Dave Clawson dishes on tampering, addressing it within the Wake Forest program

Tampering has been the bugaboo of many a college football coach since the widespread allowance of NIL payments and the transfer portal. Wake Forest and head coach Dave Clawson have not been immune from outside voices trying lure players away.

Joining On3’s Andy Staples for a conversation on Tuesday, Clawson explained that after the 2022 season he had eight players who were tampered with. All but one told Clawson about the interactions after the window had closed.

“Of the eight of them, seven of them shared it after the fact,” Clawson said. “And they just said it almost out of, ‘Hey coach, I just — I don’t want you to hear from anybody else. I just want you to know that this institution reached out to me in this way through this alumni or this local trainer and they were talking this amount of money. But I want to get my degree from Wake, but I just thought you should know.'”

Clawson said the eighth came to him as the offers were ongoing and discussed it with him.

Without naming schools or players, Clawson shared how some of the conversation went.

“And I just said, ‘It’s a lot of money. And if your entire decision is gonna be based on how can I get the most amount of money in the next calendar year, I said ‘You probably have to go. But why did you pick Wake Forest? What’s the value of our degree? You’ve spent three years here to try to get a Wake Forest degree and you’re two semesters away. Yes, there’s a benefit financially of leaving but there’s also a cost of leaving. And are you really willing to give up a $450,000 education that you’ve worked hard for for four years to get a one-year payment of $250,000?'” Clawson said.

Getting to weigh out the value of a Wake Forest degree is a luxury Clawson has that plenty of coaches do not as he coaches at a top-notch academic institution.

And in the end, the fact that players chose to stay and complete their Wake Forest degrees is a reflection that Clawson and staff had identified the right type of guys to fill out their program.

While it might be a bit of a self-selecting sample, Clawson is clearly assured that he’s got a group of guys interested in being at Wake Forest for the football program and a chance to get a valuable degree.

It might not work for everyone, but Clawson seems to have found a healthy balance to counteract outside forces trying to poach players.

“So a lot of these players that stayed, they’re within a year of their degree. They came here because they valued what our degree means and what it’ll lead to when they’re done with football and again, all of them except one just stayed without even telling me and shared it after the fact, which I really appreciated,” Clawson said. “They didn’t try to leverage it. They knew they wanted to stay, they knew they wanted to graduate and I think because of it we’ll have a good football team again this year.”