WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Dave Clawson choked back tears multiple times as he explained why it was the right time for him to step down as Wake Forest’s coach amid a time of landscape-altering changes in college athletics.
“You can’t do something successfully, and it’s not fair to the players or the institution if you’re doing something that your whole heart and soul isn’t into,” Clawson said at a news conference after the school announced his resignation.
“I did not want to do this, in my perfect world I’d be having this press conference in three or four years. But I just looked at kind of where the industry is right now, and I just felt like it was time.”
The 57-year-old Clawson spent 11 years with the Demon Deacons, a tenure that 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.
That combination has led to roster upheaval across the sport, posing a particular problem for a program like Wake Forest — boasting one of the smallest undergraduate enrollments in the Bowl Subdivision ranks — that has thrived under Clawson by retaining and developing players over years rather than landing four- and five-star recruits.
Clawson battled his emotions multiple times during the morning campus news conference, including about the unending demands of the job on his family over the years. But he was also clear that the state of the sport was also a factor, first when he mulled stepping away briefly after last season.
Clawson said he felt as if it was “somebody else’s job” as he shifts into an advisory role to athletic director John Currie.
“I tried to embrace it, I tried to fight through it,” Clawson said. “I tried to get in the mindset with it. I could do it, I just don’t want to do it. It’s really where I am. It’s not the way I’m wired. It’s not how I build programs. It’s not why I got into coaching.”
