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 City 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.
Jim
Grobe won 77 games
and logged a 32-11
record against
in-state opponents
as Wake Forest head
coach from 2001
through 2013. In his
first game on the
Demon Deacons
sideline, Grobe set
the tone for turning
around the
struggling program
with
ECU
basketball
coach
Jeff
Lebo
and
players
Akeem
Richmond
and
Antonio
Robinson
met
with
the
press
after
the
Pirates'
win
over
Fayetteville
State:
The
Brian Bailey Show
airs on Pirate Radio
1250 and 930 on Mondays at
6:30 p.m. This week's
guests were ECU
assistant basketball
coach Ken Potosnak
and Rose High School
football coach Dave Wojtecki:
The
Steve Logan Show
airs on
FM 103.7 and
FM 94.1 on Mondays
from 6-8 p.m. Replay
this week's show:
