By Denny O'Brien
©2010 Bonesville.net
All Rights Reserved.

Visit any college town and you’ll hear stories about the galvanizing and polarizing figures who have defined the athletics legacy of the local university. Greenville is no different.

If you drop by one of the local barbecue haunts near East Carolina, you’ll hear no shortage of stories about Leo Jenkins and Clarence Stasavich, the iconic men who are largely the reason for the Pirates’ football-first approach. Without them, it’s hard to envision ECU filling a 50,000 seat venue with regularity in this day and time.

You’ll also hear stories about guys like former athletics director Mike Hamrick, whose actions throughout his tenure kept Pirates fans splintered. His contentious relationship with former football coach Steve Logan forced fans to choose sides and wage an internal civil war that has taken years to fully overcome.

Those who have attended any of the Pirates four home games this season — all wins, by the way — can confirm that ECU has completely emerged from the rubble. If you polled any of the 50,145 in Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium on Saturday about why they are emphatically rooting in unison, I’m guessing the response will be unanimous.

Ruffin McNeill. The Pirates’ first-year head coach. The former ECU defensive back who got his undergraduate degree in education and a graduate one in counseling.

It’s obvious he is putting both degrees to work in his current gig. Because so far his tenure at ECU has been both educational and therapeutic.

“We were tremendously impressed with his interview. But I thought it would take some time for the Pirate Nation to adjust to our new coach,” athletics director Terry Holland said. “But like he is with everybody, as soon as you meet him, you’ve got to like him.

“It’s just amazing the impact he has on individuals, as well as collective groups of people, whether it’s ECU alumni, or whether it’s the Durham Sports Club or whoever it may be. You have to really like the guy and you have to really like what he stands for. I think he’s just so genuine. He’s as genuine as anyone I’ve ever met.”

That was important given how Skip Holtz’s time in Greenville concluded. While there is no denying the Pirates’ success under Holtz’s leadership, the peripherals of his tenure became a source of frustration for many fans.

The verbal message from Holtz was his loyalty and commitment to East Carolina, yet the conclusion of each season was met with him entertaining overtures from other universities. There also were a few cases of team dissension along with several players who found permanent residence within the coach’s proverbial dog house.

And this is by no means an indictment against a coach who was the architect behind consecutive Conference USA titles. Such a position would be both short-sighted and foolish. Rather it is a testament to the unique way in which McNeill has operated his program and how everyone has bought into his methodology.

“Coach Ruff is a players’ coach to the max,” senior linebacker Dustin Lineback said. “He’s all about family, he’s all about doing the right thing and being professional. It’s really a blessing to play for him.

“He loves being here. He wants to be here. He’s not going anywhere unless they get rid of him. The camaraderie around the players and the coaches is unbelievable. It’s way stronger than it ever was since I’ve been here. You don’t let him down because he cares so much.”

It would be easy to dismiss Lineback’s comments if they were isolated to only him. But this is the consistent tone from within the East Carolina locker room, and it’s clear that these players cringe at the notion of disappointing their head coach.

Not because they fear immediate exile on the bench. Nothing of the sort. Rather McNeill has invested so much relationally in his players that it motivates them to push their limits further than before.

Just like his deep East Carolina roots make fans cheer even louder and longer for him. He’s Eastern North Carolina through and through, and that ‘one of us’ sentiment has been uniformly embraced by fans.

And for different reasons, the media also has jumped aboard this fast moving Ruffwagon. You won’t find a bigger group of skeptics than our bunch, but McNeill’s surprising success, demeanor, and straight-shooting approach has most of us now bought into Ruffmania.

Even so, it’s important to remember that we are only seven games into McNeill’s tenure, and it would be premature to predict how his career at East Carolina will unfold. You don’t have to look too far to find coaches at other schools who have experienced this level of early success only to see it fizzle down the road.

But that’s irrelevant at this point.

What isn’t, however, is the fact that in all my years of covering East Carolina football — which is entering its second decade and fourth head coach — I’m witnessing something new about the Pirates. And I honestly don’t know if I can justify it with words.

Maybe the buzz around Greenville is dictated by the surprising 5-2 record the Pirates have posted despite losing 29 players from consecutive C-USA titles. Maybe it’s the installment of a new wide-open offense or the addition of the Boneyard.

Or maybe it can all be traced back to ECU’s lovable, huggable head coach. It hasn’t taken long for him to galvanize the Pirate Nation into one.