THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 4, 1995 TAG: 9510040475
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY HARRY MINIUM, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: GREENVILLE, N.C. LENGTH: Long : 144 lines
Just a few years ago, the writing was on the wall, if not already etched on the tombstone.
Poor East Carolina. The Pirates would never play big-time football. They were in a puny TV market, couldn't find a conference to take them, played in a rinky-dink stadium and were located smack-dab in the middle of ACC territory.
Major newspapers and TV networks ignored them, as did their uppity in-state ACC neighbors North Carolina, North Carolina State, Duke and Wake Forest.
The future looked downright depressing as ECU, the closest Division I-A football program to Hampton Roads, struggled to find its place on the turbulent landscape of college football.
Then, things began to happen in Greenville:
The Pirates began winning. After compiling eight losing seasons in the previous 10 years, ECU was 7-5 last year and went to the Liberty Bowl, and is 3-2 this year, including a 2-0 mark against Big East teams.
TV is on the way. Those poor Pirates are much richer after signing a deal with ESPN worth a minimum of $2 million for ECU. The deal, which calls for eight games televised over five years, makes ECU one of only two independents with a network TV contract - Notre Dame is the other.
The ACC is on the schedule. After the state legislature threatened to force UNC and N.C. State to play ECU, both schools agreed to home-and-home series with the Pirates by the end of the century. Duke and Wake Forest also have committed to play ECU home-and-home.
The stadium is getting a face lift. ECU plans to give Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium a much-needed makeover, including the addition of 11,000 seats, which will swell capacity to 47,000 for 1997.
Put it all together and you have new life for a program that not long ago saw buzzards circling overhead.
Conference affiliation still eludes ECU, but that, too, might be in the works. Last month, the Liberty Bowl announced that ECU would be part of a two-year deal between the Big East and Conference USA to send teams to the bowl. The Pirates will compete against the Conference USA champion, based on overall record, for a Liberty berth against the No. 4 Big East team.
``I think that's a pretty bold statement about what people in Memphis (site of the Liberty Bowl) think of East Carolina,'' ECU athletic director Mike Hamrick said.
Hamrick said the next step will be to push for membership in Conference USA, which rejected ECU when the conference formed last year.
``The Liberty Bowl people said they'd love to see us in Conference USA,'' Hamrick said. ``I've had some informal talks with Conference USA. We will have formal talks soon.
``I think everyone associated with East Carolina is very optimistic about the state of our program. We're headed in the right direction.''
That hasn't always been true of ECU, whose football history has been punctuated with moderate success and plenty of mediocrity.
The school began a modest football program in 1932, in part to help attract men to what had been a women's teaching college. In 1937 the Pirates lost at Foreman Field to the Norfolk Division of the College of William and Mary, which later would become Old Dominion.
The Norfolk school dropped football in the '40s, deeming it too expensive, but ECU persevered. The Pirates joined the Southern Conference in 1965, began playing road games at North Carolina and N.C. State, and had dreams of becoming a big-time power.
ECU's fan base exploded and became a cash cow for UNC and N.C. State, which sold thousands of tickets to purple-clad legions each time the Pirates came to town. The two largest crowds ever at N.C. State's Carter-Finley Stadium were games against ECU.
When Division I football split into Division I-A for large schools and I-AA for smaller schools in 1977, ECU expanded its stadium from 20,000 seats to 36,000, dropped out of the Southern Conference and went Division I-A.
I-A proved to be a difficult fit. Sonny Randle (22-10 from 1971-73) and Pat Dye (48-18-1 from 1974-79) had been winners, but ECU couldn't hold onto good coaches and received just one bowl bid in its first 14 years in I-A - to the 1978 Independence Bowl.
The Pirates were forced to hit the road, playing big schools in return for large gate guarantees. Then the in-state ACC schools dropped ECU from their schedules. The years since have been a roller-coaster, with more downs than ups.
Ed Emory followed Dye and had one glorious season in 1983. The Pirates were 8-3, losing by a total of 13 points to Florida, Florida State and Miami, and finished in the top 20 for the first time. But ECU didn't get a bowl bid while unranked North Carolina did.
More troubling to school officials was ECU's academic reputation, which was under attack. Media reports claimed that the school had lowered academic standards for football players and had an abysmal football graduation rate. ECU was branded a renegade school.
Emory was fired in 1984 and Art Baker was hired to clean up. Baker improved ECU's academic act but suffered four losing seasons, including a 14-game losing streak.
Baker did recruit the nucleus of the 1991 team, which probably saved the school's future in I-A.
The '91 Pirates, coached by Bill Lewis, went 11-1, topping off the dream season with a heart-pounding 37-34 win over N.C. State in the Peach Bowl. More than 30,000 ECU fans made the trek to Atlanta.
Lewis, like so many before him at ECU, used his success to move up. When Lewis left for Georgia Tech, assistant Steve Logan replaced him. Logan, now in his fourth season, had losing records his first two years but appears to have the program heading up again.
Hamrick, hired this summer from Arkansas-Little Rock, says he cannot take all the credit for ECU's suddenly solid foundation. He admits he is deeply indebted to his predecessor, Dave Hart, who expanded the program's facilities and kept ECU in the black financially at a time when TV and bowl money was virtually nonexistent.
Hart also negotiated the ESPN deal and, during his tenure, home attendance steadily increased, from an average of 24,418 in 1988 to 31,961 last season. There are 10,000 season-ticket holders and 4,000 contributing members of The Pirate Club.
All this in Greenville, a town of 45,000 surrounded mostly by tobacco farms and open land.
``ECU football has filled a void for many people in eastern North Carolina who needed a regional vehicle to rally around,'' Logan said. ``A lot of people who spend time out in the tobacco fields feel like they're part of our program. They feel a little disenfranchised from the mainstream.''
Hart began insisting in the mid-'80s that any school on the ECU schedule agree to play in Greenville. At the time he was deemed stubborn - especially by UNC and N.C. State, which considered playing in Greenville unthinkable.
Now, however, Hart's wisdom is clear. Florida State, Syracuse, Miami, South Carolina and Virginia Tech have all been to Greenville. Alabama and Kentucky are scheduled to visit in a few years. And check out the '99 home schedule: West Virginia, Duke, Temple, Memphis, Houston, Miami and Southern Mississippi.
In spite of the improving schedules, Hamrick said the Pirates need a conference home, probably in Conference USA, which includes Louisville and Memphis. But before the Pirates can move there, Hamrick concedes he must strengthen the school's 16 other sports, especially men's basketball, the league's bread-and-butter sport.
ECU won the Colonial Athletic Association men's basketball tournament three years ago and recently completed an expansion of Minges Coliseum to 7,500 seats.
``The thing that makes me optimistic is our people,'' Hamrick said. ``They're overachievers. Our people have been told here for years that they can't achieve, that they're second class. What that has done is to rally them. East Carolina will become a major player in college athletics.''
Unthinkable a few years back, that thought is entirely believable today. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
LAWRENCE JACKSON/Staff
Tight end Scott Richards rallies the crowd during East Carolina's
23-20 win Saturday over West Virginia. The Pirates are 2-0 this
season against Big East teams. ``We're headed in the right
direction,'' athletic director Mike Hamrick said.
by CNB