GREENVILLE For years now, East Carolina
has pursued an invitation to the Big East Conference. The Pirates have
expanded facilities, improved men's basketball and have developed
steadily increasing attendance in football. All of those factors are
viewed within the ECU community as being favorable for Big East
consideration.The Big East, on
the other hand, appears to have been doing its best to ignore ECU's
overtures and that may work out for the best in the long run for the
Pirates.
The Big East is crumbling. Two of its
most prestigious members, Pitt and Syracuse, will jump to the Atlantic
Coast Conference, a trail blazed by former Big East members Boston
College, Miami and Virginia Tech.
There is a lack of vision in the Big
East, a lack of consensus because of the sheer number of its members,
many of which don't play football. The Big East doesn't fit for the
Pirates. It's northeastern, metropolitan and basketball-oriented at its
core. It's a contrast with ECU's culture.
There is doubt about whether the league
will even maintain automatic qualifying status in the Bowl Championship
Series when that situation is evaluated in a couple of years. The AQ is
the dangling carrot that has driven the Pirates' quest for the Big East.
ECU might be better off staying put in
Conference USA if C-USA and the Mountain West get some sort of combined
berth in the future structure of the BCS.
The league that makes the most sense
for the Pirates is the ACC, although neither ECU nor the ACC appear to
see the logic.
The prevailing mindset has been that
the ACC would never seriously consider the Pirates and vice-versa. Both
the ACC and the Pirates need to get over those stereotypes for their
mutual benefit.
A UNC-Chapel Hill grad once told me
that the ACC would never have five teams from North Carolina. There's no
such rule. It wasn't that way when the Southwest Conference consisted of
Arkansas and a slew of Texas teams. Compact is the way to go in an era
of spiraling transportation costs.
ECU's sister schools in the state
public higher education system, North Carolina and North Carolina State,
need to be proactive on behalf of the Pirates. Virginia set a precedent
when it lobbied for Virginia Tech at the ACC's last expansion. UVa's
effort on behalf of the Hokies led to the league's previous exclusion of
Syracuse.
It would help the state's struggling
economy to cut ECU a slice of the revenue pie. With the manner in which
the Pirates support their teams in person and as television viewers, I
can't see where the ACC would lose.
ECU probably graduates four times as
many students as Duke and five times as many as Wake Forest annually.
They may not show up in the television market data that the ACC has been
looking at but they are there and the stream will continue. Having ECU
in the ACC would be a great advantage in terms of scheduling proximity.
That reduces the cost of travel in nonrevenue sports and, because trips
are shorter, there would be less missed class time for student-athletes.
That should be a strong factor in the decisions of college
administrators.
The Pirates, of course, would need to
adjust any academic qualifying standards for athletes that are not in
line with those of the ACC. The pool of potential recruits that would
open up for ECU with ACC membership would more than compensate for the
occasional nonqualifier that gets his grades together and makes it into
the program.
The inclusion of ECU in the ACC would
be a great statement for UNC-Chapel Hill in particular, which is in need
of a public relations makeover in light of pending NCAA sanctions to the
Tar Heels' football program. The notion of recognizing the Pirates as
competitive peers seems to avulse the Tar Heel nation. Based on
North Carolina's 35-20 football win in
Greenville on Saturday night, there appears to be little
immediate danger of ECU yanking any biscuits off the Tar Heels' table.
The Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium record crowd
of 50,610 does indicate the drawing power the rivals have. To North
Carolina's credit, the Tar Heels have agreed to play ECU in football in
Chapel Hill in 2012 and in Greenville in 2013.
The history of bad blood runs deep
between North Carolina and the Pirates. ECU had to take on the Chapel
Hill power structure to get a medical school and university status.
The state's transplanted-European
history starts in eastern North Carolina, going back to the Lost Colony.
When UNC-Chapel Hill was chartered, eastern North Carolina was the most
prominent region in the state. That has resulted in a competitive
dynamic between the two institutions as ECU has become the university of
the region over the last century.
The hard feelings of the past need to
give way to helping hands in the future. It needs to happen for more
reasons than are written here.
The ACC listens when the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill talks, and ACC commissioner Johnny
Swofford, a North Carolina alumnus, still carries weight in Chapel Hill.
Swofford's call for reform in college sports at the ACC football media
gathering preceded the dismissal of Butch Davis as Tar Heels football
coach by mere days. For once, UNC needs to be the University for North
Carolina because of the financial impact and trickle down that a
conference upgrade would mean for eastern North Carolina through ECU.
Reports indicate that Governor Beverly Perdue is up to speed with that
school of thought.
Wouldn't it be great if the Pirates
were included in the round of expansion that got the ACC to 16 members?
Swofford has stated that the league is not philosophically opposed to
having 16 members. Two divisions of eight would be ideal for football
and a 16-team bracket would work for the ACC basketball tournament as
well.
I would think that former governor Jim
Hunt would be a lot more influential as an advocate of ECU in the ACC
than in the Big East. The ACC connections of ECU athletic director Terry
Holland would seem to be of great value, politically, in the ACC, too.
ECU chancellor Steve Ballard has developed respect in circles throughout
the UNC system, having chaired a study on means to improve compliance in
athletics.
I think ECU has been interested in the
Big East for years as an end run to what it perceived to be a closed
door to the ACC.
That door needs to open. As Ronald
Reagan said when Germany was on the verge of being united, "Tear down
that (Berlin) wall." Swofford needs to do that sort of moving and
shaking. It would enhance his legacy and perception as a visionary,
which at the present time is leaning more along the lines of being a
hand puppet for ESPN/ABC.
The ACC needs to add East Carolina. It
would be a mutually beneficial situation.
Houston, we have a problem
For the foreseeable future, the Pirates
are in C-USA and they face a huge challenge next week in Houston as they
return to league play. Cougars quarterback Case Keenum generated huge
numbers in a 49-42 win at Texas-El Paso on Thursday night. It seems like
he's been playing for Houston since Bill Clinton was governor of
Arkansas. Houston got a head start on prepping for the Pirates with a
midweek game plus they're playing at home.
The C-USA schedule makers did ECU no
favors on that one.
First half turnovers were ECU's undoing
against the Tar Heels but perhaps the Pirates can build on an improved
effort in the second half. The Pirates did a better job against North
Carolina's running game as the contest continued and outscored the
visitors 17-7 over the final 30 minutes.