His appeal goes beyond energy and belief. It’s whether the way he runs a program can translate to a school with more money—and greater expectations. The most important question about Jake Dickert isn’t simply what he has changed at Wake Forest. It’s how much of that change would travel.
Jake Dickert’s Wake Forest Success Raises a Bigger Coaching Carousel Question
For a school considering Dickert, the attraction starts with a tempting projection: Give him more resources, and imagine what becomes possible. But the more revealing question is what those resources would be supporting. An energetic personality? A connection with players? An approach to running a program that fits the current college game?
Tony Siracusa, who covers Wake Forest for Last Word on Sports, sees a case that includes all three. “If I am a bigger program with good funding, I can’t help but say, ‘Man, if Jake can do this at Wake, imagine what he can do with a fully funded operations budget,’” Siracusa said. That is the promise behind Dickert’s appeal. It is also the projection a potential employer would need to examine.
More money would change what Dickert could do. It would also change what he would be expected to deliver.
More Than a Personality Change
Siracusa starts his explanation of Dickert’s impact with the atmosphere inside the program. “The thing that Jake has done the most is change the tone of the program,” he said. That assessment does not require diminishing Dave Clawson. Siracusa described the former Wake Forest coach as a very good coach with a cerebral approach.
Dickert brings a different presence. “Jake is like the coach who wakes up like he has had a couple of Red Bulls already,” Siracusa said. One of Dickert’s favorite sayings captures the approach: “If you’re juiceless, you’re useless.”
It is a memorable line. But the more important part of Siracusa’s assessment is what follows it. “The program now resembles the coach and the energy,” he said. That distinction matters when evaluating a potential hire. Enthusiasm can draw attention. Getting players and staff to reflect a coach’s expectations is a more meaningful accomplishment.
In Siracusa’s telling, Dickert is doing more than delivering animated speeches. He is changing how the program approaches its work.
The Standard Behind the Energy
For all the emphasis on energy, one of the more revealing details of Dickert’s approach is how he defines progress. According to Siracusa, Dickert does not center his message on goals. “He talks about the standard and what it should be and if the team is getting there,” he said. A goal identifies an outcome. A standard establishes what the work should look like before that outcome arrives.
That distinction gives substance to the personality. Dickert’s message is not simply to get excited about what Wake Forest might accomplish. It is to establish expectations for how the team operates.
The energy gets attention. The standard gives it direction. For another school, that is the part worth studying. Can Dickert’s expectations be taught, reinforced, and sustained in a different environment? Can the approach hold up when the excitement of a new coach wears off? Siracusa’s description offers a reason to investigate those questions rather than reduce Dickert to a high-energy personality.
Refusing to Coach to a Limitation
The biggest shift Siracusa describes is what Wake Forest players believe they can accomplish. “The players are responding because he has them believing,” he said. “He has them believing they can play with anybody.” Siracusa contrasted that confidence with the “Little Ol’ Wake Forest” identity he said has followed the program for decades.
The financial challenges have not disappeared. Siracusa acknowledged that the football program still faces budget issues. Dickert’s response, he said, is to refuse to use the school’s size or funding as an excuse for not winning. That is not the same as pretending resources do not matter. It is a refusal to let those resources determine the team’s expectations of itself.
“The players are bought in,” Siracusa said. For an athletic director evaluating Dickert, that is a more useful starting point than a slogan. It raises questions about how he has earned that trust and how the program reinforces it. Belief alone does not establish a coach’s ceiling. But Siracusa describes a team that is no longer treating its circumstances as a reason to expect less.
A Head Coach Shaped by the Current Game
Perhaps Siracusa’s most distinctive argument for Dickert concerns not his personality, but his experience. Dickert’s head-coaching career at Washington State and Wake Forest has unfolded within the transfer portal and NIL era. Siracusa sees that timing as an advantage: Those conditions are part of the environment in which Dickert learned to lead a program.
“He has dealt with the evolution of college sports, instead of having to adjust to it,” Siracusa said. That does not automatically make Dickert more effective than a coach with a longer résumé. It does offer a specific reason to examine how he works.
Siracusa pointed to Dickert’s trust in a program general manager to manage operations. The detail adds another dimension to the portrait: The coach supplying so much energy is also willing to delegate responsibility.
His appeal, in this telling, includes knowing where to direct his attention and whom to trust with the rest. Siracusa also described Wake Forest’s recruiting of high school and transfer portal players as operating “at an extraordinary level.”
Together, those observations suggest a hiring argument broader than locker-room enthusiasm. They describe an approach to attracting players, organizing responsibilities and establishing expectations. Those are the methods another school would be betting on—not simply the catchphrases.
More Resources, Different Pressures
The strongest version of the Dickert argument is straightforward. If he can build belief and recruiting momentum while navigating financial limitations, a better-funded program could give him more ways to reinforce both. But that remains a projection, not a guarantee.
A school considering Dickert would still need to determine which parts of the program’s progress reflect his leadership, which depend on the people working alongside him and which come from his particular fit at Wake Forest.
It would need to assess whether he could sustain that work, not merely recreate its initial energy. Dickert would have his own calculation to make. A larger budget would be a meaningful difference. Whether it would produce a better opportunity is a separate question involving expectations, support and authority.
For Wake Forest, Siracusa sees a potential departure as much more than losing an engaging personality. “It would be a massive loss for Wake,” he said. His assessment connects the pieces: the changed tone, the players’ belief, and the recruiting momentum. Wake would be losing someone he sees as shaping both the program’s identity and its future roster.
For another school, those same qualities explain the attraction. Wake Forest can show a potential employer what Dickert is building. It cannot show exactly what he would become with a bigger budget. That is the decision at the center of his candidacy: whether the methods behind the work are convincing enough to justify the projection.
