Last man standing sells Pirate Nation

By Brian Bailey
©2015 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.

East Carolina’s new football coach had to first sell himself to Pirate athletic director Jeff Compher.

He was the last to interview.

He was the last man standing.

He then went about his sales pitch to Pirate Nation.

He certainly succeeded with both.

Scottie Montgomery was introduced as East Carolina’s 21st football coach on Monday morning. [Select press conference audio clip in a new window...]

It wasn’t the emotional introduction that we saw from Ruffin McNeill six years ago. It was business-like in nature, with hints of emotion from time to time.

I’ve been fortunate enough to cover introductory ECU football press conferences for Art Baker, Bill Lewis, Steve Logan, John Thompson, Skip Holtz, Ruffin McNeill and now “Coach Mo.”

That’s exactly one-third of the history of Pirate football. I consider it an honor. I have had the chance to work with some great men.

Coach Montgomery went right to work in his first press conference, working to repair the fractured state of the Pirate Nation. He knew of former head coach Ruffin McNeill’s popularity.

I came away thinking that all the new coach wants is a chance. I believe most will give him that chance.

Compher was first to give him a chance.

“He was the last interview I had face-to-face,” said Compher. “We had three that were final interview candidates. And as he told me his story and expressed his vision, I knew that he was just going to be a great fit. And we connected right away.”

Montgomery comes to East Carolina after a phone call to ECU from Duke head coach David Cutcliffe. Cutcliffe tweeted out Monday that East Carolina was getting a special coach.

I had the chance to sit down, one on one, with the new coach and picked his brain on football x’s and o’s.

On offense, Coach Montgomery talked about the custom approach.

“We really have I think at Duke over the years done a good job of fitting what we have,” said Montgomery. “We have to recruit a little bit differently than a lot of people across the country so we had to build our system to kind of fit multiple types of quarterbacks. We want to throw to score and we want to run it to win, plain and simple.”

On defense the new coach calls it the "KILL" theory.

“KILL, keep it likeable and learnable,” he explained. “We are going to be aggressive. There will not be a situation where we are just sitting back. Like on offense, we plan to be aggressive."

The coach’s eyes lit up when I asked about special teams.

“Special teams, you have to hear this because a lot of people don’t understand this,” he said. “It is a one play series. It is the only time where all that can happen in one play, and when we really got good at Duke – going from winning 3 games to 6 and then 10 – that success happened when we really got good with our special teams.”

The new head Pirate has a blueprint for success and the energy to implement it. Pirate fans, unmatched in their passion and football culture by the followers of the state's other teams, will be counting the days until they can see it unfold on the field.

BB

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