The search for Wake Forest’s next football coach was, indeed, further along than people realized.

That was posited by the outgoing coach, Dave Clawson, at his resignation press conference on Tuesday morning.

By Wednesday morning, the scope of it is clear.

Wake Forest is going to hire Jake Dickert of Washington State. Dickert took over as the Cougars’ interim coach in 2021, guiding them to a 3-3 finish after Nick Rolovich was fired because of a refusal to adhere to COVID-19 vaccination mandates; Washington State is 20-17 in the past three seasons, going 8-4 this year with a date to play Syracuse in the Holiday Bowl on Dec. 27.

News of Dickert’s impending hiring was first reported by The Athletic and confirmed by multiple sources to Deacons Illustrated.

Dickert, 41, has spent most of his 19-year coaching career in the Midwest. He was hired at Washington State after spending three seasons at Wyoming; other stops as a position coach have had Dickert at North Dakota State, South Dakota, Southeast Missouri State and Minnesota State.

He comes from one of the programs left in the wreckage of the Pac-12 Conference — and he’ll play the other one in his first season at Wake Forest. The Deacons, in the corresponding move with backing out of their game at Mississippi, will go to Oregon State next season.

According to Clawson, Wake’s search began almost two weeks ago when he first voiced his feelings on a possible resignation to athletics director John Currie.

According to Currie, that only started the vetting process — the search didn’t begin until Sunday afternoon, around 2:30, when Clawson told him he was resolute in stepping down.

The vetting, or search, or however it's phrased, moved quickly.

In Tuesday morning’s press conference, which was emotional for seemingly all affiliated with Wake’s football program, Currie talked a couple of times about trying to convince Clawson — Wake’s coach of the past 11 years — to remain in the position for one more season.

“About 95% of my time these last couple of weeks has been on Dave Clawson, which I did not succeed in,” Currie said. “And about 5% of my time has been on characteristics” of what to look for in Wake’s next coach.

This is where it should be noted that Dickert is Currie’s first football coach hire at Wake Forest. He started at his alma mater in spring of 2019; in his previous athletics director role, he was fired at Tennessee amid a publicly disastrous football coaching search.

When he was fired from the post at Tennessee, he was reportedly lining up then-Washington State coach Mike Leach to be the Vols’ next coach.