COLLEGE FOOTBALL WEEK ONE:
UNC, Duke, Wake, UVa, FCS/D2 Programs
Among DG’s ACC/NC “Fun Facts & Shout-Outs”
By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
(last updated Sept. 1, 2026)
While the focus of our weekly college football shows are forward-looking as often as possible, we always take a glance back at the previous week, too, and sometimes we’ll offer some quick mentions to those making impactful headlines on the gridiron, especially in the Atlantic Coast Conference and/or across North Carolina.
With that in mind, below are our Week One “Fun Facts and Shout-Outs,” brought to you by our good friends at Jimmy’s bar and King Neptune restaurant in Wrightsville Beach and the same folks’ latest creation, Jimmy’s Inland, their new bar in Wilmington.
Jimmy’s has a full bar, nightly drink specials and live music 365 days a year(!). (It’s a great place to watch a game, too.) Right next door, King Neptune has become one of the best restaurants in the entire greater Wilmington area. Jimmy’s Inland, which features live music, pool tables, darts, an arcade and the brand’s signature slushies, is located about a mile from the UNC Wilmington campus.
Week One “Fun Fact #1”
As crazy as this may sound, since the creation of the ACC 73 years ago, no Wake Forest football coach ever has finished his career with the Demon Deacons having posted more victories than defeats.
This is a Fun Fact, rather than a sad fact, because current Wake coach Jake Dickert posted a 9-4 record last season, in his debut with the Demon Deacons. Those nine victories were the most for any first-year coach in the history of the program.
You may be wondering, as I did, if this Fun Fact should be double- or triple-checked, because we all know that guys such as Jim Grobe and Dave Clawson were really good football coaches. Sure enough, Grobe and Clawson — Dickert’s two most immediate predecessors in Winston-Salem — came closest to a .500 record during their time leading the Demon Deacons.
Grobe, who famously led the Deacons to the 2006 ACC championship, finished with 77 wins and 82 losses from 2001-13. Clawson, who’s now working with the ACC Network, led the Deacs to a program-record seven consecutive bowl games before finishing with 67 victories and 69 defeats from 2014-24.
Now, thanks to Dickert’s impressive debut, it appears that Wake’s decision-makers have made the right hire for their program for the third time in a row, dating all the way back — almost — to the turn of the century, meaning Grobe’s arrival in 2001.
Wake lured Grobe away from Ohio University. The Deacons lured Clawson away from Bowling Green, another Mid-American Conference program. Most recently, they found Dickert at Washington State, a long-time Pac-12 program that also had fallen into the Group of Six ranks, thanks to the quick and painful crumbling of the Cougars’ former league.
Nobody wants to see Dickert leave Wake any time soon, and he appears to have the makings of a second straight bowl team. If Dickert can post a second straight winning record with the Deacons and he decides to stick around in Winston-Salem, maybe he could be that first Wake football coach of the entire ACC era to complete his tenure with a winning record.
Week One “Fun Fact #2”
Regardless of what happens during the 2026 season, Duke coach Manny Diaz already has worked a miracle in Durham.
North Carolina-based college football programs have captured just two ACC titles in the past 37 years. Grobe led Wake Forest to the league championship in 2006, and Diaz took the Blue Devils to that promised land just last year.
That’s it. That’s the entire Bold North State list, over almost four decades. Despite consistently bigger gridiron budgets, more populous fan bases and much larger football stadiums, NC State (most recent ACC title = 1979) and UNC (1980) aren’t even worthy of a modern-day mention in this category.
Duke’s most recent ACC title had come in 1989, a shared honor with Virginia (long before the creation of the ACC championship game) under legendary coach Steve Spurrier. The Blue Devils’ most recent outright crown had come in 1962, meaning 63 years — or two full generations — prior, under legendary coach Bill Murray, who (like Spurrier) also went on to be enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame.
That’s elite company for the 52-year-old Diaz, whose only previous head coaching experience ended with his dismissal. From 2019-21, Diaz led Miami to a 21-15 record and one top-25 national finish, but those results obviously weren’t good enough for the decision-makers in Coral Gables.
In Durham, Diaz’s back-to-back nine-win campaigns (each also included a winning record in ACC competition) to begin his tenure were unprecedented.
Since Murray retired in 1965, 12 men — Tom Harp, Mike McGee, Shirley Wilson, Steve Sloan, Spurrier, Barry Wilson, Fred Goldsmith, Carl Franks, Ted Roof, David Cutcliffe, Mike Elko and Diaz — each have had two or more seasons leading the Blue Devils.
Among those 12 coaches, only two — Cutcliffe and Diaz — managed to post even two consecutive winning records in conference play. Cutcliffe managed the feat in 2013 (10-4, 6-2 ACC) and 2014 (9-4, 5-3), in the middle of his 14-year tenure (2008-21). To his eternal credit, Diaz pulled it off in his first two Duke campaigns.
On to some quick shout-outs, brought to you by our friends at Muscle Milk, as we head into Week One …
#1—Shout-out to UNC defensive tackle Xavier Lewis, a product of Rolesville High School in the Triangle area of the Bold North State.
