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WINSTON-SALEM -- Wake Forest flew out of the chaos Wednesday and into the wild, wild West, trying to leave the craziness behind. N.C. State will march right into the chaos on the first night of college football.

What happens next is anyone's guess, but as the South allows itself to exhale between hurricanes, it's as good a time as any to play the games that do more than anything to bring us together and tear us apart.

College football in the South is a religious experience for many, one that seems to occur elsewhere year after year. But a funny thing happened in the last few years that no one thought possible. Wake Forest became good. Really good. And now the Deacons head out as the best team in North Carolina, one of the best in the South and the 23rd best in whole nation.

It's a far cry from what it looks like elsewhere. Take a peek at Williams-Brice Stadium tonight where more than 80,000 Gamecocks will gather for an annual rite of summer. But football in North Carolina is not what anyone could've imagined only a few years ago. The image of football in North Carolina is that of a Demon Deacon. With that comes expectations.

"We've ridden this underdog thing pretty well for a while now," coach Jim Grobe says. "It's been kind of fun to be under the radar."

The radar shows ASU to the west and ECU down East and an uncertain mess in the Triangle. The season that begins tonight is expected to bring everything raining down on little Wake Forest.

"You take everybody's best shot and get their best effort every week," Grobe says.

These words, of course, have never been uttered before by a Wake Forest coach. And while coaches around the South have been saying them for years, no one ever thought they would come from Winston-Salem. But as they get used to the pressure of being the team everyone wants to beat, the Deacons will be doing something they haven't done since 1952 -- finishing with a winning record for a third straight year.

That was before the ACC even existed, before Wake moved from its namesake town to Winston. That was the year Jim Grobe was born.

While the other teams in the state struggle with their own agendas, the Deacons will struggle with a tough schedule and the hopes of an energized fan base that didn't exist before Grobe arrived. A&T will hope for a win, any win this year. Duke will hope for a football renaissance. State hopes a redshirt freshman quarterback will buy time for one of this year's true freshmen to emerge next year. Carolina continues to build slowly, something it's been doing for a generation now. ECU believes its return to glory is close.

But at Wake Forest, the glory days have arrived. That's a good thing for the fan base and a concern for the coach.

"We're not a team that's arrived," Grobe says. "We're not gonna ever take the field and look across at the other sideline and feel like we've got better players."

He was looking forward to getting away from the people who insist on telling his players how great they are, how great this season's going to be.

"We haven't played a game yet," he says. "We haven't earned anything right now."

This is a veteran team, and Grobe believes his senior class will leave the accolades behind tonight.

"The young guys believe all the pats on the back and the people telling them how great they are," he says. "They tend to start believing that. The old guys have been through it, and they know how tough the first game is."

Wake will play before 50,000 people tonight at Baylor in the kind of game Wake used to lose every year. Ole Miss and Florida State await. For the first time, Wake Forest is a part of the Southern rite of passage, the seasonal drawing of lines that attract thousands to football stadiums that stretch to the skies.

N.C. State will play before the zealots in Columbia, S.C., tonight in the kind of game they play all over the South, and have for years. For whatever reason, college football has never taken hold here the way it has elsewhere in the South, and nothing suggests that it ever will.

But who would've believed Wake Forest would play in an Orange Bowl? And who would've believed the Deacons would ever start a season with expectations of playing in another major bowl?

The chaos back home, where Wake's players watched their own stadium begin an ascent to the skies, will build if the Deacons get past Baylor tonight. And if the team lives up to everyone else's hopes and dreams, Wake Forest will win the ACC championship this year. Those words have never been uttered either, at least not in August.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com