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Grobe era linked to ECU

By Al Myatt
©2013 Bonesville.net
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Jim Grobe resigned as football coach at Wake Forest after 13 seasons on Monday, an era that included unprecedented success for the Demon Deacons.

"Wins are hard," as current East Carolina coach Ruffin McNeill is inclined to say, and that is probably as true at the institution with a Baptist heritage in Winston-Salem as anywhere in the country.

Back in 1974, Wake was shut out in five straight games, including a 63-0 rout at Oklahoma.

A sense of humor helped then-Deacons coach Chuck Mills cope with the difficulty of the job.

The Sooners had a horse that pulled a covered wagon around the field after every touchdown.

"I thought I was going to have to call the SPCA," the cigar-chewing Mills said. "I thought they were going to run that poor horse to death."

No Wake coach since D.C. "Peahead" Walker, who guided the program on its old campus from 1937 to 1950, has finished with a winning record.

Grobe's predecessor, Jim Caldwell, had one winning season among eight at Wake. He has since won a Super Bowl as quarterbacks coach for the Indianapolis Colts, guided the Colts to a Super Bowl berth as head coach and has most recently served as offensive coordinator for the Baltimore Ravens, last year's Super Bowl champs.

Grobe followed Caldwell, who was 26-63 at Wake Forest from 1993-2000.

Grobe took the challenge of changing the football culture at Wake Forest after orchestrating a transformation at Ohio.

The link that led to Grobe's arrival in the Twin Cities began in Huntington, WV, at Marshall, where the Thundering Herd's linebacking corps in the late 1970s included Mike Hamrick. Grobe was their position coach.

Hamrick was athletic director at East Carolina from 1995 to 2003. Hamrick was friends with Wake athletic director Ron Wellman, whose daughter, Angie, worked as director of marketing for ECU athletics during that time.

When Caldwell was dismissed after a 2-9 season in 2000, Hamrick set up a meeting between Grobe and Wellman in Columbus, Ohio.

The rest, as they say, is history.

I met Grobe in his office before his first game at Wake, which was at East Carolina, in 2001.

I made a comment about the difficulties of recruiting at Wake because of high academic standards but he was upbeat in his response. He was excited about being able to offer prospective players a quality education.

He took a negative and turned it into a positive. He did it countless times.

N.C. State had made Chuck Amato head football coach a year before Grobe arrived at Wake. North Carolina had turned to John Bunting in 2001.

"Between you and me," former Pirates coach Steve Logan told me in his office one afternoon. "Wake made the hire."

Hamrick and Logan didn't see eye to eye on some things but they agreed on Grobe.

Wake fans didn't have to wait long to see improvement.

The Deacons came to Greenville with two quarterbacks contending for the starting role, James MacPherson and Anthony Young.

"Stevie Wonder could see the starter between those two," said Logan, who respected Young's run/throw capability.

MacPherson and Young directed a trend-setting 21-19 Wake win.

Grobe went 32-11 against in-state opponents. His 77 wins at Wake tied Walker, another legend from another era, for the most in school history.

The zenith for the Deacons in the Grobe era was an ACC championship in 2006.

Wake opened that incredible season with a 20-10 win over Syracuse. That matchup developed as a result of negotiations between then-ECU AD Terry Holland and Wellman. The Pirates had one more contracted game with Wake Forest. Holland also had a date with Syracuse at his disposal. When the Wake-ECU series was not extended, Holland offered the game with the Orange as a replacement for ECU.

The Syracuse game was important because it set a tone and it also marked the emergence of redshirt freshman quarterback Riley Skinner, who came on after much-heralded Ben Mauk was injured in the second half.

A series of astounding outcomes followed. The Deacs edged Duke 14-13 as Chip Vaughn blocked a late field goal attempt by the Blue Devils.

Wake ventured to SEC turf and downed Ole Miss, 27-3.

There were victories at N.C. State, North Carolina and Florida State (30-0) en route to the Orange Bowl and an 11-3 season, the most wins in school history.

Grobe lost staff members such as his initial offensive coordinator Troy Calhoun, now head coach at Air Force, and former linebackers coach Brad Lambert, now head coach at Charlotte, over the years.

But Grobe never left. He declined overtures to leave for relative powers such as Arkansas and Nebraska.

The logic has always been if a coach could win at Wake, he could be successful at other locations with greater resources and tradition.

Cal Stoll went to Minnesota after the Deacons' only other ACC title in 1970. John Mackovic departed for the NFL after a competitive stint from 1978-80.

Wellman rewarded Grobe's loyalty with a salary reported to be $2.3 million in 2013.

At some point, Grobe got away from a policy of redshirting virtually all freshmen. His teams struggled against some of the upper echelon teams in the ACC but were still resilient.

The Deacons followed a 56-7 loss to Clemson this season by topping N.C. State, 28-13.

Despite a 59-3 loss to Florida State, Wake was up 14-0 on Duke in its next game before falling 28-21.

A 23-21 loss at Vanderbilt last Saturday apparently was the last straw.

Grobe reportedly went into Wellman's office Monday and resigned. A five-game losing streak to end 2013 kept the Deacons from bowl eligibility and ultimately led Grobe to decide he wasn't up to the seemingly perpetually-uphill battle of coaching football at Wake Forest. He was 77-82 with the Deacs.

If the company line is true, he graciously bowed out to allow the program new direction and leadership. At his salary, some might have held on longer.

The move completed for the foreseeable future a professional relationship of 28 years between Grobe and Billy Mitchell, most recently associate head coach and special teams coordinator for the Deacons.

Mitchell was with Grobe at Air Force, Ohio and Wake Forest.

Mitchell lettered three seasons at wingback and defensive back for East Carolina and was named the Pirates' MVP in football in 1971. He also earned four letters as a member of the ECU track team.

Grobe is a native of Huntington, WV, where ECU's 2013 regular season ended with a 59-28 loss to Marshall. Grobe's son, Matt, is in his first year as golf coach for the Thundering Herd. Hamrick is Marshall's AD. The Grobe-Hamrick connection has endured for another generation.

Too coincidental to be a coincidence? That's what McNeill sometimes says.

Logan has said football coaching careers seldom end well, but Grobe's tenure at Wake probably ended as well as anyone could have expected 13 years ago.

E-mail Al Myatt

PAGE UPDATED 12/05/13 02:29 PM.

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