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A synopsis of Wake Forest football pre-Jim Grobe: The most beloved, successful figure in the program's history was a guy named "Peahead."

Grobe, who took over the program in December 2000, has coached the Demon Deacons to a position they never contemplated until it was upon them: an ACC title with an accompanying Orange Bowl trip in the 2006 season and a follow-up, nine-win campaign with another postseason appearance.

The ACC crown was the program's first since 1970, when the Deacs went a pedestrian
6-5 and didn't even get to a bowl of any stripe. Bowl games in consecutive years? Now that was really a first. It has become the most surprising and noteworthy development in Triad college sports in years, and the story's not done yet. Dixie Clyde "Peahead" Walker, whose greatest years were in the 1940s, has some company.

In September, Wake opens Deacon Tower, a $40 million improvement project for the team's home base at Groves Stadium. The signature elements are luxury seating plans, which are armed with the sort of amenities common in perpetually successful programs but once considered comical in a 30,000-seat stadium like this one.

Another sign of the times is the name. Groves Stadium is effectively out, having been replaced by the less nostalgic but more lucrative corporate handle of BB&T Field.

Grobe doesn't have a distinctive nickname and probably won't get one. If you come out of Huntington, W.Va., and get to your late 50s without one, it's not going to appear suddenly. That's OK. Architect, contrarian and revolutionary will suffice as identifiers.

Grobe wasn't sure he was going to get this job when it came open following a dismal 2000 season. But Deacons officials loved his backstory - Ohio University had been even worse off in its league, the Mid-American Conference, than Wake had been in the ACC - and they saw the sort of offensive innovation that could make fans notice, too.

The victory total for Grobe at Wake built slowly, and fans were patient. They weren't overly concerned with 4-7 records in 2004 and '05. Heck, the Deacons were competitive in virtually every game, and that overall mark was better than the program had mustered in a typical year. They, like their coach, were taking a long-term view.

Shortly after his arrival at Wake Forest, Grobe began holding most of his freshmen out of competition each year in the hopes of using them as more mature fifth-year players down the road. The practice, called redshirting, is common in college football, especially among teams with superior depth. But few have had the patience to make it work like Grobe, and no one at Wake Forest ever had.

There was no better example of the success of Grobe's approach than the 2006 ACC championship game, a rain-drenched 9-6 victory over Georgia Tech.

The big fourth-quarter play in that game began with quarterback Riley Skinner, an unheralded recruit from Jacksonville, Fla., who after a redshirt year on the sidelines had just been named the ACC's Rookie of the Year.

Skinner took the snap, looked downfield and found Willie Idlette, a fifth-year senior wide receiver from Chattanooga, Tenn., who had no major college suitors before Wake took a chance.

Idlette waded his way through the muck and hauled in Skinner's pass in position for a tie-breaking field goal by Sam Swank, a redshirt sophomore who had taken the only big-time offer to come his way.

Swank drilled the kick to put Wake up, the Deacs held on for the victory and got into one of the nation's most prestigious bowl games.

None of the ACC's North Carolina schools had won the ACC championship since UNC took it in 1980. None of them had played in the Orange Bowl since Duke in the 1950s.

The Deacons didn't beat Louisville in the Orange Bowl in January 2007, but they haven't disappeared yet, either. They figure to be strong again in 2008, still guided by a core of players who weren't widely known out of high school. More than a dozen will be fifth-year seniors.

Even they aren't old enough to remember "Peahead" Walker, but they really don't have to.

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