, and I step down knowing I gave everything I had for this program and university."
In an open letter on the school's athletics site that has been a regular fixture, Currie said Clawson's decision was “not the news we had wanted to share.” Currie said Clawson had confided that he was contemplating his future in recent weeks.
“And I held out hope, until our meeting earlier today, that he would change his mind,” Currie wrote, noting that Clawson and Currie met with the team via Zoom to inform them shortly before the school's announcement.
Clawson took over in 2014 after Jim Grobe's successful run that included winning the 2006 ACC title. And much like Grobe, Clawson found success at the elite but small private university with a formula that leaned on player retention and long-term development to compete against programs drawing four- and five-star recruits.
Clawson's Demon Deacons typically redshirt young players and bring them along slowly, allowing them to get stronger and picking up larger roles to hone their skills. By the time most of those players would crack the two-deep depth chart, the goal then would be to play disciplined football with clean execution while avoiding self-defeating mistakes.
When working its best, Wake Forest often had a prolific, tempo-controlling offense — featuring an ability to churn out developed receivers — while ranking among the nation's leaders for fewest penalty yards and turnovers. And there was long runs of coaching continuity on Clawson's staff with few changes, a combination that Currie said in a statement “made football at Wake Forest important.”
During that seven-year bowl run (2016-22), Wake Forest ranked tied for eighth in the FBS in turnover margin (+39), No. 8 in fewest penalty yards per game (42.2) and No. 9 in fewest penalties per game (4.93).
It all came together in 2021, a season that included Clawson reaching a long-term contract extension with the school on the eve of the ACC division-clinching win at Boston College.
That 11-win team lost to Pittsburgh in the ACC championship game in a season. But it was a magical season, with the Demon Deacons starting 8-0 and hitting No. 10 in the poll, led by star quarterback Sam Hartman in an offense ranked fourth nationally in scoring (41.0) while also ranking sixth in third-down conversion rate (49.6%).
And yet, Hartman soon became an example of the challenges of today’s climate for Clawson and the rest of FBS ranks. Two years later, Hartman was gone — not because he had run out of eligibility, but because he was transferring for a one-year run at Notre Dame in a high-profile player move.
Clawson spoke multiple times, too, about the challenges of retaining players in this era. Notably, he said roughly a half-dozen of his players returned for the 2023 season despite tampering efforts by other schools promising lucrative endorsement deals to transfer ranging from roughly $150,000 to $500,000.
This year's team ranked near the bottom of the national stats in defense (117th in total at 435.0 yards, 113th in scoring (32.5), and languished through multiple losses that seemed to wear on Clawson in his postgame news conferences.
That included the Demon Deacons blowing a 13-point fourth-quarter lead at home to lose to Virginia in their second game, then losing at home to Louisiana three weeks later when their final-play tying field goal from 42 yards out plunked the left upright. Still, Clawson guided Wake Forest wins in its first three road games to recover from a 1-3 start and enter November needing to split the final four games to become bowl eligible again.
Instead, the Demon Deacons lost them all. The last came at home to Duke, with the Blue Devils rallying from 14 down and winning on a 39-yard touchdown pass as time expired.
That crushing loss, with Wake Forest punting on its final three possessions to go 1-6 at home, turned out to be Clawson's Wake Forest finale.
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