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WINSTON-SALEM — Bill Haley and His Comets. The Starland Vocal Band. Vanilla Ice.

But not Wake Forest. Not yet, anyway.

After they lost their first two games, the 2006 ACC champions wondered how this football season would play out and how history would remember them after their first title since 1970. While there’s still half a season to play, Wake bought itself some time — an extended record contract, if you will — with Thursday’s 24-21 win over 21st-ranked Florida State. Winners of four straight and now 3-1 in the league, the Demon Deacons may yet make Boston College sweat in this newfangled thing called the Atlantic Division.

"They didn’t want to be a one-hit wonder and just play well last year," coach Jim Grobe said. "A lot of people wonder if, after you win a championship, you’ll kind of be too cool for school and kind of relaxed and complacent. It has been the opposite with our team. Our team has been way stressed out. They want to be seen not as a one-hit wonder but as a football program. Tonight was the first night we had a lot of guys who were having fun and looking forward to playing football."

Wake probably can’t afford another league loss if it wants to win the division, and No. 4 BC (6-0, 3-0 ACC) will have to fall twice. But a look at the teams’ remaining schedules suggests this race could drag out.

The Eagles and Deacons have only one common opponent; they’re both at Clemson. The biggest difference — and it is a glaring one — is that the Eagles must play at Virginia Tech on Thursday, Oct. 25, while Wake doesn’t face the Hokies in Winston-Salem, Blacksburg or anywhere else. BC still must tangle with Maryland and FSU, and the Eagles end the regular season with the Miami Hurricanes, to whom they have lost 15 straight meetings.

In other words, BC’s games against the Coastal Division are against Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech and Miami. The Deacons get the comparatively benign trio of North Carolina, Virginia and Duke.

"We see how dangerous we can actually be," said Micah Andrews, the deposed starter at tailback who spearheaded the second-half running game Thursday night. "It does more for everybody watching us: to see what we can actually do if we click."

And the Deacs have already disposed of the Seminoles, having overcome a ferocious defense that denied the Deacs’ preferred perimeter runs, induced four holding penalties and intercepted two Riley Skinner passes.

The Orbit sweep? The Deacons ran it four times and never gained ground. The attempts added up to minus-15 yards.

The Deacons won with credible interior blocking in the second half and another interception from Alphonso Smith, whose first three picks went for Wake touchdowns. This one didn’t, but it stopped a Seminoles drive that looked like it would generate a 21-7 lead midway through the third quarter.

The Noles were going for the long ball to 6-foot-6 Greg Carr against 5-9 Smith, and an underthrown ball might have served them well. Nobody in the ACC can get higher for a jump ball than Carr, but an overthrown toss negates the advantage. Such was the case here. Smith hauled it in, and the Deacons went 80 yards for the tying score behind the running of Andrews, a senior bumped from the starting lineup by redshirt freshman Josh Adams.

Adams isn’t going anywhere. His 83-yard touchdown run in the second quarter was the longest by a Deacon since 1968, a tie for the fourth-longest in school history and the longest against the Seminoles in at least a dozen years. Now Wake Forest appears to have two solid backs for the first time in two seasons.

And the most shocking thing about Thursday’s game? It wasn’t that Wake beat FSU for the second straight season; it was probably the fact that nobody charged the field when it was over.

"My whole family is from Thomasville, Ga., about 30 or 45 minutes from Tallahassee," Andrews said. "To hear my uncles talk about Florida State, I just wanted to go to Florida State. Bobby Bowden, Deion Sanders, et cetera, et cetera. They made these guys up to be gods. In the South, when you step on that field and see that arrowhead, you feel like you’re playing with some football gods. But once you go out there and bang with them and bring them down, you kind of feel, 'I can play with these guys.’

"The unthinkable. Twice in a row. It’s great!"

Contact Rob Daniels at 373-7028 or rdaniels@news-record.com