Is Jake Dickert This Year’s “It” Coach?
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It happens every year. A college football coach garners the attention of the game’s insiders and hangers-on alike and becomes the “it” coach; the guy next in line to take a big leap into another head coaching job at a bigger program. Apparently now, it is Wake Forest’s Jake Dickert.
If you are like most college football fans, your first reaction is to say, “But wait. Doesn’t Dickert already have a head coaching job at a Power 4 school? Wake Forest?” And of course the answer is yes, he does. But that did not stop the likes of SiriusXM’s Danny Kanell and Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wolken from spending their Sunday on social media wondering where Dickert would coach next season. Others joined in as well, because apparently the idea that he would stay at Wake Forest was too outlandish to consider. All of this came on the heels of Wake’s 30-27 upset win at Louisville.
Is Jake Dickert This Year’s “It” Coach?
Dickert was emotional about the win. And he was emotional about his wife not being there. She was attending the funeral of her father, something Dickert was bothered that he was missing.
Love this interview. Jake Dickert is the real deal. https://t.co/44G8K7EREK
— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) September 27, 2026
While posting the video of Dickert’s emotional on-field postgame interview, Kanell said, “If I’m in the market for a head coach, this is my first phone call.” Wolken asked, “Where’s Jake Dickert coaching in 2027? Dude is good.”
In 2025, James Madison’s Bob Chesney and Tulane’s John Sumrall were the “it” coaches. They each had their choice of offers from bigger schools. Chesney is now the head coach at UCLA (and 4-0), while Sumrall is at Florida, where his Gators just beat Ole Miss.
But if you notice, those two came from Group of 6 schools and made the big leap to Power 4. Are Wolken, Kanell, and their ilk intimating that Wake Forest is the equivalent of Group of 6 schools? Probably.
Dickert’s Response
Dickert, at least publicly, is unfazed by the recent chatter about his coaching future. We asked him about it on Monday. “Our game is in a constant state of distraction. Period,” he said. “Coaches are one of three lists. You’re on the first-year head coaching list that has a honeymoon phase. Or you’re on the “going to get hired/going to get fired lists. How fast you can go from list to list.”
Dickert did not commit on Monday to a length of stay. No coach should. It’s shallow to assume the future like that. His current contract terms are an estimate only because Wake Forest is a private university and does not release such details. He is generally estimated to be making about $3.5 million per year. The length of the contract would be nothing more than a guess. If the dollar figure is accurate, it likely puts him about 12th or 13th among ACC coaches, some of whom he has already beaten in his nearly year-and-a-half on the job.
Clawson to Dickert
Dickert has decidedly put his stamp on the Wake Forest program. In December of 2025, when he was named as the replacement for the retiring Dave Clawson, few Wake Forest fans knew who he was. He had been the head coach at Washington State for about three years, and it was his first head coaching job. Couple that with the common regionality of sports fandom, and Dickert was a mystery to many in Winston-Salem.
Clawson was a known entity, a comfort blanket for the football program. He had been a college football head coach since 1999 and had been at Wake Forest for 11 years.
Clawson was an appropriate fit for the academically acclaimed university, and he clearly had settled in. The fan base felt like they knew him. He was one of the most successful coaches in school history. And the media knew him. Behind the scenes, after his weekly press conferences during the season, Clawson used to spend even more time with the media.
A staffer would order some food, and Clawson would sit with media members in a room in the Bob McCreary Football Field House and talk about anything and everything. There were two rules for the media. No topic or question was off the table. And everything was off the record. Want some funny anecdotes about game officials or want an update on his daughter’s media career path? This was the room for that.
Clawson was cerebral in his approach, and he liked to be heard on the bigger topics of college sports beyond the X’s and O’s of the game. He became familiar.
Dickert’s Vibe
Dickert is a different guy. He has an energy level that tells you he may have had a couple of energy drinks as soon as he got out of bed. The Midwestern football coach in him is clear. The more animated he is, the more amped up he is; he drops the “g’s” at the end of his words. If he is excited, “going” becomes “goin’.” “Running” becomes “runnin.”
He is seemingly real about all of it. He wears his emotions unapologetically on his sleeve. The word seemingly creeps in because getting to know Dickert takes more work, by design. As soon as his time with the media is done, you get a “Go Deacs!” proclamation, and he is in a mad dash for the door. He’s not being rude. He just likely has 13 other things on the calendar, is overextended, and likely a few minutes late. So, what you see is what you know.
That became apparent in recent weeks through our reporting on the administration’s financial commitment to the football program. Dickert told us on the record a few times that Wake was in the bottom third of the conference when it came to football spending. The administration reached out to another outlet to try to refute our reporting and claim that the school was in the top half of the ACC. Dickert stood firm. When he speaks, it is generally with certainty.
In the on-field interview after winning at Louisville, he could not help but blurt out that Wake had just beaten a team that has three times the resources his program does. It’s who he is.
A Different World
All coaches take on the headache of the current college sports system. It is, in part, what pushed Clawson and other coaches out the door. Clawson openly endorsed players being able to transfer. But he hated managing the portal. He openly endorsed players getting legitimate NIL money, but he hated managing the player expectations. Add in a school with tough academic standards and limited financial resources, and enough was enough. The last two months of his coaching tenure were a real emotional drain that was visible to all of us covering the program.
But Dickert’s entire time as a head coach has been in the era of the portal and college athletes getting paid to play. He supports both but does not like the constant turmoil of the current system. But he has handed over the business end of it to the program’s general manager, Rob Schlaeger, and there is an undeniable mutual trust between the two.
He has very certain thoughts on fixes for the big picture. You just have to get him to sit still with you for 10 minutes to go through them.
Is Dickert a Fit? Is Wake Forest a Fit?
Dickert’s first season was an undeniable success. The program had just gone through back-to-back 4-8 seasons in Clawson’s last two seasons.
Dickert came in juggling two quarterbacks who ran hot and cold all season. And he rode a mix of the returning players and new portal players to a 9-4 record, including a win over Mississippi State in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.
In the 21 months since his introductory press conference, he has worked to ingratiate himself with the local community, alums, and donors. He even manages his own social media profile. He is no Lane Kiffin, in terms of activity. But he does do his own scrolling to find content, and does the very occasional post.
Does he fit in long term? There is no way to know if he does or if he wants to. Then again, how does Wake Forest fit into the big picture of current-day college athletics? There is no clear objective answer to that either.
The Near Future
He said he thinks Wake Forest gets overlooked and undervalued as a football program. “People discredit our players more than any program in the country in my opinion.”
Dickert answered our question about his current status of adulation and fame by saying he is not the only one going through it. “Distractions come when your team does really successful things,” he said. “So I’m not the only one dealing with that.”
He repeated a concept that we have heard from him many times in the last year. “Excited about what our team has done. That’s a byproduct of being really good on the field. And I will say this again. I get way too much credit.”
At 3-1 this season (12-5 in his time at Wake Forest), there are still a couple of months left in the 2026 season. That’s about how long Wake Forest has to figure out how much it likes its new “It Coach.” Wake Forest Men’s Basketball coach Steve Forbes chimed in on the question. He responded to Wolken’s Twitter/X question with the answer, “Wake……Forest!!!”
Main Image: Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images
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