Twenty-five years ago was a different time in college football. Transfers had to sit out a year and recruiting did not involve NIL money. The 1999 team was one of the best in East Carolina history. The team will be recognized as ECU hosts Texas-San Antonio in its American Athletic Conference opener on Sept. 28.
Kevin Monroe was a senior leader at cornerback as the Pirates opened the season with wins over West Virginia, Duke, South Carolina, Miami of Florida and Army.
“Going into the ’99 season, Coach (Steve) Logan picked a player committee,” Monroe recalled. “It was just made up of seniors, captains, leaders on the team. … Forrest Foster, Jeff Kerr, David Garrard, Sherwin Lacewell, Pernell Griffin. … He would use us as the council that he would come to, rather than go to the whole team to say things that were important. He would use us just to take that information to the team, and to make sure that everybody was in line and on the same page.
“Beginning of that year, he came to the committee and he said, ‘We’ve got four crazy tough games to start the season off.’ It was West Virginia, South Carolina, Duke, and Miami. He said, ‘If we can win two of those four games, that puts us in great shape to go into conference play. And we could have a great year.’
“I just remember all of us left that meeting thinking, ‘Geez, Coach. I know we’re not expected to win them all, but we’re certainly not going to go into them hoping to win two of them. We want to win them all. We’re expecting to win them all.’ And so we just went back to the guys and said, ‘Hey, we got four tough games. Let’s take them one at a time, but we’re going to win them.’ And that was our mantra. That was our driving force through the beginning of that season.”
Monroe today
Monroe will serve as an analyst on the Pirate radio network for the 22nd season in 2024. He also is a contributor on Bonesville, sharing his insights on the weekly pregame podcast.
Monroe is a financial advisor based in the Raleigh area. He received his undergraduate degree in business administration as well as his MBA from ECU.
He met his wife, Rasheeda, at Rose High in Greenville. She got an undergraduate degree in Exercise Physiology from ECU and a medical degree from the Brody Schoo of Medicine. She is the Raleigh Campus Director of the UNC School of Medicine, training medical students and residents.
The couple’s two sons, Marcus and Derek, are both versatile athletes who aspire to play college football. Marcus is a junior at North Raleigh Christian and Derek, nicknamed Butter, is an eighth-grader.

Monroe was an All-Conference USA performer, who still holds a school record for an interception return of 100 yards against Louisville on Nov. 14, 1998.
He has reduced his role on Pirate radio to ECU home contests in order to be at his son’s high school football games.
Monroe was recruited by N.C. State before accepting Logan’s offer from the Pirates.
West Virginia in Charlotte
ECU started the 1999 season with a 30-23 win over West Virginia in Charlotte after some motivation from strength coach Jeff Connors.
“Coach Connors had seen something on the internet where one of their players was recorded as saying, ‘Sometimes you have to play lightweights at the beginning of the season to get to your tougher games,'” Monroe said. “(Coach Connors) got T-shirts made that said ‘Lightweights’ on them. He wanted us all to know what they thought of us.
“(Marc) Bulger was their quarterback. He was about to go to the NFL.
“They had a really good team, and defensively we just kind of got after them. And I did end up getting an interception in that game, and so that was pretty cool, to honor my buddy and his mom (who had passed away that year). And then, so at the end of the game, Coach Connors broke those T-shirts out. We all put them on as we went across the field to shake hands, which was just kind of a classic chip on your shoulder kind of move that East Carolina was all about back in the day.”
Vs. Duke, Scottie Montgomery
The Pirates downed a Duke team that featured future ECU coach Scottie Montgomery at receiver by a 27-9 margin in week two.
“The Duke game was at home,” Monroe said. “They had a new coach (Carl Franks). They kind of revamped their passing game, and they were all about this kind of air attack. Scottie Montgomery was one of their star receivers. They had two or three really good receivers, and they were throwing the ball all around the park. And so we knew that going in, they were going to pass the football.
“And so it was for myself, and Forrest Foster, and Chris Satterfield, and the guys back there. We took it on our shoulders to know that we had to stop that passing game to be able to win that ball game. … It was a tough game, a tough battle, but we were able to pull it out. I remember talking to Scottie about that in later years, and him talking about how going into that game, he knew we had two senior corners. It was going to be a tough test for them to get their passing game off the ground, and we held our own. So I was proud of the way we played in that game, to be able to get that victory.”
South Carolina
Next up for ECU was a trip to South Carolina, which had hired Lou Holtz to rebuild the program. The Pirates left for Columbia as Hurrican Floyd was approaching Greenville.
“It was Lou Holtz’s first home game,” Monroe said. “That stadium used to be one of the biggest in college football. It was jam-packed. So it was really, really crazy.