Undersized at just 6-0 and 260 pounds, Lewis was a little-used backup in coach Bill Belichick’s first season in Chapel Hill, but he earned a starting job in the preseason this year, and he certainly made his presence felt in the Tar Heels’ 15-10 victory over TCU in Ireland on Saturday.
Lewis was named the MVP of a game called the “Aer Lingus Classic” after his seven tackles and two sacks helped the Heels shut out the Horned Frogs in the second, third and fourth quarters of that overseas matchup.
In a sport where 4.5 tackles for loss could make a pretty solid season for an interior defensive lineman, Lewis had 4.5 tackles for loss in the TCU game alone.
In addition, Lewis’ first-down stop for just one yard on a running play on the Horned Frogs’ final offensive possession led to a turnover on downs just three plays later, before UNC was able to run out the final four minutes of the fourth quarter to preserve its low-scoring victory.
#2—Shout-out to all five of Virginia‘s starting offensive linemen, because their performance against NC State on Saturday resulted in the rare Power Four-level football game in which one team might have been able to win without attempting a single forward pass.
Based on total roster career snaps, the Cavaliers are the most experienced team in major college football this season, and that showed up repeatedly in their 34-8 triumph over the Wolfpack, especially in the trenches.
UVa’s offensive line sets up this way this season: fifth-year left tackle McKale Boley (6-5/329), sixth-year left guard Noah Josey (6-5/315), seventh-year center Drake Metcalf (6-2/304), sixth-year right guard Makilan Thomas (6-3/317) and seventh-year right tackle Monroe Mills (6-7/322).
Entering the NC State game, those five linemen had a combined 165 career starts (a stunning average of 33 per man) at the college level. Boley, Josey and Metcalf were returning starters from UVa’s 2025 team, which finished 11-3 and played in the ACC championship game. Thomas and Mills were transfers who missed last season with injuries, but both were three-year starters at their previous schools.
By halftime of UVa’s victory, the Wahoos already had built a 17-0 lead while gaining 168 rushing yards and possessing the ball for nearly 20 of the 30 first-half minutes, and new starting quarterback Beau Pribula had attempted only three passes against a physically overwhelmed, reeling Wolfpack defense.
Virginia finished the game with 57 rushing attempts for 258 yards and two touchdowns. Pribula led the way with 110 yards on 15 carries.
Congratulations, UVa “big boys,” on a job extremely well done.
#3—Shout-out, at the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) level, to Campbell quarterback Kamden Sixkiller and Western Carolina signal-caller Lex Thomas (an NC State transfer) for leading their teams to Week Zero victories and posting some very big numbers along the way.
Under third-year coach Braxton Harris, Campbell opened its 2026 campaign with a 49-37 nonconference victory at East Tennessee State.
A senior now in his second season as the Camels’ starting quarterback, the 6-foot-3, 210-pound Sixkiller completed 29 of 42 attempts for 343 passing yards (sixth-most in program history) and two touchdowns against ETSU while adding 95 rushing yards and two more scores. He led seven touchdown drives on the team’s 11 offensive possessions, as the Camels posted 514 yards of total offense.
Under sixth-year coach Kerwin Bell, who has posted four consecutive winning seasons in Cullowhee, Western Carolina opened its season with a 45-21 nonconference home victory over Eastern Kentucky.
A junior competing in his first college start after two seasons as a backup at NC State, the 5-foot-11, 210-pound Thomas completed 27 of 35 throws for a career-high 320 passing yards and three touchdowns against EKU. A former prep star at Heritage High School in the Triangle, Thomas added a team-high 69 rushing yards, including a game-sealing 15-yard score in the fourth quarter.
Campbell (Coastal Athletic Conference) and Western Carolina (Southern Conference) next go head-to-head in a nonconference matchup on Saturday in Buies Creek (3:30 p.m., FloCollege).
Last, but certainly not least…
#4—Shout-out, at the Division Two level, to third-year head coach Doug Socha and Lenoir-Rhyne, which opened its season Friday with an absolute drubbing of #13-ranked Virginia Union at Moretz Stadium in Hickory.
The Bears, who entered this week’s Division Two rankings at #21 and — at least temporarily — are one of only two North Carolina-based teams ranked in the Top 25 of any of the NCAA’s Division One, Division Two or Division Three polls, clobbered Virginia Union by a final margin of 45-3.
Socha, who previously had great success as a head coach at the NAIA level, started his Lenoir-Rhyne career with a 10-3 record and a trip to the second round of the Division Two playoffs in 2024, but the Bears fell last year to just 6-5, a middling record you don’t see very often with that program.
In the preseason, Lenoir-Rhyne was picked to finish third in the 10-team South Atlantic Conference, but with preseason favorite Wingate losing its opener — and its preseason national ranking — perhaps the Bears’ time has come once again.
Lenoir-Rhyne hosts West Alabama this Saturday before visiting nationally ranked Newberry, which was picked to finish second in the South Atlantic, on Sept. 12 in Newberry, S.C.
