Heading into the 2026 college football season, the sport spent plenty of time hunting for “this year’s Indiana” - the surprise team that appears out of nowhere and turns the whole conversation upside down. The truth is, that kind of run almost never shows up. Most seasons don’t have an Indiana.
This year’s closest match may be Wake Forest.
The Demon Deacons have become the team nobody seems eager to fully buy into, even as they keep stacking wins and looking more and more like a real breakout program. They’re doing it in the middle of a season that mirrors 2024 Indiana in a lot of ways: low expectations, one respectable loss, and a schedule that hasn’t stopped them from overwhelming almost everyone else.
Wake Forest’s rise starts with the reality of what the program has always been. Under Dave Clawson, the Deacs were a steady ACC winner through the 2010s and beyond.
From 2016 to 2024, they averaged 6.8 wins per season, reached seven straight bowl games from 2016 to 2022, and won five of those games. That was a program built on squeezing every last bit out of limited resources.
That part matters, because Wake Forest was never going to operate like a heavyweight. It’s one of the smallest Power-4 schools by enrollment and alumni base, and it was never going to have the deepest pockets, the best facilities, or the easiest recruiting pitch.
High academic standards only made the job tougher. So when Clawson retired after the 2024 season, there was a fair question hanging over Winston-Salem: could Wake Forest keep winning in the transfer portal and NIL era?
Jake Dickert has answered that question quickly.
After going 8-4 in the regular season at Washington State, Dickert was hired to lead Wake Forest, even though he had no East Coast ties and plenty of people wondered whether he was a one-year flash in Pullman. His first season in Winston-Salem changed the tone fast.
He kept star running back Demond Claiborne, added key pieces from Washington State such as wide receiver Carlos Hernandez, and landed quarterback Robby Ashford through the transfer portal. Wake Forest surprised people by going 9-4 and winning its bowl game, and Ashford enjoyed a career revival after rough stretches at Auburn and South Carolina.
The second year looked a lot more fragile on paper.
Wake Forest lost a chunk of its best 2025 talent. Tackle Melvin Siani left for Texas.
Run stopper Mateen Ibirogba went to Texas Tech. Wideout Chris Barnes headed to Oklahoma State.
Ashford was gone, and so was backup Deshawn Purdie. Dickert had to rebuild the roster and do it fast.
That’s where the skepticism really kicked in, especially when Gio Lopez became the quarterback choice. Lopez had struggled badly for Bill Belichick at North Carolina and finished that season on the bench.
But this version of Lopez was set up differently. Wake Forest offensive coordinator Rob Ezell had coached him when he was productive at South Alabama, and Carlos Hernandez was back in Winston-Salem to give the offense a proven weapon.
The result has been much better than the market expected. Wake Forest’s preseason win total sat at 5.5, and the Deacs cleared that number by the middle of October.
Lopez and Hernandez have been central to one of the ACC’s best offenses, and Dickert’s team hasn’t just been winning - it has been flattening people. Wake Forest has won eight games by an average margin of 32 points per game, with its only loss coming in an early-season 33-20 defeat to top-10 Miami.
Even with that résumé, the College Football Playoff Committee has not treated Wake Forest like a true contender. In the initial rankings, the Deacs landed at No.
- After several contending teams lost, they moved only to No.
That’s where the frustration comes in. The committee’s own Strength of Record metric has Wake Forest at No.
- The Deacs are not outside the top 15 in any of the four major power-rating metrics mentioned - SOR, Sagarin, FPI and SP+ - while UCLA, BYU, Kentucky and Texas Tech each have at least one metric that drops them outside that range.
The comparison to Indiana is obvious. Like that 2024 Hoosiers team, Wake Forest came in with little buzz, took a respectable loss to a top team, and then handled nearly everything else in front of it.
The difference is that Indiana had a soft Big Ten path, while Wake Forest has had to navigate a tougher ACC slate. The problem for the Deacs is that the league’s weak non-conference showing hasn’t given them many chances to collect eye-catching wins.
So the case is simple: Wake Forest might be this year’s Indiana, and the committee still isn’t treating it that way. If the season ended today, the Deacs would be left out of the playoff. They can do a lot to change that perception - and strengthen their case - by beating SMU on Saturday in Dallas.
In Other News...
Wake Forest Has A Chance To Prove Its ACC Standing This Weekend
Wake Forest kept rolling with a lopsided win over Merrimack, a 77-0 result that did little to change the bigger picture around the program but did reinforce how comfortably the Demon Deacons have handled the stretch they are in. The latest ACC Football Power Rankings still place the Deacs at No. 2, where they have sat for seven straight weeks as Miami continues to hold the top spot.
The real test is still ahead, and it comes with far more weight than anything Wake Forest has faced recently. A trip to Dallas to meet No. 4 SMU now looms as the kind of game that can sharpen the league race and clarify where the Deacons truly stand in the ACC pecking order, with the rankings and the upcoming schedule both pointing toward a matchup that should say plenty about their championship path. [Read more 🡒]
Former Notre Dame QB Sam Hartman Is Headed For A Very Different Spotlight
Sam Hartmans football path has already taken a few unexpected turns, from five seasons at Wake Forest to a stop at Notre Dame and then on to the Washington Commanders practice squad. Now the quarterback is stepping into a completely different kind of spotlight, one that has little to do with playbooks or pocket presence.
ABC has tapped Hartman to lead the next season of The Bachelor, with the 30th edition set to premiere in March. For a player still attached to an NFL roster, it is a notable detour and one that shifts the attention from training camp fields to prime-time television, with plenty of curiosity still hanging over how this latest chapter will play out. [Read more 🡒]
Wake Forest Faces A Season-Shaping Test Against SMUs Dangerous Offense
Wake Forest heads into a pivotal regular-season matchup with SMU knowing the stakes reach well beyond one Saturday afternoon. With ACC Championship hopes still in play, this is the kind of game that can tilt a season one way or the other, and the Demon Deacons are staring at a Mustangs offense that has earned its reputation by making opponents defend every inch of the field.
The challenge starts with quarterback Kevin Jennings and running back Kendrick Raphael, but SMU also brings defensive pieces such as Marques White and Kilgore who can make life difficult in their own right. For Wake Forest, the margin for error is thin, and the result could end up shaping not just the conference race but the programs postseason outlook as well. [Read more 🡒]