COLLEGE FOOTBALL WEEK 13:
Cignetti, Elko, Four North Carolina Coaches
Among DG’s ACC/NC “Fun Facts & Shout-Outs”
(Weekly Video = Posted Below)
By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
(last updated Nov. 24, 2025)
While the focus of our “This Week In College Football” show is forward-looking as often as possible, we always take a glance back at the previous weekend in college football, 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 13 “Fun Facts and Shout-Outs,” brought to you by our good friends at Jimmy’s bar and King Neptune restaurant in Wrightsville Beach.
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.
Week 13 “Fun Fact #1″
Fun Fact: Two of the top three teams in all of college football right now are led by men who had multiple coaching stops here in the great state of North Carolina.
Curt Cignetti is the head coach at #2 Indiana. The Hoosiers are 11-0 and must beat only lowly in-state rival Purdue on Friday night (7:30 p.m., NBC/Peacock) to finish the regular season with a perfect 12-0 mark and clinch a bid to the Big Ten championship game. Regardless of what happens there, Cignetti will be taking IU to the College Football Playoff for the second year in a row.
Cignetti was an assistant at NC State under Chuck Amato in the early 2000s and more recently the very successful head coach at Elon (2017-18) and James Madison (2019-23) before he took the Indiana job.
While the Hoosiers are a five-time national champion in men’s basketball, they only rarely have been nationally relevant in football. In fact, the Hoosiers had finished in the national Top 25 only once in 35 years when Cignetti took the job, and they rarely have had even a winning record in their Big Ten games.
Cignetti obviously had an amazing, immediate impact in Bloomington last year, when the Hoosiers went 11-2, made the College Football Playoff and finished #10 in the national polls.
Last season marked only the third time, in more than 100 years of college football, that IU had a top-10 campaign on the gridiron. Now, under Cignetti, the Hoosiers are in the process of doing it for the second year in a row.
Meanwhile, Mike Elko is the head coach at #3 Texas A&M. The Aggies are 11-0 and will post the program’s first perfect regular season since 1992 if they can win at #17 Texas on Friday night (7:30 p.m., ABC). A perfect 12-0 mark also would propel A&M into the SEC championship game for the first time in their 14 seasons as a member of that league.
Elko was Wake Forest’s defensive coordinator under Dave Clawson from 2014 through 2016 and more recently the very successful leader at Duke, which gave him his first head coaching opportunity. During his two seasons in Durham, the Blue Devils went 9-4 in 2022 and 8-5 in 2023, impressive results that led directly to A&M’s pursuit of Elko, who had been coach Jimbo Fisher’s defensive coordinator in College Station from 2018 through 2021.
After signing a six-year, $42-million contract with A&M, Elko posted a solid 8-5 record last season and now has the Aggies in the running for what would be their first national championship since way back in 1939.
Now on to this week’s shout-outs, with the focus on those currently coaching here in the Bold North State…
#1—Shout-out to first-year Wake Forest head coach Jake Dickert, who joins Virginia’s Tony Elliott as a top candidate for ACC Coach of the Year.
The Demon Deacons have been extremely well-coached overachievers all season, and Dickert and his staff have squeezed virtually every last drop of productivity and efficiency out of that roster. Despite a limited offense and some problems on special teams, the Deacons — along with UVa — have been among the most pleasant surprises in all of college football.
If the Demon Deacons beat Duke on Saturday to finish the regular season at 9-3, Dickert will be assured of at least a tie for the third-highest win total in Wake Forest football history. If Wake beats Duke and later adds a bowl victory, the Deacons would reach the 10-win plateau for just the third time in program history.
Jim Grobe led the Deacs to an 11-3 season and the ACC championship in 2006, and Dave Clawson led the Deacs to an 11-3 record — including a Gator Bowl victory — in 2021.
That’s some pretty good company for Dickert, whose first year in Winston-Salem should be considered an unqualified success no matter how things go this weekend or during the postseason.
#2—Shout-out, at the FCS level, to seventh-year NC Central coach Trei Oliver, who gradually has built the most successful FCS program in the Bold North State.
