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Coach Mo sets out to calm the waters

By Brett Friedlander
©2015 Bonesville.net
All rights reserved.

We’ll probably never know whether East Carolina athletic director Jeff Compher is the smartest guy in the room or simply the luckiest.

At this point, it doesn’t really matter.

Because just 10 days after his unexpected decision to fire popular football coach Ruffin McNeill, seemingly without a specific plan to upgrade the position, Compher may just have come up with the home run hire a nervous Pirate Nation feared wouldn’t happen.

Scottie Montgomery doesn’t have the name recognition or head coaching experience of the two other identified finalists for the job – former Michigan coach Brady Hoke and James Madison’s Everett Withers. He doesn’t have the national championship cache of North Carolina defensive coordinator Gene Chizik, the candidate many at ECU coveted most.

What the 37-year-old Duke offensive coordinator does possess is a solid football foundation, formed by a successful playing career as an NFL wide receiver and groomed by some of the best coaches at both the college and pro levels.

He’s an impressive young man with a clear vision of what he wants to accomplish and the kind of energy and enthusiasm it takes to turn that vision into results.

“He talked about winning championships and about how winning is an everyday thing,” the AD said of his new coach. “He has the balance of what it means to be a student-athlete and what it means to play at the highest level. We connected quite a bit and that meant a lot to me.”

It took less 72 hours from the time Montgomery was identified as a candidate last Thursday to win Compher over. The clincher came on Saturday with a face-to-face interview that can best be described as a game-winning touchdown.

Montgomery will undoubtedly have to work harder to have a similar effect on a group of returning players and a fan base still divided – and in come cases, disillusioned – over McNeill’s dismissal and the hiring of a lesser-known replacement with no head coaching experience.

But that, beyond his pedigree and potential from a football perspective, is precisely why Montgomery has the look of the right man at just the right time for the Pirates.

Not only is he young and brimming with infectious enthusiasm, but as a native North Carolinian who went to school at Duke and has seen the passion associated with ECU football first-hand from having played at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium, he is much more in tune with the challenge ahead of him than an outsider such as Hoke or Withers.

His understanding of the situation and the sensitivity it commands shined through at his introductory press conference on Monday. Instead of shying away from the 800-pound elephant in the room – or in this case, the larger-than-life coach he replaced – Montgomery confronted it head-on with a message aimed directly at the Pirate Nation.

“I know there’s been some rough waters, but guess what? It’s starting to settle,” he said. “Right now the ship is docked and I want to make sure everybody understands one thing. We’re going to start moving. We’re going to start rowing and every man is going to row, and I’m going to be one of the ones rowing as well.

“We’re going to work as hard as we possibly can so when we walk out on the field next fall, we’re going to put the best product on the field that we possibly can.”

In order to do that, Montgomery will need the backing of his players, many of whom changed their screen names on Twitter to “Ruffin McNeill” as a show of support for their now-former coach. The new coach promised to “recruit them like they’ve never been recruited before” over the next 2-3 weeks to get them to buy into the new direction their program has taken.

One thing he has going for him in that pursuit is his youth.

He’s not another graying 50-something the players don’t know or don't trust being brought in to replace a beloved father figure, as Hoke or Withers would have been. Instead, he’s more of an overachieving big brother whose example they want to follow.

What wide receiver wouldn’t want to play for a coach that has already worked with the likes of NFL stars Antonio Brown, Hines Ward and Emmanuel Sanders?

And when it comes to lending a sympathetic ear to a group of youngsters going through the most traumatic set of circumstances imaginable, Montgomery is equipped to do that too, having dealt with the firing of his own coach at Duke, Fred Goldsmith, just prior to his senior season.

It’s an experience Compher said “can really help the team” both in the long and short terms.

And yet, no matter how well Montgomery handles the difficult transition to come, the only true measure for which he’ll judged is the number of games he wins. And the bar has been set high, both by his predecessor and his AD – who in dismissing McNeill, proclaimed that nothing short of a championship will be acceptable.

While there’s always risk involved in turning a solid program over to a first-time head coach with limited leadership experience – as ECU found out with John Thompson in 2003-04 – in this case the gamble is a little like going all in with a pair of jacks in the hole.

Scottie Montgomery might not be a home run hire yet. But he’s been groomed for just this moment and is coming to bat with the bases loaded.

You have to like his chances.

Contact Brett Friedlander

PAGE UPDATED 12/17/15 02:52 AM.

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