COLLEGE FOOTBALL WEEK SEVEN:
Wake Forest, Western Carolina, D2 Programs
Among DG’s ACC/NC “Fun Facts & Shout-Outs”
By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
(last updated Oct. 13, 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 Seven “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 Seven “Fun Fact #1”
Let’s start, as usual, with a Fun Fact — this time focused on the ACC as a whole — before we return to the great state of North Carolina for the majority of this week’s shout-outs.
Fun Fact: Even though it’s only roughly the midpoint of the 2025 regular season, we already know that this year’s ACC football champion almost certainly will be either a school that has never won that title or a school that hasn’t won it in a long time.
Since 2010, only three programs have won the ACC football championship game — Clemson nine times, Florida State four times and Pitt one time.
In case you have forgotten, the Panthers won under Pat Narduzzi back in 2021, during an 11-3 season, when Kenny Pickett was their quarterback, Jordan Addison was their star wide receiver, Calijah Kancey was their elite defensive tackle and SirVocea Dennis was their stud linebacker. All four of those guys, among others from that outstanding Pitt team, are still playing in the National Football League.
Right now, the top ACC contenders are led by #2 Miami (5-0, 1-0 ACC). The Hurricanes, despite being ACC members for more than two decades at this point, have never won the league’s football title, but they’re in excellent position right now under fourth-year head coach Mario Cristobal.
Three other top ACC contenders haven’t won the conference championship in many years.
Georgia Tech (6-0, 3-0) last captured the league crown in 2009, although that championship was later vacated by the NCAA; prior to that, the Jackets’ most recent title happened in 1998. Duke (4-2, 3-0) hasn’t won the ACC title since legendary coach Steve Spurrier helped them tie with Virginia in the regular-season standings way back in 1989. Virginia (5-1, 3-0) hasn’t won it since legendary coach George Welsh led the Wahoos to a first-place tie with Florida State in 1995.
SMU (4-2, 2-0) and Louisville (4-1, 1-1) also are still plenty alive in this year’s race for the ACC championship. Neither the Mustangs nor the Cardinals have ever won the ACC football title, either.
OK, on to this week’s shout-outs….
#1—Shout-out to Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti, who previously served as Chuck Amato’s quarterbacks coach and recruiting coordinator at NC State and later as the head coach — also here in our backyard — at Elon, which became a Top 25 FCS program on his watch in 2017 and 2018.
Cignetti then went from Elon to James Madison, where his average record over five seasons was 10-2. He led the Dukes to three straight trips to the FCS playoff semifinals, including one national title game, then through a successful transition to the FBS ranks as a member of the Sun Belt Conference, before being hired to take over at Indiana.
At this point, what Cignetti has done over this last season and a half with the Hoosiers has to rank among the most amazing stories in recent college football history. That idea is particularly pertinent this week because just last Saturday his team went to #3 Oregon and beat the previously undefeated Ducks on their home field, 30-20. Two weeks earlier, the Hoosiers defeated #9 Illinois by a 63-10 margin. Those were both absolutely enormous, eye-opening results.
Indiana is now 6-0 and #3 in the national polls, behind only Ohio State and Miami.
If you notice, most of the teams in the national top 10 right now — the Buckeyes, the Hurricanes, Alabama, Georgia, LSU, etc. — are multi-time national championship programs and long-time college football superpowers or they’re incredibly well-funded programs, such as those at Texas A&M (which now has an overall athletics budget of about $250 million per year and a football-specific budget of about $100 million per year) or Oregon (where the Nike money of Phil Knight also has built an amazing financial foundation).
Indiana, while a five-time national champion in men’s basketball, rarely has been nationally relevant in football over the past half-century or more. In fact, the Hoosiers had finished in the national Top 25 only once in 35 seasons 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. That marked only the third time, in more than 100 years of college football, that IU had a top-10 finish on the gridiron.
Now Cignetti has them in position to do all of that for the second year in a row, which would be just a mind-boggling accomplishment, especially at that university.
#2—Shout-out — back here in “ACC country” — to first-year Wake Forest head coach Jake Dickert and his defensive coordinator Scottie Hazelton, as the Demon Deacons are off to a 4-2 start largely because of their consistently sturdy performances on the defensive side of the ball.
