Episode Details

Dave Clawson, who was named Wake Forest University’s 32nd head football coach on Dec. 10, 2013, has set a new standard for Wake Forest football as he heads into his 11th season in Winston-Salem in 2024.  
 
Clawson, who was named as an American Football Coaches Association Board of Trustee member on Jan. 10, 2022, signed a multi-year contract extension with Wake Forest on Nov. 26, 2021 and has achieved unparalleled success as the leader of the Demon Deacons football program.  
 
Specifically, since the start of the 2016 season, the Deacs have the third-most wins in the ACC not counting the COVID-shortened 2020 season. Additionally, the Demon Deacons are in the winningest stretch of football in their program's history with Clawson’s teams owning five the program’s top-five win totals in program history over a five-year span. 
 
1. 38 Wins (2017-21)
2. 37 Wins (2018-22)
3. 36 Wins (2004-08 & 2006-10)
5. 35 Wins (2019-23)
6. 34 Wins (2016-20)
7. 33 Wins (2015-19)
8. 31 Wins (1944-48)
9. 30 Wins (1940-44)
 
All that winning has led to record-setting crowds, multiple sellouts and the best student attendance in school history, which has given the Demon Deacons a huge edge when playing at home inside Allegacy Stadium. Wake holds a 23-7 (.767) record in home contests since the start of the 2019 season, which included a program-record 11-game winning streak spanning from the 2020 to 2022 seasons. With that, the Deacs’ 76.7 percent win rate ranks third in the ACC during that time period (2019-23).
 
That aforementioned win streak featured a perfect 6-0 record at home in 2021, which was Wake Forest’s first undefeated home record since 1979 and that fall marked just the third time since the Deacs’ 1970 ACC Championship team to go unbeaten inside Allegacy Stadium. Meanwhile, six home wins in 2021 tied the program record that Clawson’s 2019 squad had previously set. 
 
Over the last eight seasons since 2016, the Demon Deacons have found a winning formula in one-score ball games by capturing multiple more wins by one score in six of those seasons with a total of 21 victories in 38 such games. Coach Clawson’s squads hold the fourth-best winning percentage in the ACC in those games during that span.
 
In the stands, Wake Forest has sold out nine home games since 2021 and over the course of its six home games during the 2023 season, Allegacy Stadium hosted an average of 3,511 students and 30,498 fans – both tallies are the highest on record.
 
All the aforementioned victories are due to having great players who perform well each week. The Deacs 54 All-ACC honors is the fifth most overall in the ACC since the 2019 season and Wake Forest is one of just six schools to have more than 50 honorees in that time span.
 
Over the course of his tenure at Wake Forest, Coach Clawson’s staff has had six student-athletes (Cam Serigne, TE: 2014, 2015, 2016); Dom Maggio, P: 2016, 2017, 2019; Greg Dortch, 2017: All-Purpose, 2017: Return Specialist, 2018: All-Purpose, 2018: Return Specialist; Essang Bassey, CB: 2017, 2018, 2019; Nick Sciba, K: 2019, 2020, 2021; Michael Jurgens, OL: 2021, 2022, 2023) earn All-ACC honors at least three times during their careers. While Greg Dortch is the only four-time honoree in program history. Overall, there are only 15 players in program history who have ever accomplished this feat of at least three all-conference accolades.