Wake Forest Athletics
100% Cotten -- Time To Dream
1/26/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
Jan. 26, 2007
(The following was taken from the foreword of the new book "Time to Dream: The 2006 ACC Champion Demon Deacons" soon to be released by the Wake Forest Athletic Department. The 64-page, full color book will give a game by game review of Wake Forest's magical run to the 2006 ACC Championship and 2007 FedEx Orange Bowl. The hardback book will contain more than 200 color photos, statistics, notes, game recaps, and a tribute to the 2006 senior class. The book will soon be available on line and in bookstores.)
- To purchase the book when it becomes available, click Wake Forest Store
Athletic achievement is, by nature, compelling. Show me an individual who has won anything, and by default there's a story there worth telling. When a team is involved, the plot thickens. For the coming together of a winning team is a collection of separate stories - related, but by themselves unique - sown together to tell one tale. The greater the achievement, the greater the story. When a team's season begins, there are always many questions. The passing of time answers all of them, defining the team and assigning its place in history.
The story of the 2006 Wake Forest football season was one that hit the ground running and never lost momentum. From August to the New Year, the Demon Deacons had our attention. With the passing of each week, the story got better. When it ended, history had been made. In over a century of trying, no other Wake Forest football team had had a season like this one. From two-a-days to the Orange Bowl. What a ride.
2006 was to be the season of a veteran quarterback. Turns out fate would smile on a freshman to lead the way. Without the forearm of a backup safety, a field goal would likely have wrecked Wake's magical run before it began. The Deacons would battle the elements and the Rebels and beat them both. Duke, State and Carolina would all fall to give Wake its first title of the season: Big Four Champ. As the season progressed, a receiver would throw a pass, and a quarterback would catch one. And defining a running back would be nearly impossible. Throw against this team, and you had better be able to tackle. Cross Wake's 20-yardline and you had entered the Dead Zone. A stingy Deacon defense would do to Bobby Bowden's Florida State Seminoles what no other opponent ever had. Not one in the Hall of Fame career of the game's winningest coach. And the strong undercurrent of a defiant spirit found its rallying cry in the reverent silence of the uplifted hands of the faithful. Five.
Leading into the autumn of 2006, from an outsider's perspective, there wasn't a great amount of optimism directed toward the Demon Deacons. Wake Forest was picked to finish last in the Atlantic Division of the ACC. This would neither be a year to celebrate nor remember. But those on the inside hung on to hope. They seemed to know something no one else did. Coach Jim Grobe felt his team would be better. To a man, the Deacons actually talked about winning and going to a bowl game, despite the tarp of doubt rolled out from the outside. Against the odds, their confidence never wavered.
As it turned out, the 2006 season was celebrated like none before it. And we will never forget it.
Stan Cotten "Voice of the Demon Deacons"