Among the 136 FBS programs, Wake Forest ranks only 99th on offense and 101st on special teams in ESPN’s efficiency rankings, but the Demon Deacons are 22nd on defense.
Wake absolutely shut down its three lesser opponents earlier this season, holding Kennesaw State to nine points, Western Carolina to 10 and Oregon State to 14. In the Deacs’ three ACC games so far, their defense allowed only 27 points to NC State, 23 in regulation to Georgia Tech and 23 in a win at Virginia Tech.
Wake currently ranks third in the ACC in scoring defense, at just 20 points per game, behind only Miami and Clemson, two teams that are overflowing with NFL-caliber talent on that side of the ball.
The defensive leaders for Wake have included sixth-year senior safety Nick Andersen, redshirt sophomore nickel back Davaughn Patterson, fifth-year senior linebacker Dylan Hazen (now a three-year starter for the Deacs) and fifth-year senior edge rusher Langston Hardy (a UConn transfer).
Dickert’s coaching background is on the defensive side. He was the defensive coordinator on some very successful Wyoming teams before being hired as the DC at Washington State, where he later got promoted to head coach.
Dickert and Hazelton actually worked together on the defensive staff at Wyoming back in 2017, when the Cowboys had a stunning 38 takeaways, which is one of the highest numbers for any FBS team over the past couple of decades.
This year’s Wake team has only six takeaways so far, but it has done a brilliant job of limiting opponents’ explosion plays and frequently forcing foes into field goal attempts.
#3—Shout-out — at the FCS level — to fifth-year Western Carolina head coach Kerwin Bell and the Catamounts’ sensational, record-setting quarterback, Taron Dickens.
We mentioned Dickens (as a rising star in Cullowhee) here on the North Carolina Sports Network back in August, then again last week, after he had set the all-time NCAA record — at any level— by completing his first 46 passes in a row during the Catamounts’ comeback victory at Wofford.
Without Dickens, this year’s Western Carolina team lost its first three games. With Dickens, a 5-foot-11, 180-pound redshirt sophomore from Miami, the Catamounts now have won four in a row, including last Saturday’s 52-7 pasting of Furman. Against the Paladins, Dickens connected on 17 of 24 passes for 220 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions while also running seven times for 48 yards.
Furman, by the way, is a program that has won a record 15 Southern Conference football championships, far more than any other school. Western Carolina, meanwhile, has never won the SoCon football title, despite being a member of that league since 1976.
The only undefeated teams in SoCon play this season are Western Carolina and Mercer, and they will face each other in Cullowhee on Nov. 8.
There’s still a long way to go, obviously, and Western still has four other conference games left to play, too, but after decades when the Catamounts were only rarely in the conversation for Southern Conference honors or a trip to the FCS playoffs, it’s fun to see them — thanks to Bell and now Dickens — firmly in the mix for both at this point, while also putting up the sorts of offensive numbers that make the long trip to Whitmire Stadium in Cullowhee worthwhile.
Last, but certainly not least …
#4—Shout-outs — at the Division Two level — to the coaches and players at Fayetteville State, Johnson C Smith and UNC Pembroke, who have all put themselves in position to challenge for a conference championship and a trip to the D2 playoffs.
Under 10th-year head coach Richard Hayes Jr., who led his program to the CIAA title in 2022, Fayetteville State is off to a perfect 4-0 start this season in conference play, with dominating victories by scores of 51-8, 34-14, 38-10 and 38-14. The Broncos are off this week, but they will have huge home games in November against in-state league rivals Johnson C Smith and Winston-Salem State.
Speaking of JC Smith, under fourth-year head coach Maurice Flowers, the Golden Bulls are 5-1 and back in the national Top 25, one year after posting one of the best seasons in program history. The CIAA championship game will be in Durham this year, at Durham County Stadium, and the Bulls join Virginia Union and Fayetteville State (who are currently tied for first place) as the leading contenders for those two title-game slots.
Finally, UNC Pembroke, led by third-year head coach Mark Hall, also is in the D2 national rankings, at #20, after a fantastic 6-1 start. This Saturday, the Braves visit the only other team that is undefeated in the Conference Carolinas, the North Greenville Crusaders. The winner of that one will have the inside track for the league championship and the automatic D2 playoff bid that comes with it.
