news-record.com

Usually, Howard Stern and Jim Grobe have as much in common as glaciers and Guadalajara. But for a day, they could both claim to be the King of All Media.

Wake Forest's football coach -- that's Grobe unless shock jock Stern has somehow changed professions, locations and personas -- did the full ESPN tour Tuesday, addressing the World Wide Leader's constituency online, on radio and on television. He was live. He was on tape. He was on a slight tape delay.

He was everywhere.

"It's unbelievable," he said of the network's Connecticut complex. "It's enormous. I had no idea. They call it a campus. We got in pretty good condition today. I don't know how many miles we walked going from place to place."

The appearances, which ESPN requested a few weeks back to coincide with the Demon Deacons' first bye week of the season, represented the latest evidence of the program's nascent national profile, a concept that would have seemed absurd a few years ago. These days, Wake is the ACC's only Associated Press-ranked team, a distinction it enjoys for the second consecutive week.

The network wanted a look into the development of the program, and Grobe, unfailingly polite, obliged with only slight reservations.

"As a coach, you want to stay under the radar and you want your players to have the opportunity to be the focal points," he said.

That benefit comes with nationally televised games, the next of which is Sept. 20 when the Deacs (2-0) play a 7 p.m. contest at Florida State on ESPN2. Players have those nasty obligations known as classes, which is why they couldn't make it to Connecticut on Tuesday.

After addressing two groups in Georgia on Monday -- Atlanta for lunch, Macon for dinner -- Grobe flew home and arrived around midnight. After a few hours of sleep, he took to the air again. And they didn't make him fly commercial. They didn't even make him fly to Hartford, a 45-minute drive from Bristol. He and sports information director Steve Shutt touched down at Robertson Field in Plainville, Conn., a mere 4.9 miles from ESPN HQ.

Grobe's first gig was a live appearance on "First Take," the ESPN2 program formerly known as "Cold Pizza," at 10:52 a.m. He left the set and taped a podcast at 11.

That done, he taped an interview with afternoon drive-time radio host Scott Van Pelt that aired more than two hours later -- just as the plane was set to fly back to Winston-Salem.

The next order of business was an online chat, the sort of thing that relatively few in the 56-year-old coach's generation typically undertake. Most of the questions were benign and weren't even questions. (One Wake fan asked what it would take to change the institution's name to Jim Grobe University.)

The afternoon featured two more taped interviews and an on-set appearance on ESPN News' "Overdrive College Football." One host wanted to know if Wake can sustain national relevance for a decade.

"We're getting better," the coach said. "Our coaching staff does a great job. A lot will be determined by how good your opponents are."

And with that one, he stepped conveniently into the most popular line of questioning of the day. At least three reporters asked Grobe what's wrong with the ACC, which is 3-7 against members of other Football Bowl Subdivision conferences through two weeks.

He mentioned the schedule, which has paired ACC teams with Southern California, East Carolina and Alabama. He neglected to bring up Maryland's loss at Middle Tennessee State, but then again, the Deacs do play the Terrapins in a few weeks.

Although tiring, the day exposed Wake football on more platforms than Grand Central Station.

"We did get to talk about the nuts and bolts of the program," Grobe said.

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