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Jake Dickert’s Stand at Wake Forest
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- Jake Dickert’s Stand at Wake Forest
| Source: Lastwordonsports.com - Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor
Jake Dickert's name probably comes up more than he would prefer these days. He will tell you that he gets too much credit for his Wake Forest team being 7-1 and in contention for the ACC Championship game. His name also gets mentioned with every college football head coach job opening. And then there is all the media he is doing these days to promote the newfound success at Wake (that part he likes more than he will likely admit). So Dickert sounds like a guy taking a stand on a lot of topics when the media hits him up with an array of topics.
Jake Dickert's Stand at Wake Forest
The College Football Playoff Dis
The first College Football Playoff rankings came out Tuesday night. Aside from the usual array of inexplicable positions for some schools, it was hard not to notice the 7-1 Demon Deacons all the way down at #16 (even though they are #14 in the AP poll). There are six teams with two losses ranked ahead of them. It goes without saying that most of those are SEC schools.
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So Wake Forest has had one really bad half of football all season, against #1-ranked Miami, and they get dissed like this.
And how much did Dickert care the next day? Not at all. He did not even watch the unveiling of the rankings. "I did not watch it. I am aware of it," he said after practice on Wednesday. "I'm aware of where we're at." So, he did not feel disrespected after being 14thin the AP poll but lower in the playoff committee ranking? "No, because what's the AP poll? It's just a talking point for people that rank their region." He put the coaches' poll in the same category, which is slightly ironic since he has a vote in the coaches' poll. "It is what it is, guys. We can't control it. I think we're in a good position to control our own destiny."
After the Merrimack game, Wake has back-to-back road games at SMU and Georgia Tech before the season finale at home against Duke. "At the end of the day, if you win, you're in. It's really that simple. We control our own destiny. Everything is right in front of us," he said.
Are his players aware of the college football playoff ranking? "I don't. I didn't ask them." Dickert said. He was more focused on the intensity, or lack of it, at practice on Wednesday heading into this weekend's non-conference homecoming game against Merrimack. "I thought our practice lacked a little juice. If you're juiceless, you're useless." It's a favorite phrase of his.
Photo courtesy: D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images
Getting Wake's Back
Someone else in the ACC was displeased with Wake's #16 position in the ranking. It was Duke head coach Manny Diaz. He was quoted by On3's Conor O'Neill as saying, Watching Wake Forest this year, the level they've played at for the last month, beating everyone the way they have, and losing to only the number one team in the country; I just don't think there's another team in the country that would have one loss to the number one team in a competitive game and be ranked 16th."
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Looking into Jake Dickert's Future
With every job opening as coaches get fired, Dickert's name comes up as a possible replacement. Dickert has made it clear he is not going to address every rumor about every school. He also said his players do not ask him about the rumors.
His resume at Wake Forest is short but definitive. His 9-4 record in year one was the best record for a first-year coach in Wake Forest history. Year two, at 7-1, has visions of college football playoff games dancing in the fans' heads.
There is also the well-documented issue of Wake Forest struggling to fund football operations at levels that are competitive with other ACC schools.
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Last Word covered this back in August. It was made clear, in spite of the administration's assertions to the contrary, that Wake is in the bottom third of the ACC in football spending. Dickert is on the record as being equally certain of what we have reported.
Just before the Miami game in September, athletic director John Currie held a meeting with the media in the press box at Allegacy Stadium. He said he was confident the school was competitive relative to what happens in other conferences. He declined at the time to discuss specific dollar amounts.
Around that same time, The Athletic ran a series of articles with charts, presenting what the spending was for each school in each conference. The dollar figures were given in a range of two to three million dollars to the total. Wake Forest was in the bottom third of the ACC. To further that, Last Word's sourcing has verified that while the dollar figure that The Athletic gave was low for the conference, the amount was higher than what Wake is actually spending on football for the 2026 season.
Is This the Turning Point?
But here is where the story takes a new path. Dickert has been saying for weeks that he has been working with boosters and the administration on a plan. What that plan is and what the details are, he will not discuss. "You share your problems with people that can fix them." That clearly does not include members of the media. "Right now everyone that can fix it knows where we're at, and knows what we need. Everyone's got to make that decision. Are you going to be extremely committed to the future of Wake Forest football, which is the future of every Wake Forest athletic team?"
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And then there was this. "I feel like a lot of progress is being made. We're getting in a position where I feel a lot better about it. I don't want anyone to mistake me talking about not making excuses for what we have and just settling for what we have. That isn't the case."
Through multiple independent sources (sources that we talk to from different avenues of a topic), Last Word has been told that there is more revenue in principle to be allocated to the athletic department operations, starting with football. The exact dollar total and how the allocation is structured are not finalized. The dollar amounts that Last Word has been made privy to would be a significant increase for football stretched out over a four-year period.
Having said that, we would be remiss if we did not report, in context, what Dickert also said on Wednesday about what he wants. "We're excited about everything we've built here. We're just getting started here. All those things. And I've been very adamant. I want to do it with these coaches and these players."
Main Image: Will Trent/WillyTMedia
