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GREENSBORO, N.C. -- If there is a chip on Riley Skinner's shoulder, it is imperceptible.

Four years after arriving at Wake Forest as a recruiting afterthought, Skinner has every reason to tell his former doubters, "I told you so."

Instead, Skinner can only marvel at the twist of fate that now ranks him as the most accurate passer in ACC history.

"I was just happy to get a scholarship," said Skinner, who did not have a Division I-A offer before Wake stepped forward less than two weeks before signing day in 2005. "Actually, I had a 50-percent offer from a I-AA school, Samford, in Alabama. If not, I think I was just going to go to Georgia as a regular student.

"I wasn't bitter. I knew that a 6-foot quarterback who runs like he has a piano attached to him doesn't sell himself."

Maybe Skinner could have gone out for the team at Georgia as a walk-on, "but, if nobody else was going to offer me a scholarship, I don't think I was going to get one from Mark Richt," he said.

Wake coach Jim Grobe points out that the Deacons -- and particularly then-quarterbacks coach Jeff Mullen -- had always liked Skinner. But, they already had taken a commitment from another quarterback, Brett Hodges, from Winter Springs, Fla.

Skinner played for the Bolles School in Jacksonville, Fla.

"It wasn't that we didn't think he could play," Grobe said. "We just weren't going to take another quarterback. The coach started kidding me and, basically, I couldn't leave the Bolles School unless I promised we would take another look at Riley. I called Jeff and said, 'Come on down here and take another look at Skinner.'

"I think he was in an all-star game. Jeff went down to watch him practice and Riley didn't throw an incomplete pass. I think that's right."

If so, it wasn't the last time. In last year's inaugural EagleBank Bowl, Skinner became the first player in bowl history to attempt 10 or more passes without an incompletion. Skinner was 11-for-11 in a 29-19 victory over Navy.

Skinner has passed for 6,707 yards in his career and needs only 1,500 yards to set the career record for a program that has boasted some of the ACC's most prolific passers.

"I wasn't planning on competing for a starting job till my junior year," said Skinner, who is listed at 6-foot-1 and 210 pounds.

Wake's quarterback going into the 2006 season was Ben Mauk, a redshirt sophomore who had set eight national records while passing for more than 17,000 yards in his career at Kenton (Ohio) High School.

"I was third string with two weeks to go before the season," Skinner said. "Then, our back-up quarterback [Hodges] separated his shoulder."

There were no plans to rush Skinner into action before Mauk suffered a gruesome shoulder injury in the third quarter against Syracuse, the Deacons' opening-game opponent. Mauk subsequently underwent season-ending, reconstructive surgery.

"When Riley had to go, he was so unprepared that he didn't know where his helmet was," Grobe said. "Then, the very first thing he does is, he sends our wideout in motion. He's supposed to let him get across the formation, but he signals for the snap and it hits the receiver.

"The ball's on the ground and I'm thinking I'm going to lose another quarterback on the very next play. We didn't think we were going to win a championship with that guy."

The Deacons went on to beat Syracuse 20-10, one of five straight wins to open the season, and earned a berth in the ACC championship game by finishing first in the Coastal Division. That earned them a spot in the title game, where they held off Georgia Tech at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla.

"It was a crazy story," Skinner said. "I got thrown into the mix that first game, it started off there and ended in my hometown, playing for a conference championship for the first time in 33 years. You can't really script that.

"I was way back in the weeds to start the season. I was wide-eyed, to say the least. I was like a deer in headlights."

Or cross hairs.

"He's one of those guys; you don't realize what he's got until he's in live fire," Grobe said. "He just hadn't had enough reps. When he got in situations where a lot of kids crumble, he showed his stuff."

Skinner, redshirted in 2005, began his college career in the same year as another Jacksonville-bred quarterback, Tim Tebow.

Few people would mention Skinner in the same breath as Tebow, who won the Heisman Trophy in 2007 and finished second last year, but Skinner enters his senior year with more passing yardage.

What if Grobe had turned a deaf ear when Skinner's coach made one last pitch in 2005? It didn't seem to matter that Skinner had led his team to back-to-back state championships.

"You feel like, 'It's never going to happen, Coach,' " Skinner said, "but, it does. It obviously does."