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Former Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson broke down the National Championship with writers Dan Wetzel and Pete Thamel on the ESPN "College Gameday Podcast." A transcript of their discussion is below.
Dan Wetzel: The Hurricanes are playing for the national title for the first time since 2002. They’ve won five overall. Their 2001 team is considered the greatest team in college football history, at least by me. Thirty-eight NFL draft picks, seventeen first rounders. Tailback rotation of Clinton Portis, Willis McGahee, and Frank Gore.
Coach, you coached against Miami for many years while you’re at Wake Forest. You’ve been around them working at the ACC Network. You know Mario Cristobal. What do you make of this run by the Hurricanes to the national title?
Dave Clawson: I think Mario Cristobal has embraced coaching college football in 2025 and 2026 as well as anybody in the country. He was always known as a top-notch recruiter, but what stands out now is how he’s blended the old Miami identity—physicality, line play, depth—with the modern realities of roster management and staff-building.
If you look at their football team this year, there were two key acquisitions that changed the trajectory. Number one: hiring Corey Hetherman as their defensive coordinator. That didn’t just tweak a few calls—it changed the daily standard and the overall personality of the defense. Number two: bringing in Carson Beck. The quarterback element matters in every era, but in this one it stabilizes everything—play-calling, pacing, how you manage games late, and how you recruit and retain.
Miami’s season is really interesting. They got off to a hot start. They beat Notre Dame, South Florida, Florida, Florida State. Then they had a midseason lull that, if the playoff was only four teams, they wouldn’t even be in it. But after the Syracuse game, there was one play in particular that changed the whole season.
And big picture: they are just so good up front on both sides of the line of scrimmage. That’s clearly how Mario wanted to build it. I don’t know if he knew he had that level of line play at the beginning of the year, but to me they’re playing much differently now than they did the first half of the season—more mature, more grounded in what wins in January, not what looks good in September.
Dan Wetzel: Dave, what was the play? You said there’s one play that changed the whole season.
Dave Clawson: They were really struggling against Syracuse. If you remember, that game was like a low-scoring game late in the second quarter and they opened up the playbook. They ran a reverse with Malachi Toney, who threw it back to Carson Beck. Beck runs into the end zone and does a finger roll, and the whole team celebrates.
To me, it wasn’t just a trick play. It was a message—almost a reset. Like: we’ve got to make this fun again. We’ve got to loosen up, play free, and stop carrying whatever weight we’ve been carrying. Ever since that one football play, they’ve been on a roll. They’ve played as well as anybody in the country—with maybe the exception of Indiana—since that moment.
I give Shannon Dawson a lot of credit. When an offense is searching, you can’t just demand execution harder. Sometimes you have to change the emotional temperature—inject energy, creativity, confidence. That play wasn’t random; it was strategic, and it sparked them. You could feel that the team started playing with a different kind of belief after that.
Pete Thamel: Dave, I completely agree with the identity shift. From being around Miami last week out west and watching them in the playoffs, to me the defining plays of Miami are Mark Fletcher going up the middle. He should get an NIL deal from Caterpillar because all he does is move piles of people. He turns three-yard runs into eight-yard runs. There’s these beehives of humans and his legs are just churning.
Mario almost lost the mumbles out of his mouth. He was so excited on that 19-yard run—he gave one of those big fist bumps and screamed. That’s what this team is. And it’s going to be fascinating because Indiana without as much raw talent on each line has whipped people up front. They whipped Oregon in Eugene up front with six sacks. They whipped them again up front in Atlanta the other night. That bulldozer mentality is going to meet an interesting match.
Dave Clawson: After last year, Miami wasn’t an average defense. They were bad. They blew coverages. They didn’t run to the football. They didn’t pursue things. So when the year started, you thought: okay, this is Miami of the previous year—just with Carson Beck instead of Cam Ward—and they’ll have to win games on offense.
About halfway through the year, they discovered they’re pretty good on defense too. I always say you have a great team when you’re capable of winning low-scoring games and high-scoring games. Miami in this playoff run has been able to do both. They won low-scoring games against Texas A&M and Ohio State. Going into the Ole Miss game, I thought the magic number for them was 30. If they could get to 30, they could win. They got to 31.