“I remember my parents who came to most games, were not able to come because of the threat of the hurricane. They bought a generator to be able to watch that game in Greenville when the power went out. And so yeah, that was another one of those hard-fought games. The score (21-3) didn’t tell the whole story. They had a really good running back and running game. They were a good team. They made a mistake, about halfway through the game, where we punted to them, and their punt returner tried to field it inside his own five. … It hit off his leg and rolled to the end zone, and I was lucky enough to recover for a touchdown.
“That kind of got us going. I don’t know if that was the first score, but it was one of the scores that was pretty important in the game. And I want to say late in that game, Anthony Adams got a pick-six, one of the twins.
“I think we had a defensive touchdown and a special-teams touchdown if I remember correctly. But yeah, we just kept that crowd out of it. We didn’t allow their offense to get going much during that game.”
No return trip
The Pirates stayed in Columbia much longer than they had anticipated.
“Coach Logan literally, like right after the game, came in the locker room and said, ‘Hey guys, I know you’ve been following what’s going on in Greenville. Things have gotten pretty bad and we can’t go back. We’re just going to have to stay here, and then we’ll go from here back home to play our game,” Monroe recalled. “At that point, I don’t think we knew that we weren’t going to be able to play the home game against Miami in Greenville.
“We just knew that we had to stay in Columbia, which was kind of crazy, because you think about it, you pack for the game, and you literally just bring essentials for a one-night stay. And so yeah, I had a toothbrush, but I only had one pair of underwea.
“So it was like, what do you do? And so we were all kind of freaking out about that, and throughout the week they kind of took care of us. They were able to get us toiletries and things that we needed to sustain ourselves. … It was just kind of a crazy long week, where we were just kind of out of sorts because we weren’t in our practice facility. I think the Carolina Panthers loaned us their practice jerseys, because we didn’t have practice jerseys. All we had was the game stuff. And we practiced in the indoor facility, I believe, mostly over there at Columbia.
“And oh, by the way, we’d just beaten them. So they were nice and cordial to us, but they weren’t the happiest to have us around for an additional week after having lost to us. So that was just really interesting. And then just being around those guys for a week. We were teammates, obviously. We saw each other every day, but we didn’t see each other 24 hours a day, for seven straight days.
“Just having that environment was different. They tried to take us bowling, tried to take us to the movie theater, to do different things, to keep our mind off of what was going on back home, but also to keep us focused on the task at hand, which was going to play Miami in what we thought was going to be Greenville, but it ended up being in Raleigh.”
Former ECU athletic director Mike Hamrick had the game moved to Carter-Finley Stadium.
“Crazy, crazy kind of week,” Monroe said “That’s one I’ll never forget, having to go through that. But it was cool. It was also kind of a bonding experience for the guys, to bring us closer together, to know each other better, closer to our coaches, because everybody was kind in the same boat. We were all kind of stuck there, not being able to get home.”
Deficit to overcome
ECU trailed the Hurricanes, 20-3, at the half.
Coach Logan said stuff like, ‘We’re in this. We’ve taken their best punch, and we’re still in the game. We got to come back out and execute.’
“And so I think we just all took it personal to just kind of do our jobs. I remember Forrest had a bit of a hamstring issue, so he was kind of in and out of the game. Still played his butt off, but he wasn’t moving the way he had most other games. And so I took it on myself to make sure that I was playing my best. And we had to face Santana Moss and Reggie Wayne, two long-time NFL stars. Clinton Portis at running back.
“Kenny Kelly was the quarterback. They just had a team just jam-packed full of stars.”
A crowd of 45,900 saw ECU turn the momentum.
“That second half, we just got into this mode of, ‘We got to make Kenny Kelly beat us,’ because he didn’t have the most accurate arm. He had a strong arm. He was also a baseball player. But he didn’t have the most accurate arm. So we just knew that if we were in the area of the receiver, we’d have a chance to make a play on the ball. And so we just kept making play after play.
“As we started getting stops, the offense started getting going. I think that was one of Jamie Wilson’s better games.”
Garrard threw for 328 yards, including the go-ahead touchdown to Keith Stokes that covered 27 yards. ECU won, 27-23.
“I don’t think that Miami had a chance, once that crowd started going crazy,” Monroe said. “And you could actually see it on the field. I remember hearing Bubba Franks yelling at his players in the offensive huddle like, ‘Come on, what are we doing? We should beat this team. It’s East Carolina. Why are we playing like this?’ And we could just see it in their eyes, as the life was draining out of them. They were tired, they were bent over at the waist.
“We were just getting going. We always considered ourselves, under Coach Connors, to be the most conditioned team in the country. And so we were feeling good. They were dragging and it was showing.”
Back to Greenville
The Pirates returned home after the win over Miami.
