Gold Rush: Seattle Bowl Champions
1/16/2003 12:00:00 AM | Football
Jan. 15, 2003
By Sam Walker
At the Broad Street exit in downtown Winston-Salem, there is a billboard off Interstate 40 business that reads: "Wake Forest Demon Deacons, Seattle Bowl Champions." For many, Wake Forest's 38-17 victory over Oregon in the Seattle Bowl will forever be the defining moment of the 2002 Wake Forest football team. The billboard is a lingering reminder the Deacons ended the 2002 season as bowl game champions, but it failed to touch on the subplots that make the Seattle Bowl victory one of the biggest in Wake Forest football history.
Just getting an invitation to play in a bowl game was a story in itself. The Deacons, decimated by injuries and reeling after a season-ending loss to Maryland, were not sure they would even receive an invitation with a regular-season record of 6-6. The previous season, Wake Forest was bowl eligible with a winning record but did not receive a bowl invitation. Thanks to the lobbying of Ron Wellman, Wake Forest's athletic director, and John Swofford, ACC Commissioner, and because the PAC-10 had two teams qualify for Bowl Championship Series games, the Deacons got the bowl game invitation it seemed they waited for for two years.
Getting a bowl game invitation was an important step for the Jim Grobe-led Deacons. In just two years as head coach, Grobe has taken Wake Forest football program to new heights with back to back winning seasons, something that hasn't happened at Wake Forest since Bill Dooley led the Deacons to 7-4 and 6-4-1 records in 1987 and 1988, respectively. The Seattle Bowl marked the first bowl game as a head coach for Grobe, who has lofty goals for the Demon Deacon football program and now a bowl game victory to bolster his recruiting banter.
"We did the things good teams do to win football games," head coach Jim Grobe of Wake Forest said after the game. "I thought we played good defense, didn't give up a lot of big plays. Offensively, we took care of the football. Our kicking game was shaky in the first half. Matt Wisnosky has been hurt a little bit and wasn't able to kick until this week. I thought he was poor in the first half and really good in the second half. When our kicking game improved in the second half, it gave us a better chance to win."
Underdog Wake Forest arguably played its most complete game of the season against Oregon, a team that started the season 6-0 and was ranked as high as No. 6 before losing five of its last six, just a year after going 11-1 and winning the Fiesta Bowl. Ironically, the Deacons, one of the nation's top rushing teams, beat the Ducks with the pass.
James MacPherson completed 9 of 16 passes and had two passing touchdowns. The Deacons passed for a season-high 241 yards but also rushed for 256 yards against a defense that had been holding opponents to 106 yards per game. MacPherson's touchdown passes were the second and third longest passing touchdowns this season for Wake Forest, which was 97th in the country in passing offense.
"I can't say enough about James MacPherson," Grobe said. "To close out his career with a day like he had today...."
MacPherson, an Arizona product tabbed as the quarterback nobody wanted coming out of high school, became a sidebar as the nation learned through ESPN's national telecast that he had made his own game tapes and sent them to universities around the country to lobby for a scholarship. MacPherson finished his career with a stellar performance inside the $430 million Seahawks Stadium. The same player who punted in Wake Forest's last bowl game was named the Seattle Bowl's MVP as quarterback.
"Going into the game, I knew there were going to be opportunities to throw a couple of deep passes on them and maybe score a few touchdowns," MacPherson told the Associated Press following the game. "Luckily, we were able to do that. I couldn't ask for a better game to finish out my career here at Wake Forest."
"Coming in, that (throwing the ball) was something we felt we absolutely had to do," Grobe said. "You saw in the third quarter we couldn't run the football at all. Against a really tough, physical Oregon defense, if we didn't air it out we couldn't win the football game. And we had a healthy Jason Anderson. Jason had been banged up a little bit throughout the year, and we just felt like we had to single him up and what a great job he did."
Anderson was on the other end of MacPherson's two scoring throws. The sophomore wide receiver had three receptions for 157 yards and passed the 1,000-yard mark for career yardage.
The Deacons still ran the ball. True freshman Chris Barclay led the Deacons with 82 yards on 19 carries. Senior tailback Tarence Williams got off to a slow start this season because he was recovering from a broken foot. But the Wilmington native, who rushed for 550 yards in his final five games, had 53 yards on 16 carries before sustaining a knee injury late in the third quarter.
Wake Forest defensive end Calvin Pace remained one sack short of the school record of 30 set by Mike McCrary largely because he broke his left leg Nov. 23 against Navy and only practiced for the first time the Thursday before the Oregon game. Pace hobbled as he ran to make plays against Oregon, but he fittingly finished his career on the field despite having a limited impact.
The seniors leave Wake Forest with two bowl game victory rings. The Deacons' 1999 Aloha Bowl victory over Arizona State and 2002 Seattle Bowl win over Oregon are signs the Wake Forest football program is making strides toward a winning tradition. The 2002 seniors were freshmen when Wake won the Aloha bowl. They lived through a coaching change that brought with it a change in style of play and philosophy. They will be remembered as some of the players that began the Jim Grobe era at Wake Forest, and only the future will tell what they started. They leave as winners
"They've done everything we've asked them to do," Grobe said. "We came in here a couple of years ago and worked their fannies off, and they never flinched. They just worked and worked. We were really down when we played Maryland and had some injuries but didn't play well and to come in here and have a chance to beat a good team out of the PAC 10 is really special for all those seniors."