Sources – Wake Forest to hire Washington State’s Dickert as coach

Two days after Dave Clawson announced his departure, Wake Forest is set to 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 guided 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, has gone 23-20 at 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 first part of his coaching career in the Division II and FCS ranks before joining the Wyoming staff under Craig Bohl in 2017. Dickert was Wyoming’s defensive coordinator in 2019 and was hired the next year as Rolovich’s defensive coordinator at Washington State.

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

Clawson was at Wake Forest for 11 seasons and took the Deacons to seven bowl games. He guided Wake Forest to 11 wins and the ACC’s Atlantic Division title in 2021 and won eight games the next season, but the Demon Deacons’ record fell to 4-8 each of the past two seasons. Clawson will remain at Wake Forest in an advisory role. His resignation comes amid sweeping changes in college sports with NIL payments to players and the transfer portal.

“You can’t do anything successfully and it’s not fair to the players or the institution if you do something that your heart and soul is not into,” Clawson said at his farewell news conference. “I didn’t want to do this; in my perfect world I would be doing this press conference in three or four years. But I just kind of looked at where the industry is right now and I just felt like it was time. “