The Eagles finished 8-4 this season, and that was viewed by many as a disappointment, mainly because of the high expectations Oliver has created for his program in Durham. A former all-conference punter and defensive back for the Eagles, he led Central to a 10-2 record, the HBCU national championship and its highest-ever postseason national ranking in 2022. Then, in 2023, the Eagles went 9-3 and made their first-ever appearance in the FCS playoffs.
This season, thanks largely to quarterback Walker Harris, running back Chris Mosley, wide receiver Chauncey Spikes, left tackle Trevon Humphrey and kicker Kaleb Robison, NCCU had the highest-scoring offense in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, at about 34 points per game.
Those five players also symbolize the impressive manner in which Oliver has built his highly successful program.
The Eagles signed Harris, a fifth-year senior, from nearby Heritage High School in Wake Forest; he spent his entire college career at NCCU. Mosley, also a fifth-year senior, is a Texas product who started his college career in the junior college ranks but spent the past four seasons with the Eagles. Spikes, a fourth-year senior, spent his entire college career in Durham after being signed from the Maryland high school ranks. Humphrey, a redshirt junior also in his fourth season at NCCU, was a second-team all-state player at in-state high school powerhouse Greensboro Dudley. Robison, a sophomore, is a Florida high school product who mainly handled kickoffs last season before taking on all of the placekicking duties this year.
Among NC Central’s 22 offensive and defensive starters in their season-ending win at Morgan State, nine were from North Carolina, four from South Carolina, two from Virginia, and one each from Alabama, California, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Texas, with a large majority of those starters having spent their entire college career with the Eagles.
#3—Shout-out, at the Division Two level, to our “2025 Bold North State Coach of the Year,” fourth-year Johnson C Smith head coach Maurice Flowers.
The Golden Bulls’ season didn’t end the way they wanted — they fell 21-7 to Frostburg State last Saturday, at home, in the first round of the D2 playoffs — but they still had arguably the greatest season in the 100-plus-year history of their program.
Johnson C Smith hadn’t appeared in the CIAA football championship game since 1972, but Flowers led his team there this year. The Golden Bulls hadn’t won the CIAA title since 1969, but Flowers and his team got that done, too, for just the second time in their 100 years as a member of that conference. The Bulls had never previously made an appearance in the D2 playoffs, but they knocked down that wall this season, too.
In the end, Flowers led this year’s Golden Bulls to a 10-2 record — that’s the highest win total in any single campaign in program history — AND the Bulls peaked last week with a #11 national ranking, which also ranks as the highest in program history.
This 2025 JCSU team ended up with a defense that led the CIAA and ranked among the top 10 in the D2 ranks by giving up only 17 points per game. The Bulls’ offense ended up second in the CIAA, at 34 points per game.
At the end of the regular season, nine Johnson C Smith players earned first-team all-conference honors — they got shout-outs last week — and Flowers was the obvious choice for the CIAA Coach of the Year honor.
Congratulations, again, on a job incredibly well done.
#4—Last, but not least, shout-out — at the Division Three level — to ninth-year Brevard College head coach Bill Khayat, who gradually has built the most successful D3 program in our state, amazingly at a school that had only one winning season ever prior to his arrival.
Brevard College is located in the mountains of western North Carolina, just south of Asheville, near the South Carolina state line.
If Bill Khayat’s name rings a bell, that may be because he was a two-time All-ACC tight end at Duke in the mid-1990s who later played briefly in the professional ranks before getting into coaching. He actually led the Blue Devils in receiving yards one year, which is extremely impressive for a tight end at any school.
Since posting 4-6 records in each of his first two years with the Tornados, Khayat hasn’t had a single losing campaign. Starting in 2019, when his team finished 8-2 overall, Brevard has had a winning record in USA South Athletic Conference competition every year, and in 2025 his 6-4 overall mark was the best of any D3 program in North Carolina.
The 52-year-old Khayat, who previously served as an assistant coach in the NFL, is now the winningest head coach in Brevard football history.
