Newspaper Page Text
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♦ WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2006
Wake Forest’s Grobe has performed miracles before
You say no one saw Wake
Forest coming.
You hail the Demon
Deacons’ run to Saturday’s
Atlantic Coast Conference
Championship game as a
miracle.
You claim a weakened
ACC put the Deacons in
Jacksonville, Fla., to face
Georgia
Tech and
it will
never hap
pen again.
Wrong.
Wrong.
And so, so
wrong.
A small,
quiet
group of
football
fans know
M
Adam Van
Brimmer
Morris News Service
better. And no, we are not
biased homers reveling in
Wake’s success.
We are the folks who wit
nessed Deacons head coach
Jim Grobe’s first - and far
greater - miracle in his pre
vious head coaching job at
Ohio University.
Ohio went 0-11 in 1994,
my first season as the foot
ball beat writer for The Post,
the school’s daily student
newspaper. The coach, Tom
Lichtenberg, was in poor
health and was plagued by
dissension on his staff.
The situation so flustered
Lichtenberg that midway
through that season he
uttered one of the funniest
yet saddest lines ever in a
press conference: “I often
times feel like we’re Cliffy
and the clowns out there on
Saturdays - and I’m Cliffy.”
The team’s play and the
general apathy of the uni
versity community so dis
gusted the school’s new
president, Robert Glidden,
that he fired Lichtenberg
with a week remaining in
the season.
Into this quagmire a
month later stepped Grobe,
hired away from the Air
Force Academy - where he
was a position coach, not a
coordinator. Unheralded or
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not, Grobe made an impres
sion. His calm and confident
demeanor made believers
out of cynics.
He hired several former
Air Force players for his
staff and brought in Mike
Sewak, the right-hand man
of triple-option guru Paul
Johnson, to build his offense.
The Air Force grads brought
a disciplined, military-like
approach and ran off several
of the few talented players
Ohio returned, guys happy
with their status as the best
players on a bad team.
Grobe demanded sacrifices
and hard work. No excep
tions.
Ohio snapped the nation’s
longest Division I-A losing
streak in Grobe’s second
game as head coach. The
Bobcats defeated a Division
I-AA team by a 5-3 score in
a driving rainstorm.
The few dozen students
who stuck it out rushed the
field to rip down the goal
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posts afterwards.
It took close to 20 minutes
- yes, I timed it - to topple
the posts on one end of the
field. Aboilt a dozen of the
students ran the length of
the field after the second set.
After five frivolous minutes
of slipping and sliding, they
gave up.
The football program
didn’t, though. The Bobcats
went 2-8-1 in 1995 and 6-6
a year later. By the 1997
season, the players and the
university community had
bought in.
The stadium began to
sell out. Fans turned out to
tailgate before kickoff and
stayed beyond the marching
band’s renowned half-time
show.
And Ohio won eight of its
first nine games, the lone
loss to then Big 12 power
Kansas State by three points
on the road.
The Bobcats lost their last
two games, including a Mid-
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American Conference divi
sion title game to Marshall
and Randy Moss., but the
turnaround was complete.
In his last season at Ohio,
2000, the Bobcats defeated
Big 10 power Minnesota and
MAC bully Marshall. Grobe
won 33 games in his six
seasons at a school that had
won 17 games in the 10 sea
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sons before he got there.
And that success spawned
what he’s done at Wake
Forest.
“Ohio was really a tougher
situation, etien though Wake
Forest was in the ACC,”
Grobe said Sunday. “Coming
to Wake Forest, one of the
things that gave us confi
dence was what we did at
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Ohio. ”
And that’s why we former
Bobcats say, “Where there’s
a Grobe, there’s a way.”
Adam Van Brimmer is
an Atlanta-based writer
for Morris News Service.
E-mail him at adam.
vanbrimmertomorris.com or
telephone him at 404-589-
8424.
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