Why Wake Forest Hired Steve Forbes

If at first you don’t succeed . . .

Well, my original take of Steve Forbes not going to Wake Forest didn’t hold up very well, did it?

Forbes is a surprising hire for Wake Forest. Not that Forbes isn’t a talented coach. Just the opposite.

But he’s a former junior college head coach with five players on his current roster at East Tennessee State. And as mentioned before, he’s going to a program that’s had a grand total of one junior college transfer in 23 years.

Forbes is also at an age, 55, where Division I athletic programs generally don’t like to bring a coach aboard unless he’s had a track record of success at a major program.

Throw in the fact Wake Forest will be the first private school he’ll have coached at, and Forbes’ background is simply not the one you’d expect to mesh with the university’s administration.

But Forbes had two things going for him. First, charm. Like his former boss Bruce Pearl, he knows how to get people to like him.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, Wake Forest athletic director John Currie.

Currie and Forbes worked together at Tennessee for three years