I'm trying to catch up after the wedding and honeymoon and want to get some thoughts written about this.
I don't think Dave Clawson will leave Wake Forest for Northwestern after this season.
That's the short version; If you want to stop reading here, you've got the gist.
Here's the longer version: I've spent the past couple of years -- mainly after the '21 season and during VT's search -- saying that two schools are in the tier of, "if that job opens, Wake Forest fans should pay a whole lot of attention." Those are Notre Dame and Northwestern.
Private schools, academic-driven, both capable of throwing a boatload of money at Clawson. Because he didn't leave in the wake of the '21 season, I'm operating under the logic that it's a short list of schools that could draw him away from Wake Forest and Northwestern has been one of those schools.
Where my feeling shifts on Northwestern is how the job has come open. Everything I've read about the hazing scandal is grotesque. I'm not here to judge whether it happened, to what extent, etc. -- I'm here to say this is a trainwreck of a situation that no coach with an established reputation is likely to jump at. That means Northwestern will either need to grossly overpay for its next coach, which is hard to do when trying to build a new stadium, or they're going to need find a bargain of a coach -- and that's not going to be Clawson.
Here's the part I haven't seen anybody write: Clawson and Pat Fitzgerald have the same agent. It's Bryan Harlan, who's named in
Fitzgerald's statement about fighting his wrongful termination.
So even if Northwestern could overcome some of the financial hurdles, you expect me to believe it'd hire a client from the same agent who's fighting the school's decision to fire the previous coach?
That's what pushes it into a non sequitur.