“We kind of knew before coming home, there were a couple of apartment complexes that were just really completely flooded and trashed,” Monroe said. “We knew we had teammates that all their stuff was probably lost because their apartment complexes were flooded. I remember Travis Mazyck was one of them. He was a safety. And so just kind of having that moment with those guys as they went through, picking up the pieces of what they never thought was possible — just kind of losing everything in their apartments. That was pretty rough.”
At Army
The Pirates moved to 5-0 with a 33-14 win at Army.
“Army’s always a tough game,” Monroe said. “I remember Tim Rose, our defensive coordinator, always used to say, ;’You better wear an extra chain strap when you’re playing against Army, because they’re going to come at you hard. They’re going to block you downfield.’ Those fullbacks and running backs, they all run hard. Just a hard-nosed group of guys. And they go through, more than anybody else in the country other than other service academies, with what they have to deal with aside from playing football. And so you just can never take them lightly. Plus to prepare for that triple option in a week is sometimes impossible. And we were able to get that victory.”
Stumble
Southern Miss came back after trailing, 15-0, to deal ECU a 39-22 defeat as Derrick Nix, now offensive coordinator at Auburn, ran 42 times for 171 yards. The Pirates were ranked No. 16 by the Associated Press before the setback.
“Nemesis,” Monroe said. “I don’t know if there’s a better word for it, but it’s one of the few teams that I never beat as a Pirate. They beat us, I don’t know how many times we played them. They beat us every time, home and away. … They found a way to come back in our house. …
“That kind of knocked us back a peg. I think we were still in the top 25, but that loss was huge, because we just felt like we were unbeatable at that point, and they found a way to beat us in our house.”
Bouncing back
The Pirates responded to their initial loss with a 52-7 homecoming win over Tulane before taking a 19-3 victory at Houston.
“I have good memories of playing against Houston,” Monroe said. “I had seven interceptions in my college career and four of those were against Houston.”
Stunner at UAB
The Pirates were No. 18 in the AP poll before a stunning 36-17 loss to Alabama-Birmingham at Legion Field. ECU led 17-6 at the half. Blazers back-up quarterback Thomas Cox ran for two TDs and threw for another in the second half. UAB’s Rodregis Brooks, who was taken off the field on a stretcher in the first half after an apparent neck injury, came back and scored on a 91-yard interception return. He set up another score with a 59-yard punt return.
Brooks had his jersey cut away for X-rays. He came back with a jersey his mother had worn to the game.
“A weird one,” Monroe said. “And I’ll stake my reputation on saying, had we not lost to Southern Miss, there’s no chance UAB beats us. Because once we lost to Southern Miss, and Southern Miss didn’t lose another game, we knew that we didn’t have a chance to win the conference, and that was our goal.
“It just kind of put us in a bit of a funk before that game. And I want to say they played their third-string quarterback. I think the first-string guy got hurt, and maybe the second-string guy was suspended or something. They played their third-string quarterback. He came out running the option, which they had not run all year, and that was just his skill set. And so, they kind of put it in that week. And we hadn’t seen it on film. And so, excuse after excuse, after excuse, they just found a way to make some things happen.
” … Everything kind of went wrong in that game. I did score. I had a fumble recovery for a touchdown in that game. But that’s definitely one of the ones I’d like to forget, because it just was a game that just kind of never got going in the right direction. It’s definitely not a team we should have lost to.”
There was a sparse crowd at Legion Field, virtually no energy for the Pirates to draw on.
“They didn’t put fans in the stands,” Monroe said “You could just hear people talking. It just was so quiet, everything echoed. And it’s hard to get up for a game like that, on the road where there’s no kind of environment. I’d much rather played Alabama there, which we did the year before. I’d much rather play Alabama in Legion Field than playing UAB, because there was just no environment at all.
“We lose that game, and now we’re just kind of dumbfounded that we’ve found a way to lose two games in the conference that season, as good as we were.”
Wolfpack in Greenville
After a 48-34 home win over Cincinnati, N.C. State came to Greenville for the first time to close the regular season.
“It was one of those things where we had to get that victory,” Monroe said. “And so going to the game, I think Jamie Barnette was their quarterback. Koren Robinson was their star wide receiver. He was just a freshman, but he was one of the leaders in the nation for catches and yards. They had a really, really good team. Defensively, they were strong, but we just were not going to lose that game.
“They brought in seats for both end zones before our stadium had gotten closed in. And so it was the largest crowd in ECU history up to that point. There were 50,092 fans.
“If we win, that game would make Coach Logan the winningest coach in ECU history. And so that was on everybody’s minds. We wanted to make sure that happened under our watch. … A lot going into that one. We played pretty well.
“David Garrard had a big day. Jamie Wilson played well offensively. And defensively, we didn’t give up anything.

