Ten years later, the players and coaches from the 2006 Wake Forest football team can still feel the thrill of winning the ACC’s most improbable championship.
Some days, on their good days, they feel it stronger than others. Some days, on his best days, Steve Vallos feels it stronger than he did the day the Deacons knocked off Georgia Tech 9-6 in the title game in Jacksonville, Fla.
For Vallos, the All-American tackle who has returned to work with his alma mater’s fundraising organization, it has taken these 10 years for the magical 11-3 run of 2006 to clearly come into focus.
“It’s special,” Vallos said. “I don’t think I fully grasped how big of a deal it was until just in the last year, working with the Deacon Club and meeting these Wake Forest fans and Wake Forest alums.
“As soon as I tell someone I was on that team, or a part of that team — they usually know already — they want to know what was it like? Grown men have told me they cried that day, or drove through the night to get to Jacksonville in the rain.
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“It was like something they could have never dreamed up.”
Against all odds, the program, long considered the stepchild of ACC football, rose up to win it all. Against all odds, a program picked to finish last in the conference after back-to-back 4-7 seasons, got it together to record a school-record 11 victories, pull off a clean sweep of Big Four rivals Duke, N.C. State and North Carolina, stomp Florida State 30-0 in Tallahassee, overwhelm Maryland 38-24 in the regular-season climax in College Park and storm to the school’s second conference championship — and first in 36 seasons.
Special satisfaction was taken from the team’s 6-0 record in road games.
“We were undefeated in those white jerseys,’’ Vallos said.
Jim Grobe, the coach who made it all happen, won’t be on hand when Wake Forest honors the accomplishments of the 2006 team at Saturday’s homecoming against Army. Baylor hired Grobe this season to help clean up the mess it had found itself in, and Grobe will be a bit busy coaching his undefeated and eighth-ranked Bears at Texas on Saturday.
Nor will Sam Swank, the team’s most valuable player, be able to make it. Swank, a first-team All-ACC kicker and second-team all-conference punter that season, is a member of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department, which means he will be a bit busy handling the traffic and crowd sure to show up for the annual Georgia-Florida football game in his hometown.
“I wish I could be there,’’ Swank said this past week.
But quarterback Riley Skinner, Vallos and around 55 of their coaches and teammates will gather at Bridger Field House to relive the golden memories of a decade ago. The 2006 Deacons, Skinner maintains, were a team in the truest sense of the word.
“When I look back on it, I really think of our team chemistry,’’ Skinner said. “And I know that’s kind of a cheesy thing, but I think of our injuries and I think of the circumstances and I think of the end result. And I just think magic. The way it all set up and what transpired, it was just a team to its truest and rawest form. It was an actual team.
“It was a lack of statistics from any one player. It was a defense that had an incredible turnover margin. And it was an offense that rarely turned the ball over and made plays when it had to, everybody on the offense. It really was the rawest form of a team.’’
Though the accomplishment was considered somewhat of a fluke, coming in a season both Florida State and Clemson were off their games, only in hindsight does it become clear just how much talent Grobe and his staff had stockpiled. Although none became an All-Pro, 11 players from the team played in regular-season NFL games.
“There were some studs on that team,’’ Skinner recalled.
Tom Elrod, an assistant coach, noted that at least 10 players from that team — and probably more — will in time be inducted in the school’s Hall of Fame. Any list of candidates would have to include Skinner, Swank, Vallos, running back/receiver Kenneth Moore, center Steve Justice, defensive end Jyles Tucker, linebackers Jon Abbate, Aaron Curry and Stanley Arnoux, cornerbacks Kevin Patterson and Alphonso Smith and safety Josh Gattis.
“We had a group of coaches that had come up together,’’ Elrod said. “We had a group of kids that believed they could win.
“And it doesn’t happen much at Wake Forest that you’re physically better than people you play.’’
What Grobe had in store for the conference wasn’t evident early, as the Deacons stumbled to early season victories over Syracuse, Duke and Connecticut. But as the season unfolded, every time the Deacons needed a big play, someone delivered, whether it be Chip Vaughn’s blocked field goal to save a 14-13 victory over a Duke team that would go winless, Jeremy Thompson’s 86-yard interception return for a touchdown at Connecticut, Swank’s unforgettable three field goals of at least 51 yards at N.C. State, Abbate’s interception in the end zone at North Carolina or Patrick Ghee’s interception in the end zone the next week against Boston College.
“I mean week after week it was just, find a way to win,” Vallos said. “And we did it.”
Both Elrod and Skinner agreed that it was in a 27-17 home loss to Clemson that the Deacons realized just how good they were. Wake Forest led 17-3 into the fourth quarter before a 66-yard fumble return for a touchdown by Gaines Adams turned the tide in the Tigers’ favor.
“We dominated that game for 3 ½ quarters,” Skinner said.
Even in a 24-13 Orange Bowl loss to fifth-ranked Louisville, the Deacons gave a good accounting of themselves. With easily half of the 74,720 present at Dolphin Stadium decked out proudly in black and gold, Wake Forest led 13-10 early in the fourth quarter before the Cardinals scored the game’s final two touchdowns.
Grobe, named National Coach of the Year, was one of the hottest commodities in all of college football. Instead, he remained to direct Wake Forest to bowls in the 9-4 season of 2007 and the 8-5 season of 2008.
“Grobie did a tremendous job handling it all,” Elrod said. “The thing I will always be really impressed with was there were a lot of job offers out there that year. And he declined all interest, because he wanted it not to take away from kind of a legacy team for Wake.
“You’ve got a guy who put team before personal ambitions, from that standpoint.”
With history too often left to the historians, it comes as a surprise to most of the players for the legendary 2006 Deacons the total significance of what they accomplished.
Since the inception of the ACC in 1953, Wake Forest has been judged most directly against its Big Four rivals — N.C. State, North Carolina and Duke. The Wolfpack last won an ACC football championship in 1979, the Tar Heels in 1980 and Blue Devils in 1989.
So the football bragging rights most worth bragging about go to the Wake Forest program that 10 seasons ago did what nobody outside the locker room even dreamed it could do.
“Every year we get further removed from that year, that team, that coaching staff you realize the significance of the accomplishment,” Skinner said.