Wakeyleaks: The Wake Forest football espionage caper of the century

Louisville quarterback Lamar Jackson is a college star. He won the Heisman Trophy as a sophomore last season, and he’s a contender (though not an outright favorite) to become the second repeat winner in history this season. Whether he pulls that off or not, Jackson’s among the handful of best college QBs in recent years.

There’s some disagreement about whether he’ll amount to much in the NFL. In a Sports Illustrated story published in January, an anonymous ACC coach compared Jackson to Clemson’s Deshaun Watson and said of the Louisville QB:

A Friday afternoon in December featured two Wakeyleaks newsdumps back-to-back. First, Louisville announced it was suspending the coach who was initially contacted by Wake Forest’s Tommy Elrod. Then, Indiana announced that its probe didn’t find anything, leading it to believe that the Hoosiers received no info from Wake Forest’s reported mole, who was previously a colleague of an Indiana assistant.

This brings our current total to four teams who have directly spoken about their involvement in Wakeyleaks: Wake Forest, plus opponents Louisville, Army, and Virginia Tech, who said they were tipped off to game plan information by Wake radio announcer Elrod. Just fill in Indiana as an “X” here:

Wake Forest’s game at Louisville on Nov. 12 was what set off Wakeyleaks, the pigskin espionage thriller that enthralled the college football world this winter.

A member of Wake’s travel party found Demon Deacons game plan documents at the Cardinals’ stadium. The Deacs investigated how they got there, and they settled on former assistant coach and then-radio commentator Tom Elrod as their mole. The debacle also touched Virginia Tech and Army.

At halftime, Wake Forest was flat out crushing Temple, winning 31-10. The game isn’t even as close as that score indicates. The Owls scored on their first offensive play of the game, and only mustered a field goal after that. In explaining the offensive explosion against a good Temple defense, obviously coach Dave Clawson was going to be asked if this had anything to do with the end of Wakeyleaks.

ESPN’s Paul Carcaterra asked Clawson if the team’s success could be attributed to now being able to use the full playbook with no fear of espionage.

The ACC has spoken on Wakeyleaks. The conference announced earlier this week that it would investigate on its own what happened between former Wake assistant coach Tommy Elrod and the football staffs at Louisville, Army, and Virginia Tech, to whom he leaked game plan information. That investigation has come to a conclusion.

Besides the fines (which the ACC says are the highest they’re allowed to dish out), the conference will not levy further discipline on Louisville. In the statement the conference says it is “fully supportive” of the Cardinals suspending assistant coach Lonnie Galloway for the Citrus Bowl, which the school announced Friday.

Friday afternoon is the perfect time for the good, old-fashioned news dump, and you bet Louisville hit us with one involving the Wake Forest game plan leaks story.

Galloway is suspended for the Citrus Bowl, and the ACC could levy additional sanctions whenever the conference’s investigation concludes. Louisville says it’s cooperating.

2016’s hottest college football scandal involves a former Wake Forest assistant coach and radio analyst leaking play calls and other proprietary material to Deacs opponents. It’s been dubbed Wakeyleaks, because 2016.

Friday, Wake Forest head coach Dave Clawson went on ESPN Radio and detailed some of the nitty gritty surrounding what happened before and during the matchup against Louisville, which is the linchpin for this whole thing blowing up.

On Nov. 22, 2014, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest played one of the most gloriously dreadful college football games of the last thousand years. It produced this all-time classic moment, when Frank Beamer celebrated a missed Wake field goal that ensured the game would go to overtime:

Wake would eventually win, 6-3, in a game that stole the attention of uninvested onlookers across the country. No, seriously. Everyone flipped over to watch the final moments of this disaster, then rooted for 0-0 to continue forever.

Wake Forest’s ongoing football espionage caper has already enmeshed the programs at Louisville and Army. Now a fourth school has entered the fray: Virginia Tech.

The Hokies released a statement Thursday afternoon, with athletic director Whit Babcock acknowledging a “former Wake Forest staff member” gave game-plan information to one of Virginia Tech’s “former assistant coaches” in 2014.

Back on Rivalry Weekend, Georgia Tech scored a nice road win at Georgia on a pretty cool, pretty weird game-clinching touchdown. The play looked like a sweep pitch and throwback to the quarterback, but it turned into something else.

Tech’s Qua Searcy decided not to try for a touchdown pass to QB Justin Thomas, who slipped away to run a wheel route concept across the field. Searcy instead tucked the ball and ran, and he scored by diving through a mess of UGA defenders. Pretty cool play, and it got Tech to 8-4 on the year. Georgia is a mere 7-5.

Tuesday night, college football asserted its dominance as America’s greatest and dumbest sport:

WAKEYLEAKS, as Twitter’s named it.