Demon Deacons Make Themselves at Home in the Dome

Dan Steinberg Chronicles College Football's Postseason Coming to The Nation's Capital

So I was wandering around some random room at the U.S. Capitol yesterday, lost amid random Wake Forest football players, when I heard one of them talking about how Phillip Fulmer was over in the rotunda. So I went to look.

Indeed, there was Fulmer, shaking hands with Wake Forest Coach Jim Grobe. Just another one of your random division I-A coach-passing-through-the-

Capitol-rotunda meetings. Tell me that happens in Shreveport or Boise.

"I was just walking around and looking around and I saw him," reported Wake Forest cornerback Alphonso Smith, who facilitated the coach get-together. "I went back to Coach and said, 'I just saw Phil Fulmer, you might want to say hey.' Coach went up and said 'wassup,' and I said 'wassup,' too."

After chatting with Fulmer, Grobe reported that the former Tennessee coach's daughter is a history buff and that she prompted the visit. His players took the sighting in stride.

"Man, it's the nation's capital," said nonchalant wide receiver Devon Brown, who grew up in the Washington area and has been bragging about his home town in advance of tomorrow's EagleBank Bowl. "Everyone comes here to visit. It's a great place to visit, a great place."

"The local boy was telling me about it, and I kind of disagreed with him before arriving in D.C.," said Smith, who is making his first visit. "I was like, 'Aw, D.C.'s really not all that and a bag of chips.' Now that I'm here, I'm kind of impressed, and I believe him now."

Brown is from Southeast, though he hasn't yet taken Smith to his old neighborhood.

"I don't think he wants to take me to his neighborhood, because I'm gonna tell everyone in Southeast about Devon Brown," Smith told me. "He's a funny guy, a confident guy, thinks he's the man, but myself and [cornerback] Josh Bush lock him up every day in practice."

Lock him up?

"As in defend him, he's not open," Smith said. "I don't have any handcuffs and mace."

I figured every bowl shuttles the visiting players to the local historic sights, but the players told me 'twas not so. During their last bowl experience, in Charlotte, the Wake Forest players were taken to the Richard Petty Driving Experience and driven around Lowe's Motor Speedway.

"That was tight," Brown reported. "I don't know how they do that 500 times. We did it two times and I was dizzy."

Two years ago, at the Orange Bowl, players couldn't recall any educational trips at all.

"They said you can go to South Beach," tackle Joe Birdsong recalled. "That was it. No tours."

Some players sat on benches with their mobile devices, others posed for photos with the statuary and others, like Smith, zoned in on the tour. The all-American history major quizzed the guide on the lack of sculptures featuring black Americans, explained something about John Quincy Adams to a group of teammates and bet running back C.J. Washington 20 push-ups that he could beat him in the exhibition hall's U.S. history quiz. He did admit, however, to not understanding the reference in the "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" e-mail sent to alumni in an effort to goose ticket sales.

There weren't any North Carolina media members following the tour -- "budgets are tight these days for newspapers," Birdsong explained -- but Wake Forest's players were still treated like the celebrities they are in this town, in this week.

"Are they, like, famous or something?" 12-year old Kayla Huntley asked after getting autographs and photos with about a dozen Demon Deacons.

"They all have their nice jackets," said her friend, Samantha Hughes. "They looked famous."