Wake Forest hires Washington State’s Jake Dickert as new coach
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Dave Clawson reminisces about time at Wake Forest (1:21)
Dave Clawson speaks to the media in his final remarks as Wake Forest football coach. (1:21)
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Chris Low, ESPN Senior WriterDec 18, 2024, 10:15 AM ET
- College football reporter
- Joined ESPN.com in 2007
- Graduate of the University of Tennessee
Two days after Dave Clawson announced his resignation, Wake Forest hired Washington State‘s Jake Dickert as his replacement Wednesday.
Dickert was in his third full season at Washington State and guided the Cougars to an 8-4 record this year. He took over midway through the 2021 season after Nick Rolovich was fired by the university for declining to take the COVID vaccine, and Dickert was promoted to permanent head coach following the regular season.
Dickert, 41, is 23-20 overall at Washington State, which played in a two-team Pac-12 this season and pieced together a schedule after the other teams bolted for other conferences. The Cougars started 8-1 before losing their last three games. Washington State was Dickert’s first head coaching job. He spent the first part of his coaching career in the Division II and FCS ranks before joining the Wyoming staff under Craig Bohl in 2017. Dickert was Wyoming’s defensive coordinator in 2019 and was hired that next year as Rolovich’s defensive coordinator at Washington State.
Washington State was 11th nationally this season in scoring offense (36.8 points per game), with quarterback John Mateer leading college football with 44 total touchdowns. Dickert announced Monday that Mateer was entering the transfer portal, and offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle also left to take the same position at Oklahoma.
Clawson was at Wake Forest for 11 seasons and took the Deacons to seven bowl games. He guided Wake Forest to 11 wins and the ACC’s Atlantic Division title in 2021 and won eight games the next season, but the Demon Deacons’ record dipped to 4-8 each of the past two seasons. Clawson will stay on at Wake Forest in an advisory role. His resignation comes amid sweeping changes in college sports with NIL payments to players and the transfer portal.
“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 his resignation news conference. “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.”
