A refresher on Wake Forest’s football schedule
Deacons move out of the ACC Atlantic while still retaining traditional powers of the division
We’re only a few days away from planning some weekends in the fall.
The ACC’s football schedule will be released Monday night. Wake Forest hasn’t started spring practices (yet), but the Deacons’ 2023 calendar will soon take form.
Wake Forest is entering Dave Clawson’s 10th season at the helm and has been to seven consecutive bowl games. The Deacons went 8-5 last season with a Gasparilla Bowl win.
Monday’s announcement — slated to be made on ACC Network in a show that begins at 7 p.m. — will be dates of next season’s games.
Let’s get some reminders out of the way before then:
- This is the first of four seasons under the 3-5-5 scheduling model, which the ACC announced last summer. It means that each team will have three permanent opponents, while playing the other 10 teams twice in the next four seasons (once at home, once on the road).
There could be more seasons under the 3-5-5 model; it was just announced in a four-year cycle.
- Wake’s three permanent opponents are Duke, Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech. That’s two schools who had first-year coaches last season (Mike Elko did well at Duke and was named ACC coach of the year, while Brent Pry struggled at Virginia Tech), and another that fired its coach after four games and removed the interim tag from Brent Key.
- Last season was the final one for the ACC’s Atlantic and Coastal divisions. Pour some out for #CoastalChaos and … well, Clemson and Florida State’s dominance kept #AtlanticAnarchy from ever getting off the runway.
The ACC championship game will be between the two teams atop the 14-team standings, played Dec. 2 in Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium.
- Wake’s home ACC games this season will be against: FSU, Georgia Tech, N.C. State and Pittsburgh.
The Deacons won’t get a reprieve from seeing FSU on the schedule until next year (like Clemson), and then will play them again in 2025 (also like Clemson). The series against N.C. State has been played every season since 1910 and will end under this model, but not until 2025.
- Wake’s road ACC games this season will be against: Clemson, Duke, Syracuse and Virginia Tech.
It’ll be the second straight season with a trip to Durham, which probably isn’t the strangest quirk in these road games; the trip to Syracuse will mark four visits in the last five seasons. The Deacons are familiar with going to Clemson, they just haven’t won there since 1998 (11 straight games). Wake’s last trip to Blacksburg resulted in a loss in 2019.
- Wake’s non-conference opponents are Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Old Dominion and Elon.
The date of the Notre Dame game—you might have heard of a certain quarterback transferring there—is locked in for the penultimate weekend of the regular season, Nov. 18. It’s Notre Dame’s final home game.
Wake Forest beat Vanderbilt 45-25 this past season, and opened the 2021 season with a thrashing of Old Dominion in the teams’ last meeting. The Vanderbilt game will be Sept. 9.
The Elon game will be Aug. 31, which is a Thursday. It’s the second straight season Wake Forest will open against its FCS opponent, and will be the ninth time in Clawson’s 10 seasons the Deacons open on a Thursday or Friday (the exception was the 2020 opener against Clemson).