WINSTON-SALEM – Give Jake Dickert credit for this one: He didn’t get up on the podium for his introductory press conference as Wake Forest’s football coach and hit the room with, “So, how about that ride in?”

He could have.

The last hour of Dickert’s cross-country flight from Washington was a “rocky one,” as he put it — and here comes the most obvious of metaphors, that Wake Forest hopes his tenure as football coach is a lot smoother.

Dickert certainly said all of the right things at Thursday morning’s introductory press conference, right down to noting he’s got to work on developing a southern drawl.

“I’ve got to work on my accent. I’ve got a little upper U.P. in me,” Dickert joked. “I got advice — my greatest mentor is Craig Bohl … and he told me this a long time ago, ‘Be you.’ It’s always worked.”

The 41-year-old arrives from Washington State as himself because of what the former North Dakota State and Wyoming coach told him. Dickert has been this version of himself while rising through the coaching ranks.

He went into more detail.

“I’ve had an opportunity to coach at every level,” Dickert said. “I get asked a lot of times, ‘Coach, you must coach these big-time athletes way different than you did those D-3 guys?’

“I say, ‘No, I don’t.’ They need accountability, they need love, they need to be pushed and challenged. I think that’s how you build these guys into where they need to go.”

This is athletics director John Currie’s pick as Dave Clawson’s successor. News of Dickert’s hiring came less than 48 hours after news of Clawson’s resignation, the 11-season coach of the Deacons exasperated with certain aspects of the college football — and college athletics in general — landscape.

Paramount to Clawson’s success at Wake Forest is how he fit the school. That’s summed up in this My Take about the 57-year-old, who was not at Thursday’s press conference.

Dickert’s fit at Wake Forest doesn’t jump off the résumé pages.

Washington State’s enrollment has more than 20,000 undergrad students; Wake’s total enrollment is around 9,000 and about one-third of that is the graduate student population.

As that indicates, Washington State is the big public school; Wake Forest is the smallest power-conference team in the country.

If Dickert has ties to the area, or even the region, they’re not well known — or at least, they weren’t discussed Thursday. He’s from Oconto, Wis., he’s coached at Wyoming, four programs in the Dakotas (threee South, one North), Minnesota State and Southeast Missouri State.

So, probably best to hold off on asking him whether he prefers Eastern or Lexington barbeque.

Dig deeper and you can find fit.

Washington State, along with Oregon State, was — borrowing the perfect term used by Dickert — annexed from the Power 5 with the collapse of the Pac-12 Conference. The Cougars and Beavers were infamously dubbed as participants of the, “nobody wants us bowl” by Lee Corso.

The man sitting next to Corso on College GameDay is the one who remarked that “all six” of Wake’s fans were upset by something.

There’s something to be gained from picking up a coach from a program that knows something about being belittled; there’s also something to be said for a coach moving away from a place where resources are drying up.

Currie’s confirmation on Tuesday that Wake Forest is committed to spending the full allotment of revenue sharing money from the impending House settlement is the theme, here.

“The biggest thing I was looking for is a partnership,” Dickert said to Currie. “Thank you for sharing your tremendous vision, not only of your plan but of every person here at Wake Forest and just how invested everyone is in the future. That means a lot to me.”

Or, understanding the fit is simply listening to Currie explain what he was looking for in his clandestine sear — er, vetting of candidates while Clawson’s decision to step away became clear, and then search.

“You need to have proven results” to coach at Wake Forest, Currie said. “You need to be able to instill belief and bring energy to the table.

“He brings a lot of the same qualities and values that Coach Clawson brought to this program.”

Which lands us here: Clawson was the best fit for what Wake Forest has been, and for the transformation of the program over the last 11 years; Dickert is the fit Currie needed to find for Wake’s future.

Dickert’s first priority, he said, was maintaining as much of the roster assembled by Clawson. That process is well underway, given Dickert had a not-so-subtle name drop that he was meeting with running back Demond Claiborne at 1 p.m. Thursday.

There were eight players at Thursday’s introduction; among them were running back Tate Carney, linebacker Quincy Byrant, tight end Michael Frogge and cornerback Zamari Stevenson, among others.

His second priority, Dickert said, would be putting together “the best staff in the country” to coach this team.

He’ll figure out quickly who from Wake’s past fits with what he makes the program’s future.