And a lot of that is because of the offensive line. They wear people down. But the key in this game is whether Miami can stay on the field enough and make enough first downs against Indiana’s run defense so that that wearing-down effect actually shows up late.
Pete Thamel: You mentioned Corey Hetherman. He’s moved up quickly—Fitchburg State, then he was on staff for Curt Cignetti at JMU, then Rutgers, then Minnesota, then Miami. He overlapped with Bryant Haines—Indiana’s DC—who’s been a revelation too. Can you give me two traits of Hetherman’s defense and how you’ve seen him stamp it, Dave, versus last year?
Dave Clawson: I don’t know if it’s a massive schematic change as much as it’s a massive change in how they play. Two traits jump out.
First: space tackling. They get the ball on the ground better than they did a year ago. The pursuit is different. The gang tackling is different. When a guy misses, there are multiple bodies arriving to clean it up. That’s culture. That’s standard. That’s effort married to technique.
Second: they’ve leveraged their pass rushers as true “poisons.” Rueben Bain is a poison—meaning he dictates protection. You slide to him, chip him, bring help. And Miami has two of them, because Akheem Mesidor is a poison too.
What Mario Cristobal and Corey Hetherman have done a great job of is using those two guys to complement each other. If you slide one way, the other guy can have a one-on-one. If you try to help both, you start compromising something else—your release plan, your spacing, your timing.
In the Ohio State game, the very first third down, they lined those two guys up next to each other and ran a twist. They found a protection stress point immediately and made Ohio State solve problems from the opening snap. And once an offense starts thinking protection-first, it changes the whole rhythm of the game.
The other benefit is it protects what can be Miami’s vulnerability—coverage depth in the secondary—because quarterbacks don’t get to hold the ball long enough for routes to fully develop.
Pete Thamel: Keionte Scott made arguably the biggest play of the playoff against Ohio State. Walk us through that play from a coach’s perspective. Was that a mis-block by Jeremiah Smith? Was that great instincts by Scott?
Dave Clawson: It was all of the above. You study tendencies. A lot of times when teams motion a tight end wide, it’s to get the ball to a playmaker. If you’ve seen that on film, you rehearse it. You train your eyes. And as a defensive player, when you see the exact picture you’ve prepared for, you’re ready to trigger.
And yes, it was also a mistake by Jeremiah Smith. As a perimeter blocker, you have to stop penetration first—avoid disaster—then work to the perimeter. He took a step outside anticipating Scott would widen with the screen, and Scott attacked the inside path.
I was at field level for that. The reaction from Ohio State’s sideline was devastating. Plays like that don’t just change a down—they change belief. It ignited Miami and it told them, “We can beat these guys.” From that point, Ohio State was playing uphill.
Dan Wetzel: Let’s turn to Indiana. They made a movie once called “Hoosiers.” There’s the famous tape measure scene to calm the underdog farm kids. This Indiana football team is nothing like that. I don’t think they’re scared of anything. I don’t think they care about program history. I think they’re going to walk into Hard Rock Stadium and believe they’re the best team.
Coach Dave Clawson, how did Curt Cignetti not just get IU here from a talent and scheme aspect, but get them here believing they’re the bully?
Dave Clawson: He’s done an unbelievable job, and the portal era allows people to flip programs quicker. The smartest thing he did was bring in 13 players from James Madison right away and a whole bunch of coaches who had been with him for over a decade.
In other words, he didn’t have to create a culture—he imported a culture. When he spoke, he had instant credibility in the room because there were already people inside the program who could translate what he meant, reinforce what it looked like, and hold everyone accountable to it.
And it’s not just culture. It’s evaluation and coaching. Coaches who come up through places where you don’t have a huge talent gap learn to win with details. In those jobs, the margin is small, so you have to be precise: who you recruit, how you develop, how you teach situational football, how you structure your week. That experience transfers directly to building a roster through the portal.
