Monday, January 28, 2008

Wake staff's long run bound to end

The recent news that two Wake Forest assistant coaches have gone elsewhere means the Deacons are quickly becoming victims of their own success.


A major reason Wake Forest has won 20 games in the past two seasons – the best stretch in program history – is the coaching stability fostered by head coach Jim Grobe. When Grobe arrived at Wake Forest in 2001, he brought eight assistants with him from his previous stop at Ohio. Seven of them were still with the Deacons this past season, until last week when defensive coordinator Dean Hood left to become head coach at Eastern Kentucky and quarterbacks coach Jeff Mullen went to West Virginia as offensive coordinator. That’s an uncommonly long period of time to keep a staff virtually intact.


One of the most underrated indicators of success these days in college sports is coaching stability. But coaches like Mullen – who helped Riley Skinner become one of the ACC’s top quarterbacks – and Hood – who coached one of the country’s most opportunistic defenses – are bound to want to step away for something bigger at another school. It just happened later, rather than sooner, at Wake Forest.


-- David Scott

2 comments:

Zach Smith said...

I agree that Wake's coaching stability has been one of its major strengths and a large part of it's success, however I think another good indicator of success is how desirable your coaches are to other programs.

The fact that programs all over the country have become interested in promoting Wake Forest assistants shows that this program has made major strides in the right direction.

I trust that Jim Grobe has the perfect people already on the staff to promote to these positions and that he'll bring in some great new coaches to fill the holes. Considering the preliminary indications it looks like this is the case.

Wake Forest football isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Anonymous said...

You forgot the Kids from Charlotte Christian who signed