It’s taken only one month of official duty for new East Carolina athletics director Jeff Compher to face a potentially polarizing decision.

Should he retain Pirates baseball coach Billy Godwin for another season, or cut ties and begin the search for a suitable successor?

All signs lead towards the former. And regardless of whether or not you believe it is the correct move, you can at least understand why Compher isn’t making a change.

A quick trigger could easily ignite an unnecessary element of fear across the athletics department, thus raising the difficulty of success for coaches of other sports. It’s hard to move a program forward if you’re constantly looking over your shoulder.

On the other hand, you can also comprehend why Compher would make a change in the ECU dugout. Of all the sports on campus, it by far has enjoyed the most national success.

Given the current climate of collegiate athletics, it’s also the only one in which the Pirates have a reasonable chance of winning a national championship with the right emphasis. So the standard — and ceiling — for East Carolina baseball is higher than other sports, football included.

That much was confirmed during the late 1990s and early 2000s when Keith LeClair elevated the program and took it to the doorstep of the College World Series. It was reaffirmed by Randy Mazey, whose 2004 team won 51 games, a Conference USA title, and made the program’s second Super Regional appearance.

Both coaches accomplished that while recruiting for a program that played in a glorified high school facility. Though East Carolina has not experienced that level of success with the upgraded stadium, the climate in which the program operates today is much different.

Neither LeClair nor Mazey had to contend regionally with a North Carolina program that was among the national elite or an N.C. State bunch that is on the brink of reaching that status. Virginia was far from a powerhouse, and there was very little higher-level competition in-state.

Today the Pirates not only must compete with the Tar Heels and Wolfpack for the state’s top-tier recruits, but also the likes of Charlotte, Elon, UNC-Wilmington and others for that next level of talent.

As the popularity of the sport has grown, so has the emphasis on success from neighboring schools. It’s just one of the explanations as to why the gap has grown between the Pirates and North Carolina and N.C. State, and why it has closed significantly between them and the Phoenix and Seahawks.

It will be up to Compher to determine where the Pirates go from here.

If he is content with ECU being competitive within its league and making trips to NCAA regionals in most seasons, then there probably is no reason to make a coaching shift. Godwin has proven he can do that.

But if Compher wants to elevate the program and compete at a level at which it hosts NCAA Regionals with regularity and becomes a serious Omaha threat, he’ll need to seriously consider a change.

In doing so, he’ll need to sink more money into the program to find a coach who, above all, is an elite recruiter who can stockpile the ECU clubhouse with top line talent. Compher must also be willing to increase the salaries of assistants who can ensure the Pirates are maximizing the development of the talent that is recruited.

Historically that’s been most evident in the caliber of arms within the Pirates’ rotation and bullpen. It’s traditionally been a notch or two below the hurlers in Chapel Hill and Raleigh, and not the quality or depth required for an Omaha run.

In both the short and long term, Compher faces some big decisions regarding ECU baseball. His ultimate direction will reveal his overall emphasis on the sport, and how much money he is willing to spend on it.