Clawson: ACC Has ‘Perception Problem,’ Not ‘Football Problem’

As a former head coach at Richmond, current Wake Forest head coach Dave Clawson is familiar with competing in a conference that regularly sent multiple teams to the playoffs in a season at the NCAA’s Division I FCS level.

So, at the 2024 ACC Football Kickoff on Wednesday – ahead of the inaugural season of the 12-team College Football Playoff – Clawson was asked how important it is for the ACC to be a multiple-playoff-bid league.

“You’re dating me now. I was in that league when it went from the Yankee conference to the A10 to the CAA. That was certainly a sell in that league, that we were one of the stronger back then IAA, now FCS conferences, that we consistently got multiple bids,” said Clawson, who spent four seasons as Richmond’s head coach from 2004-07 and is now entering his 11th season at Wake Forest.

“I think that’s our challenge now in this conference, is to establish a level of play and to have enough teams that we become a multiple-bid conference.”

As for whether the ACC can indeed be a multi-bid conference in the expanded playoff, like the aforementioned Atlantic 10 Conference/Colonial Athletic Association was when he helped turn Richmond into an FCS powerhouse, Clawson says he doesn’t think the ACC has “a football problem” but rather “a perception problem.”

And Clawson knows how the league must fix that problem – by getting its teams in the playoff, of course, and then taking care of business on the field.

“I think our challenge in the ACC, and as ACC coaches, is let’s put a product on the field that warrants getting a second, third bid,” he said. “Then once we get in there, we’ve got to make noise.”

“I don’t think we have a football problem in our league. I think we have a perception problem,” he continued. “The only way to change that perception is to put teams in. Once we get in there, win those games against those other two conferences.”

A positive of the 12-team playoff, Clawson pointed out, is that a single loss won’t necessarily be as detrimental to a team’s playoff hopes as it was in the past under the four-team playoff format.

“The positive for us is being in the same division as Florida State and Clemson for so many years, right? The second that you don’t win that game, your postseason hopes were dashed,” he said. “I think the good thing now is that you can maybe have a hiccup early, and it doesn’t eliminate your goal of making the playoffs.”

–Photo courtesy Nell Redmond/ACC