Wake Forest is making noise in college football before they make history in Toronto next year - Toronto Star

Wake Forest will come to Toronto next August as the home team in the first college game to be played at BMO Field.

Wake Forest defensive lineman Gabe Kirschke, left, celebrates a sack in last week’s home game in Winston-Salem, N.C. 

Arnold Palmer and Wake Forest was a love affair … one that he always admitted began by accident. It was his high school teammate Buddy Worsham who made it happen, telling eager recruiters that “my best buddy and I wanted to go to school together. He’s a pretty good golfer, and I’ll come to Wake Forest if you’ll give him a scholarship, too.”

Palmer got his scholarship and would prove to be pretty good indeed. But in his early days on the old campus in North Carolina, he had to turn down advice from fellow student-athlete Harry Dowda.

“Arnold, come play football with us,” Dowda said. “There’s no future in golf.”

Dowda would go on to have a solid six-year stint in the NFL but, with the greatest respect, it was nothing on the legacy Palmer would leave on his chosen game — and on Wake Forest. A nine-foot bronze statue of The King stands sentry outside the Arnold Palmer Golf Complex on the new campus north of downtown Winston-Salem.

For decades, Palmer was the yardstick by which all Demon Deacon athletes were measured. Then, in the space of a decade between 1993 and 2003, came Tim Duncan and Chris Paul. Football largely struggled to measure up, the 2006 Atlantic Coast Conference-winning team a rare exception. But 20 years on, there’s an unfamiliar and tantalizing wind blowing through Wake Forest.

Wake Forest quarterback Gio Lopez celebrates after an NCAA college football game against Merrimack last Saturday.

Head coach Jake Dickert’s class of 2026 has defied the oppressive world of prognostication and prediction that is modern college football. With one of the smallest student populations and program budgets in the elite end of the sport, they’ve defied the numbers game, too. As the campaign heads toward its crescendo, the Demon Deacons are 8-1, 13th in the national rankings and absolutely in the heat of College Football Playoff contention. The electrifying play of quarterback Gio Lopez is a huge reason why but Dickert’s team has delivered in so many ways.

Wake Forest will come to Toronto next August as the home team in the first college game to be played at BMO Field. But Syracuse and the 2027 season can wait. Because what would have been seen before this season as an absurd fantasy — that the Demon Deacons head north next summer as defending CFP champions — has flipped, first to possibility and perhaps to the realms of reachable reality.

“We’ve got an opportunity to do something that Wake Forest has never done before. It’s just excitement,” Lopez told the Star this week. “You can describe it as pressure, but we describe it as excitement and great opportunity. Our guys are just so excited about trying to go play late in December and January.

“You can definitely feel the campus buying into us more. People are super excited to come talk, to be around football. It’s awesome, not just for us, but for the campus and for the school and for Winston-Salem, the city.”

This is an era of dollar-gushing expansion of the college game, where financial power already counted for so much. NIL (name, image and likeness) and the transfer portal were sold as solutions to some of those issues — and Curt Cignetti’s Indiana Hoosiers winning it all last year felt refreshing — but the jury is still out. What is undeniable is that Dickert’s program is punching above its weight. A recent study by The Athletic put Ohio State as college football’s biggest spenders, with a roster budget of $54 million (U.S.). Wake Forest’s was estimated as low as $16 million.

Wake Forest head coach Jake Dickert looks on during last week’s game against Merrimack.

In his second year in charge, Dickert’s cultural mantra is just four words: Built in the dark.

“I think being built in the dark means doing it when no one’s watching, when the lights aren’t on us,” Lopez says. “When no one thought we were gonna win over 5.5 games, when no one thought we were gonna be in the hunt for the ACC championship, for the playoffs, we’re doing it and believing ourselves, seeing the work no one else sees. It’s one of those mentalities where you gotta be OK (without) gratification from other people, applause from other people, just knowing you’re doing the work your own self.”

Lopez constantly brings the conversation back to the collective but his individual work has paid off in breathtaking fashion. He spent last season as the man under centre in Bill Belichick’s revolution/circus at North Carolina. The results were mixed for all parties: “I wasn’t mentally there yet,” Lopez says.

Lopez transferred to Wake Forest this summer and never looked back. He has passed for 18 touchdowns with just one interception, rushed for another six and is in the Heisman Trophy conversation.

Lopez returns from a one-game injury absence in a crucial road showdown Saturday with the 7-2 SMU Mustangs. The deliberations of the CFP selection committee remain a mystifying thing but Wake Forest needs to win out to give them no option. An ACC championship game would offer a second route into the playoff.

“For the young kid in me, playing peewee football, thinking I’d be (a Heisman contender), that’s awesome. But the older me, it’s not really about (that),” Lopez says. “I’d rather go get an ACC championship, make a run at the playoffs than get personal accolades and see our season over with an almost irrelevant bowl game.”

The kind of mentality Tim Duncan and Arnold Palmer would approve of?

“Of course!” Lopez says. “When it comes to the Wake Forest legacy, you know, those guys went and did it. Went on to have really incredible careers. You look up to them.”

At some point down the line, Lopez might look up on Google Maps, too. He’s never been to Canada but has two offensive linemen, Uber Ajongo and Elliot Demaine, from Ottawa.

“All the guys. we’ve talked about the chance to go play in Canada. The first college game (at BMO Field). That’s an awesome opportunity. Who all can say they played there? It’s going to be such a cool thing to start our season up there. Hopefully it’s a little warmer for it! We’re trying not to look too far past. We have this season to finish up.”

Sure do. For Lopez and these Demon Deacons, there’s a future in football. A blindingly bright present, too.

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Joe Callaghan is a Toronto-based sports and feature writer and a contributor for the Star. Reach him via email: joecallaghan84@hotmail.com or follow him on X: @JoeCallaghan84.