Pete Thamel: You’ve lived in the same corridor as Curt Cignetti throughout your career. What did you know of him before he told everyone to Google him?
Dave Clawson: When he was at Elon, I’d get an annual call every December: “This is what I need. Who do you have? Who can’t play for you that can help me?” I’d recommend two or three players buried on our depth chart who might want to transfer down a level.
He did the same thing at JMU. And what impressed me was his detail. It wasn’t vague. It was: tell me about him—does he love football, what’s his skill set, what’s his background, what’s his temperament?
And his first question was always, “Does this guy love football?” If there was any hesitation, he didn’t want anything to do with him. That’s evaluation, but it’s also culture-building. It tells you exactly what the standard is and what kind of locker room you’re trying to build.
Pete Thamel: One of the reasons you'd be leaning Indiana is discipline. Fewest penalty yards per game—Indiana near the top, Miami much lower. Miami has had big penalty games. If Miami has punitive penalties, they’re not going to win.
Dave Clawson: In bowl games we would always research the officiating crew because different leagues call penalties differently. Big Ten crews can call games differently than ACC crews. You’re trying to understand where the line is, because that can impact how a game plays—especially for a team that plays aggressively and physically.
Dan Wetzel: All right, we’re about to make selections for the national championship game between Indiana and Miami. Indiana opened as about a seven-and-a-half point favorite, now closer to eight-and-a-half. Who’s winning?
Pete Thamel: I’m going to take Indiana. They’re relentless efficiency monsters. Best quarterback. Lines can hold up enough. I think they cover, and it’s a 30–20 kind of game.
Dave Clawson: I’m going to go with Miami. I do believe they’re the more talented team. They’re at home, they don’t have to travel, there are intangible advantages. If they play the game they’re capable of, they can win. But I’ll admit there are a lot of “ifs.”
Dan Wetzel: I’m going with Miami as well. I believe in the offensive and defensive lines. Indiana hasn’t dealt with an Akheem Mesidor or a Rueben Bain Jr. If Miami can run the ball, avoid bad penalties, and get something good out of Carson Beck, they can spring the upset. If you want the safer pick, you take Indiana. But I’m taking the Canes.
Dan Wetzel: The Hurricanes are playing for the national title for the first time since 2002. They’ve won five overall. Their 2001 team is considered the greatest team in college football history, at least by me. Thirty-eight NFL draft picks, seventeen first rounders. Tailback rotation of Clinton Portis, Willis McGahee, and Frank Gore.
Coach, you coached against Miami for many years while you’re at Wake Forest. You’ve been around them working at the ACC Network. You know Mario Cristobal. What do you make of this run by the Hurricanes to the national title?
Dave Clawson: I think Mario Cristobal has embraced coaching college football in 2025 and 2026 as well as anybody in the country. He was always known as a top-notch recruiter, but what stands out now is how he’s blended the old Miami identity—physicality, line play, depth—with the modern realities of roster management and staff-building.
If you look at their football team this year, there were two key acquisitions that changed the trajectory. Number one: hiring Corey Hetherman as their defensive coordinator. That didn’t just tweak a few calls—it changed the daily standard and the overall personality of the defense. Number two: bringing in Carson Beck. The quarterback element matters in every era, but in this one it stabilizes everything—play-calling, pacing, how you manage games late, and how you recruit and retain.
Miami’s season is really interesting. They got off to a hot start. They beat Notre Dame, South Florida, Florida, Florida State. Then they had a midseason lull that, if the playoff was only four teams, they wouldn’t even be in it. But after the Syracuse game, there was one play in particular that changed the whole season.
And big picture: they are just so good up front on both sides of the line of scrimmage. That’s clearly how Mario wanted to build it. I don’t know if he knew he had that level of line play at the beginning of the year, but to me they’re playing much differently now than they did the first half of the season—more mature, more grounded in what wins in January, not what looks good in September.
Dan Wetzel: Dave, what was the play? You said there’s one play that changed the whole season.
Dave Clawson: They were really struggling against Syracuse. If you remember, that game was like a low-scoring game late in the second quarter and they opened up the playbook. They ran a reverse with Malachi Toney, who threw it back to Carson Beck. Beck runs into the end zone and does a finger roll, and the whole team celebrates.