“Coach Rose had put in some new wrinkles that week. I remember I ran a corner blitz like three times. We hadn’t done any corner blitzes all season long. And so that was kind of a new thing that he put in. Jeff Kerr and Pernell, they were just in the backfield all game long. They made it kind of a nightmare for Barnette in that offense. And they never really got going. I don’t think they scored a touchdown.”
ECU won, 23-6.
Mobile Bowl
The Pirates absorbed a 28-14 loss to Texas Christian as LaDainian Tomlinson ran 36 times for 124 yards and two touchdowns for the Horned Frogs in the Mobile Bowl.
After the elation of beating the Wolfpack, the bowl experience was a downer.
“We are ranked in the top 20 for the first half of the year,'” Monroe said. “We considered ourselves one of the best teams in the country. We lose a tough one to Southern Miss, who ends up going on and winning the conference. And then we have a letdown against UAB, a game that we know that we should have won. But we win the rest of them. So it’s a 9-2 regular season. And you have to remember, this is the same East Carolina program that went 8-3 in ’96 and didn’t even get a bowl bid.
“We always felt like we were just getting snubbed. So we get to be 9-2. We don’t get to go to the Liberty Bowl as the winners of the conference. And so we just want a good bowl against who we perceive to be a big-name opponent. And so we ended up in this Mobile, Alabama bowl, which is, I think it was the inaugural Mobile, Alabama bowl, the first time it’s ever been played. We’d never heard of it, obviously.
“You got to go to Mobile, Alabama, which is not an exciting place for a college football player. And then it was going to be freezing in the South, and we’re like, why is it so cold in Mobile, Alabama?
“So it was just, everything about it was just negative. And then TCU, we didn’t consider them to be a big name. We had heard of LaDainian Tomlinson, but we didn’t know how good he was. So we were just frustrated that we didn’t get that big bowl game, with a big-name team, in a big-time city.
“And to add to that, it’s just, we get down there, and they screwed up our sweats. So we ended up getting royal-blue sweats from the committee.
“We just were frustrated about everything. None of that was good. None of that had to do with actually playing the football game and actually facing LaDainian Tomlinson. But it was a grinding game.
“He ended up with 124 yards rushing, but it wasn’t like he just dominated. It was one of those three yards, four yards kind of pounding us. And the clock just kind ran. And it was cold. It was just a bad game. I think Arnie Powell had a big touchdown early, that kind of kept us in it, but we didn’t really do a whole lot offensively.
“Defensively, they didn’t really throw the football. It was just tackling LaDainian Tomlinson left, tackling him right. I remember watching that game recently with my kids and they’re like, ‘Oh, did you tackle LaDainian Tomlinson?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I tackled him a lot, because they kept giving him the ball.’ So it was just one of those games, and another one that I’d like to forget, because I didn’t want to play it. And then they just came out and took it right to us, and we never really responded.”
Big picture
The Pirates held opponents to 14 points or less six times in 1999.
“Defensively, we were just pretty dominant with the linebackers,” Monroe said. “Having Jeff Kerr in the middle as a senior, and Pernell, who wasn’t a senior but played like one. Then myself and Forrest Foster, senior corners.
“D-line, having Norris McCleary up there, kind of holding down the fort. We just were tough on defense. I don’t think we gave up very many points that season.
“It allowed that offense that was younger, because, I mean at that point, David Garrard was a sophomore. So he hadn’t really come into his own. He was just kind of still kind of figuring the thing out. He started as a freshman the year before. And so we were able to keep them in games, so that they could then go out, and between Jamie and Leonard Henry, to make some things happen. LaMont Chappell at receiver, was a senior and had a good season.
“It just was one of those years where I think our defense kind of led the way, but the offense was right there to respond when we needed them. And so I just enjoyed that. I enjoyed Coach Connors and his contributions throughout that season. He was always kind of giving us those pregame speeches, and he was the coach that everybody really wanted to win for. He just was such a special guy.
“And then Coach Logan leading the way, and it being the year, the winningest coach of all time. That meant something to us. So it was just a special, special time, considering coming off of 5-6 and then 6-5, the two prior years. We knew we were better than that.
“It was great to be able to be on the big stage, and have ESPN come and interview all of us after the flood and after we were 4-0, and all of that was really cool. We win the Disney Spirit Award, and Logan and Forrest and Jeff Kerr get to go to accept that award. That was pretty cool. Just to see the way the community rallied around us.
“All the bad stuff that came with that flood, for everyone still to travel to Raleigh and pack out that stadium was just really, really cool. It gave people an opportunity to take their minds off of the bad stuff going on back home, and to rally around this team that was playing so well.
“I was just happy that we were able to come through for them in that regard. And in an 11-game season to win nine games is still one of the most impressive years East Carolina’s ever had. Just proud to be a part of that.”
Great article!! Kevin does great on interviews. I may be a little bias because after all he is my son!!