The month of October hasn’t been kind to the Wake Forest football on or off the field, particularly on the latter front.
A week or so ago, the Demon Deacons announced that six players, including four starters, had been slapped with one-game suspensions, reportedly due to random drug tests that came back dirty. Over the weekend, two more players were indefinitely suspended following their arrests on marijuana-related charges.
With Wake-and-bake jokes and one-liners flying all across the vast expanses of the Internet, the school decided to take a proactive and very public approach to the numerous situations that have cast a negative light on both the program and the university.
A letter attributed to head coach Jim Grobe and athletic director Ron Wellman was sent out to fans by the school, and the same letter was also distributed to the media via a press release. Here’s the school’s note to its fans, in its entirety:As a loyal supporter of our football program, you deserve to know the reasons for the decisions that have been made over the last couple of weeks about some players on our team. The off-the-field incidents have been embarrassing to all of us and it is important that you understand our approach to matters like this. We want you to know that we do not minimize the seriousness of these matters.
Parents understand that children do make mistakes and sometimes do things that are seemingly self-centered or amazingly thoughtless. We can assure you that we never take a young man into our program without recommendations from coaches, teachers, counselors, and school administrators. Recruiting is certainly not an exact science and we diligently try to bring student athletes to Wake Forest who will try their best to do what is right both on and off the field.
Coaches are teachers. Everyone in our program takes that role very seriously. A primary goal is to develop our players for life after school and football. The hardest decisions a coach has to make are those that may sacrifice winning a game in order to teach a player that making good decisions and caring for others are more important. Parents are most heartbroken when their children make foolish decisions but coaches run a close second. We are disappointed in the behavior of a few of our players but feel that our team will grow from the experience. Lost in the distractions of a few are the overwhelming number of players who are working hard to be the best each and every day.
We want to assure you that every decision we make in our football program and throughout our Athletic Department is with the future and well-being of Wake Forest and our student-athletes at heart. Winning is VERY important but it will not be pursued at the expense of our integrity. Our players need a reminder sometimes that their commitment to football extends beyond the practice field. We want our players to look back years from now and know that they were more important to us than winning a football game.
Thank you for all your support and loyalty to our program! We look forward to sharing many wonderful moments with you in the future.
Go Deacs!
Jim GrobeRon Wellman