help and coach a season of football. I'm not here trying to build a career."

Finding his calling

New Baylor head football coach Jim Grobe responds to reporters questions during the Big 12 Conference Football Media Days at the Omni Dallas Hotel, July 19, 2016. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News) (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

Back when they met as kids, Jim told Holly he planned to be a doctor like family friend Ray Hagley, who would steer him to Ferrum but never see him play there. The same year (1970) that Hagley loaded up his car to deliver Grobe to junior college, the doctor, who had six children, died in a horrific plane crash after a Marshall football game.

Grobe changed his mind about his future soon after he left Ferrumfor the University of Virginia.

Grobe picked Virginia both because the struggling football program offered him a scholarship and because of its reputation for pushing pre-med students to medical school.

But by the time he graduated Virginia in 1975, Grobe asked if he might stay on as a graduate assistant in the football program.

And so began a coaching odyssey that took him to back to high school, followed by a year at Virginia's Emory & Henry College. Then it was back home to Huntington for five years at Marshall, followed by 11 years at Air Force. He graduated to head coach at Ohio University in 1995 and finally Wake Forest in 2001.

At Wake Forest, the smallest of the 65 schools in what has evolved into one of college football's "power