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Thursday, November 30, 2006
Football A-Wake-ning
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Surely this is an hallucination.
Wake Forest could have the best football team in the ACC and the worst basketball outfit at the same time.
What are they smoking in Winston-Salem besides Winstons and Salems these days? Shouldn’t there be an additional small-case letter squeezed into their helmet logos to render: WtF?
Tell me this isn’t happening, that I’m really typing these words in a mescaline-fueled mad rush, a la Hunter Thompson, and that I won’t remember anything after waking up from this hallucination.
Up front in the Wake media guide is the bold declaration that Wake is tops in I-A in graduation rates (96 percent): “Academic Excellence … This is Wake Forest.”
Yet the football a-Wakening going on at the third-smallest Division I-A program in the land (in terms of enrollment) surely is the feel-good story of Saturday’s conference championship game menu.
That’s how it’s being looked at in some corners. Wake is 10-2, its best record ever, going into Saturday’s ACC title tilt against your Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.
This is prompting a number of previously unthinkable events from taking place, such as switching the start of Saturday’s hoops game against UGA to accommodate football. That’s gotta be a first.
Then again, Skip Prosser’s boys are truly awful, suffering their worst non-ACC loss in 62 seasons, a 36-point clunker to — ahem — Air Force?
Folks in Jax are frumpy that the game is far from being a sell-out. Lump that onto the Gator Bowl’s cooling to having the loser return, and it sounds like one inhospitable town for the ACC.
So how has Jim Grobe — a legitimate candidate for national coach of the year pulled off this feat? Sheer resourcefulness. Among the diamonds in the rough is ex-Harrison standout Jon Abbate, who really wanted to go to Tech. You’re probably already familiar with the grief his family has endured since the tragic death of his younger brother Luke. Wearing Luke’s favorite No. 5, Jon just got named All-ACC linebacker.
Wake also features a Tereshinski who gets to play — junior tight end John, little brother of Joe T III — a Bulldog who got away and is fourth on the team in receiving.
Predix:
What’s yours?
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