To me, it wasn’t just a trick play. It was a message—almost a reset. Like: we’ve got to make this fun again. We’ve got to loosen up, play free, and stop carrying whatever weight we’ve been carrying. Ever since that one football play, they’ve been on a roll. They’ve played as well as anybody in the country—with maybe the exception of Indiana—since that moment.
I give Shannon Dawson a lot of credit. When an offense is searching, you can’t just demand execution harder. Sometimes you have to change the emotional temperature—inject energy, creativity, confidence. That play wasn’t random; it was strategic, and it sparked them. You could feel that the team started playing with a different kind of belief after that.
Pete Thamel: Dave, I completely agree with the identity shift. From being around Miami last week out west and watching them in the playoffs, to me the defining plays of Miami are Mark Fletcher going up the middle. He should get an NIL deal from Caterpillar because all he does is move piles of people. He turns three-yard runs into eight-yard runs. There’s these beehives of humans and his legs are just churning.
Mario almost lost the mumbles out of his mouth. He was so excited on that 19-yard run—he gave one of those big fist bumps and screamed. That’s what this team is. And it’s going to be fascinating because Indiana without as much raw talent on each line has whipped people up front. They whipped Oregon in Eugene up front with six sacks. They whipped them again up front in Atlanta the other night. That bulldozer mentality is going to meet an interesting match.
Dave Clawson: After last year, Miami wasn’t an average defense. They were bad. They blew coverages. They didn’t run to the football. They didn’t pursue things. So when the year started, you thought: okay, this is Miami of the previous year—just with Carson Beck instead of Cam Ward—and they’ll have to win games on offense.
About halfway through the year, they discovered they’re pretty good on defense too. I always say you have a great team when you’re capable of winning low-scoring games and high-scoring games. Miami in this playoff run has been able to do both. They won low-scoring games against Texas A&M and Ohio State. Going into the Ole Miss game, I thought the magic number for them was 30. If they could get to 30, they could win. They got to 31.
And a lot of that is because of the offensive line. They wear people down. But the key in this game is whether Miami can stay on the field enough and make enough first downs against Indiana’s run defense so that that wearing-down effect actually shows up late.
Pete Thamel: You mentioned Corey Hetherman. He’s moved up quickly—Fitchburg State, then he was on staff for Curt Cignetti at JMU, then Rutgers, then Minnesota, then Miami. He overlapped with Bryant Haines—Indiana’s DC—who’s been a revelation too. Can you give me two traits of Hetherman’s defense and how you’ve seen him stamp it, Dave, versus last year?
Dave Clawson: I don’t know if it’s a massive schematic change as much as it’s a massive change in how they play. Two traits jump out.
First: space tackling. They get the ball on the ground better than they did a year ago. The pursuit is different. The gang tackling is different. When a guy misses, there are multiple bodies arriving to clean it up. That’s culture. That’s standard. That’s effort married to technique.
Second: they’ve leveraged their pass rushers as true “poisons.” Rueben Bain is a poison—meaning he dictates protection. You slide to him, chip him, bring help. And Miami has two of them, because Akheem Mesidor is a poison too.
What Mario Cristobal and Corey Hetherman have done a great job of is using those two guys to complement each other. If you slide one way, the other guy can have a one-on-one. If you try to help both, you start compromising something else—your release plan, your spacing, your timing.
In the Ohio State game, the very first third down, they lined those two guys up next to each other and ran a twist. They found a protection stress point immediately and made Ohio State solve problems from the opening snap. And once an offense starts thinking protection-first, it changes the whole rhythm of the game.
The other benefit is it protects what can be Miami’s vulnerability—coverage depth in the secondary—because quarterbacks don’t get to hold the ball long enough for routes to fully develop.
Pete Thamel: Keionte Scott made arguably the biggest play of the playoff against Ohio State. Walk us through that play from a coach’s perspective. Was that a mis-block by Jeremiah Smith? Was that great instincts by Scott?
