View from the East
Thursday, February 2, 2012
By Al Myatt |
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Pirates
fill needs, build hope
By
Al Myatt
©2012 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.
GREENVILLE — East Carolina
football coach Ruffin McNeill took his place at the podium in the
defensive meeting room on the ground floor of the Ward Sports Medicine
Building on Wednesday afternoon to enlighten attending media about the
Pirates' 2012 signing class.
McNeill was dapper in a purple
blazer. The news conference began slightly before its scheduled starting
time. McNeill is significantly slimmer than when his first two ECU
classes were announced. Maybe his increased mobility allows him to get
around faster — and earlier. Mobility was certainly an asset in the
recent recruiting haul, which literally spanned the nation.
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Ruffin McNeill
at Wednesday's signing day press conference (Photo: W.A. Myatt)
The Pirate coach had the look of
a corporate executive who has just completed a company-defining deal. In
a sense, that's what he is and that's what recruiting is about.
Recruiting is the lifeblood of any college athletic program and the
development of the athletes ECU attracts will play a huge role in future
success.
Everything from season ticket
sales to demand for Pirate merchandise to potential bowl trips hinges
eventually on the fruits of the harvest announced Wednesday and those
who will sign in Februarys to come.
This isn't McNeill's first
roundup on the recruiting trail by any means. Much of his professional
life, which he numbers as 32 years in the coaching profession, has been
spent seeking to influence young men to the advantages of putting on the
pads at a particular institution. It's a salesman's job and McNeill is
confident in his product, as any salesman must be.
"When we brought recruits to
campus, it sold itself," McNeill said. " ... We help to promote it but
in the end it sold itself."
He cited administrative support,
his coaching staff, the sports medicine department, the strength and
conditioning program, the city of Greenville, academics and facilities
as factors that tend to sway recruits to ECU.
There is significant evaluation
necessary in the recruiting process. McNeill and staff evaluated
position needs of the program going forward. The result is a class
loaded with offensive linemen, wide receivers, linebackers and defensive
backs. McNeill said the transition last season to a 3-4 defense means
numbers of linebackers are needed. He said ECU is committed to that
alignment.
Once the position needs are
identified the staff goes about finding the best personnel available,
which involves more evaluation. The Pirates do their homework on
character, too, which means talking to everyone from cafeteria workers
at potential recruits' schools to peers of prospective players.
McNeill said some potential
Pirates were excluded upon character examination. Better to sort out
discipline problems before they arrive on campus.
It's like Alabama coach Paul
"Bear" Bryant used to say, "A doctor buries his mistakes. I have to feed
mine for four years."
McNeill talked about the "mind
hours" in recruiting and a lot of those are spent on identifying
prospects and avoiding the mistakes to which Bryant referred. The ECU
coach also talked about the "body hours," the time spent traveling,
sitting in airports and driving rental cars to develop relationships
with players. McNeill said he even spent some time in Chicago on an
electric train this go-around, possibly in pursuit of Deshawn Byrd, an
offensive lineman from unbeaten Grand Rapids (MI) Community College,
whose commitment to the Pirates had been reported but whose name did not
appear on the official release on Wednesday.
There were 18 players on that
list. McNeill reiterated plans to sign 20 and said the class was not yet
complete. Grand Rapids has announced that it is dropping football.
Perhaps there was no assistance on the Grand Rapids end for Byrd to fax
his letter of intent or maybe another program has picked off the
blocking behemoth. It's like early evening on election night and not all
of the returns are in.
McNeill doesn't shy away from
competition in recruiting. UNC-Chapel Hill came in late to pick off
Kanler Coker, a quarterback from Flowery Branch, GA, who initially
committed to ECU.
A third of the newcomers come
from the junior college ranks to address immediate needs. The Pirates
already had juco transfers John Lattimore and Leroy Vick, a pair of
defensive linemen, in the stockpile from the 2011 class who sat out last
season with injuries.
McNeill said there will be
opportunities for immediate playing time for many of the incoming
players. He qualified that by saying that freshmen offensive linemen are
typically redshirted. The Pirate coach knows as well as anyone that
there are glaring voids in the secondary where Derek Blacknall, Emanuel
Davis and Bradley Jacobs have departed. Adonis Armstrong and Godfrey
Thompson, defensive backs from Hinds Community College in Clinton, MS,
are already enrolled at ECU.
The Pirates also landed Lucas
Thompson, a defensive back from Winter Garden, FL, who selected ECU over
the likes of Miami and South Carolina.
Wide receiver/returner Lance Ray
has already proven himself at Arkansas and will come in after a season
at Northwest Mississippi Junior College.
McNeill said there were a lot of
eyes on the fax machine in the football office on signing day as the
forms arrived. Reece Speight, a linebacker from Wilson Beddingfield, was
the first to transmit his paper work.
"It was 7:02 (a.m.) or 7:03,"
McNeill said. "He sent it twice. He wanted to make sure we had it."
Speight is one of five players
from North Carolina. The remainder range from Florida to California to
Washington, DC, and points in between.
Who knows who might emerge from
this year's class as primetime players for the Pirates? Chris Johnson
was little more than a blip on the radar when he signed with ECU in
2004. Now he's making enough money running the ball for the Tennessee
Titans to buy his own airport.
McNeill said he likes this class
and I don't think that's a salesman making a pitch to the media or the
fan base. Needs were identified and filled. ECU's move from the bottom
rung nationally in defense in 2010 to middle of the pack last season
indicates that the ECU staff can address needs effectively. The addition
of Kirk Doll and Pat Washington strengthens the staff in my evaluation,
an example of effective recruiting in a different sense. McNeill was
accompanied by Brian Overton, the new director of football operations,
as he made his rounds on signing day.
The Pirates coach left the media
gathering in search of some ribs, which he speculated might be available
from some of the Pirate Nation, who were tailgating prior to the public
presentation of the recruiting class at the Murphy Center later
Wednesday. There are no losers on signing day and this one had glorious
weather to encourage the natural optimism which the occasion engenders.
I always come back to a Steve
Logan response about the quality of a particular recruiting class in an
era when signing day was not promoted to the same degree.
"How good is this class?" Logan
said. "I'll tell you in five years."
The former ECU coach supported
his viewpoint with the example of former South Carolina coach Brad
Scott, who had attracted a heralded recruiting class to Columbia only to
fall well short of expectations with a subsequent winless season that
prompted his departure.
Ruff and everyone involved in
recruiting have put most of the hay in the barn for the 2012 signing
class. The work is done although Ruff would have liked to have been able
to work harder. He said when he was recruited out of Lumberton, former
ECU coach Pat Dye and staff spent days at a time building relationships
with him and his family.
"There was a time when you could
actually outwork somebody in recruiting," McNeill said.
Current NCAA regulations limit
the contact head coaches can have with potential players, making
evaluations and the permissible visits all the more important.
McNeill said one thing hasn't
changed since he signed with the Pirates in the mid-1970s and that's the
atmosphere surrounding the program.
Walking past the enormity of
Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium with Pirate fans converging on the area served as
a reminder of the significance football holds at ECU and that those who
booked passage on the Pirate ship Wednesday will become vital in
determining its course.
E-mail Al Myatt
PAGE UPDATED
02/03/12 12:39 AM.
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