Pirates busy on day one of bowl week

By Brian Bailey
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The East Carolina Pirates arrived in Birmingham on Monday to kick off bowl week in this Alabama city.

ECU will face Florida from the SEC on Saturday. The Pirates go into the game as a touchdown underdog.

ECU coach Ruffin McNeill loves to take his team to a bowl game. It’s not just for the game, rather for the entire bowl experience.

This team got a taste of college football history on its first day on location. The experience started in Birmingham on Monday and then quickly moved on to Tuscaloosa. The Pirate players were able to tour the facility of the Alabama Crimson Tide and also got a chance take in the Bear Bryant museum.

Legion Field will host Saturday’s game. The Pirates aren’t scheduled to hit the historic stadium until Friday’s pre-bowl press conference and scheduled walk-through.

Instead, the Pirates will call Hoover High School home for practices starting on Tuesday. Hoover is one of the nation’s top high school programs and was highlighted in an MTV reality series in 2006 entitled “Two-a-days.”

In past years these bowl practices have been used as dress rehearsals, with the real work being done in Greenville before the trip to the bowl city. That’s pretty much what I expect this year as well. The real work has been done. It’s time now to polish up some things and get ready for the game in five days.

I have always thought that bowl games and teams' attitudes often go hand-in-hand. Most times it’s the team that wants the game more than the win.

With that said, this Florida team is very difficult to gauge. D.J. Durkin is finishing out his Gator days as the interim coach for the departed Will Muschamp.

Will this Gator team play hard for an interim coach?

Does this Gator team have anything to play for other than pride?

On the other hand, this is an East Carolina team still smarting from the loss at home on senior night to UCF. The team wants nothing more than to send Shane Carden, Justin Hardy and some 16 other seniors out as winners in this Birmingham Bowl.

The Pirates get back to work on the practice field on Tuesday. It’s a short week, with plenty to do for the players.

The team hotel is the Hyatt-Regency adjacent to the Galleria Mall, giving players a chance to cruise thru the mall for belated Christmas gifts or to take advantage of those after-Christmas sales. The coaches' wives were especially interested in the chance at more holiday shopping.

This will be my 14th bowl during my career, and 12 of them have been covering East Carolina. For obvious reasons, my favorite bowl experience in terms of setting was the Sheraton Hawai’i Bowl in 2007.

Last year’s Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl was probably my second favorite. There’s an obvious advantage for bowl games with beaches involved.

My all-time favorite bowl experience was the 1992 Peach Bowl, again for obvious reasons. That was early in my career and went a long way into molding me into the person and the sportscaster that I became.

I simply fell in love with the Pirate program, with East Carolina University, with Greenville, NC, all because of a football team that never backed down.

Bowl games are great rewards, but winning those bowl games is a difficult challenge most years.

Here’s looking forward to adding another bowl chapter this week in Birmingham.

BB

E-mail Brian Bailey.