Dave Clawson: It was all of the above. You study tendencies. A lot of times when teams motion a tight end wide, it’s to get the ball to a playmaker. If you’ve seen that on film, you rehearse it. You train your eyes. And as a defensive player, when you see the exact picture you’ve prepared for, you’re ready to trigger.
And yes, it was also a mistake by Jeremiah Smith. As a perimeter blocker, you have to stop penetration first—avoid disaster—then work to the perimeter. He took a step outside anticipating Scott would widen with the screen, and Scott attacked the inside path.
I was at field level for that. The reaction from Ohio State’s sideline was devastating. Plays like that don’t just change a down—they change belief. It ignited Miami and it told them, “We can beat these guys.” From that point, Ohio State was playing uphill.
Dan Wetzel: Let’s turn to Indiana. They made a movie once called “Hoosiers.” There’s the famous tape measure scene to calm the underdog farm kids. This Indiana football team is nothing like that. I don’t think they’re scared of anything. I don’t think they care about program history. I think they’re going to walk into Hard Rock Stadium and believe they’re the best team.
Coach Dave Clawson, how did Curt Cignetti not just get IU here from a talent and scheme aspect, but get them here believing they’re the bully?
Dave Clawson: He’s done an unbelievable job, and the portal era allows people to flip programs quicker. The smartest thing he did was bring in 13 players from James Madison right away and a whole bunch of coaches who had been with him for over a decade.
In other words, he didn’t have to create a culture—he imported a culture. When he spoke, he had instant credibility in the room because there were already people inside the program who could translate what he meant, reinforce what it looked like, and hold everyone accountable to it.
And it’s not just culture. It’s evaluation and coaching. Coaches who come up through places where you don’t have a huge talent gap learn to win with details. In those jobs, the margin is small, so you have to be precise: who you recruit, how you develop, how you teach situational football, how you structure your week. That experience transfers directly to building a roster through the portal.
Pete Thamel: You’ve lived in the same corridor as Curt Cignetti throughout your career. What did you know of him before he told everyone to Google him?
Dave Clawson: When he was at Elon, I’d get an annual call every December: “This is what I need. Who do you have? Who can’t play for you that can help me?” I’d recommend two or three players buried on our depth chart who might want to transfer down a level.
He did the same thing at JMU. And what impressed me was his detail. It wasn’t vague. It was: tell me about him—does he love football, what’s his skill set, what’s his background, what’s his temperament?
And his first question was always, “Does this guy love football?” If there was any hesitation, he didn’t want anything to do with him. That’s evaluation, but it’s also culture-building. It tells you exactly what the standard is and what kind of locker room you’re trying to build.
Pete Thamel: One of the reasons you'd be leaning Indiana is discipline. Fewest penalty yards per game—Indiana near the top, Miami much lower. Miami has had big penalty games. If Miami has punitive penalties, they’re not going to win.
Dave Clawson: In bowl games we would always research the officiating crew because different leagues call penalties differently. Big Ten crews can call games differently than ACC crews. You’re trying to understand where the line is, because that can impact how a game plays—especially for a team that plays aggressively and physically.
Dan Wetzel: All right, we’re about to make selections for the national championship game between Indiana and Miami. Indiana opened as about a seven-and-a-half point favorite, now closer to eight-and-a-half. Who’s winning?
Pete Thamel: I’m going to take Indiana. They’re relentless efficiency monsters. Best quarterback. Lines can hold up enough. I think they cover, and it’s a 30–20 kind of game.
Dave Clawson: I’m going to go with Miami. I do believe they’re the more talented team. They’re at home, they don’t have to travel, there are intangible advantages. If they play the game they’re capable of, they can win. But I’ll admit there are a lot of “ifs.”
Dan Wetzel: I’m going with Miami as well. I believe in the offensive and defensive lines. Indiana hasn’t dealt with an Akheem Mesidor or a Rueben Bain Jr. If Miami can run the ball, avoid bad penalties, and get something good out of Carson Beck, they can spring the upset. If you want the safer pick, you take Indiana. But I’m taking the Canes.
