Hanging Out With Grobe on a Sunny Spring Day
Having never been a cold-weather kind of guy, I don’t know how I could make it through winter without ACC basketball. And there are certain days, when I’m sliding on ice all the way home and I’m bundled up in layers and it’s pitch black outside and not even 6 o’clock, when I wonder if even ACC basketball can do the trick.
On those bleakest days in the deadest of winter, I have a tried and true method of getting by. I envision days like today.
Few things of my experience are more glorious than a spring in North Carolina. Take today for example. I bolt out of bed to the sight of a sunshine streaming through the window and the sound of birds chirping their springtime rhapsody and hustle over to Wake Forest to watch Jim Grobe put his football team through its first controlled scrimmage of spring practice. It’s a festive scene, with at least 150 spectators either holding up the wall or scattered throughout the three practice fields. I see a bunch of good friends, super-fans Ashby Cook. Gene Overby and Sterling Carter, Mike Jennings of Scout.com., Zach Smith of Old Gold and Blog, Dr. Gene Hooks, the former athletics director of Wake Forest, Brian DeGeare, the father of offensive tackle Chris DeGeare, Chris’s uncle Mark and meet several new ones. The last person I saw was actually Al-Farouq Aminu, the 6-9 freshman basketball player who was standing head and shoulders over the crowd, decked out in a bright red sweat suit and listening to a walk-man or some such device. I asked him if he was going to put his name in for the NBA draft, and he said no. I told him that’s what his coach, Dino Gaudio, had suspected. I also told him I’m glad I’ll get to cover him playing basketball at least one more season.
But the highlight of any trip to Wake Forest is talking with Grobe, who was his usual bright and sunny self. He said he really enjoyed watching his players fly around having fun playing football, though, as is to be expected this early, they made far more mistakes than he would have liked. The question I had was why Chris DeGeare and Jeff Griffin had flipped positions, with DeGeare now at left tackle and Griffin at right guard. The starting line during the scrimmage was DeGeare at left tackle, Barrett McMillin at left guard, Russell Nenon at center, Griffin at right guard and Joe Birdsong at right tackle.
“We’re trying to get our best five guys on the field,’’ Grobe said. “The biggest move, I think, that changed things was putting Chris DeGeare at left tackle. As soon as we moved DeGeare to tackle from guard, then it gave us some flexibility shuffling people around. Our best thought, more than anything else was `Let’s leave spring with a pretty good thought of who the best five guys are.’ There are a couple of guys in there that are battling hard to be starters. The nice thing is we’ve got enough depth right now we don’t have to stop scrimmages early because of the offensive line. Now we’ve got some numbers.’‘
I mentioned that previously he had played his larger linemen at guard.
“We don’t really have any small guys anymore,’’ Grobe said. “Most of our guys are 290, 300 and you’ve got a couple of big guys out there. Guys like DeGeare and (Dennis) Godfrey are 325-330 kind of guys. But there’s not much of a thought anymore as far as big and small.’’