Sources – Wake Forest hires Dickert from Washington State as coach

Two days after Dave Clawson announced his retirement, Wake Forest will hire Washington State’s Jake Dickert as his replacement, sources told ESPN on Wednesday.

Dickert is in his third full season at Washington State and led 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 refusing to take the COVID vaccine and Dickert was promoted to permanent head coach after the regular season.

Dickert, 41, is 23-20 overall with Washington State, which played in a two-team Pac-12 this season and put together a schedule after the other teams left 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 early part of his coaching career in the Division II and FCS ranks before joining the Wyoming staff in 2017 under Craig Bohl. Dickert was Wyoming’s defensive coordinator in 2019 and was hired as Rolovich’s defensive coordinator at Washington State the next year.

Washington State ranked 11th nationally in offensive scoring this season (36.8 points per game), with quarterback John Mateer leading college football with 44 total touchdowns. Dickert announced on Monday that Mateer was entering the transfer portal, and offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle also left to take the same position at Oklahoma.

Clawson played for Wake Forest for 11 seasons and appeared in seven bowl games with the Deacons. He led Wake Forest to 11 wins and the ACC Atlantic Division title in 2021 and won eight games the next season, but the Demon Deacons’ record fell to 4-8 in each of the last two seasons. Clawson will remain at Wake Forest in an advisory role. His resignation comes amid sweeping changes in college sports, with no 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 do something that you don’t put your whole heart and soul into,” Clawson said at the press conference announcing his resignation. “I didn’t want to do that. In my perfect world, I would be holding this press conference in three or four years. But I just looked at where the industry was at right now and I just felt like it was time.” “