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Pirate Notebook No. 173 Friday, January 30, 2004 By Denny O'Brien Staff Writer and Columnist

ECU not short on options

©2004 Bonesville.net

For what it's worth, East Carolina has enjoyed a decent run in Conference USA. Few would argue with that statement.

Since joining the league in 1997, the Pirates have earned three bowl bids, resurrected their men's basketball program from purgatory, and improved the overall athletics program across the board.

In a conference in which some felt ECU would struggle, the Pirates held their own in almost every sport.

Likewise, C-USA benefited from the inclusion of a school with a traditional football culture, a rabid fan base willing to travel, and a remarkably respectable television following. The argument can be made that the Pirates, along with Southern Miss, did the most to quickly elevate the league's football profile beyond its initial mediocre status.

It was a win-win situation.

But now that C-USA is about to undergo a dramatic makeover — for the worse — East Carolina must consider other options if it strives to elevate its national status. That is the immediate challenge the Pirates' next director of athletics will face.

The notion that ECU is stuck in the ever-changing C-USA experiment is not acceptable given the current landscape of college athletics. With conference turnover happening at a rate that rivals the wheeling and dealing of a stock exchange, schools must keep their résumés polished for a possible promotion.

"It's been my contention from the beginning of the realignment process that when you examine the facts of East Carolina University and our athletics program — more particularly, the football program — the facts speak for themselves," interim AD Nick Floyd said in October. "You look at our season ticket base of 16,000; our Pirate Club membership of 8,000; our recent facilities improvements that will be pushing $50 million here in the near future with the completion of the baseball stadium project, and the Pirate Club/Ticket Office project.

"When you look at the passionate and developed fan base at East Carolina University — fans that will go on the road... and also at bowl games — these are things that are evaluated when you are looking at a program. Add on top of that the graduation rates of our football players — 70 percent in the most recent report, 66 percent for all of our student athletes — and no compliance issues."

Gone are the days when a school is judged solely by its own athletic merits. A portion of a program's reputation is determined by the conference in which it plays.

Case in point, Baylor, Vanderbilt, and Duke — habitual football pushovers — are riding the coattails of their BCS leagues and by default have been granted major status from the national media. Meanwhile, the recent success of Boise State, Miami (Ohio), and Texas Christian hasn't been enough to receive the "big-time" label each has earned.

Such is the price of membership in a non-BCS league — and it is one ECU no longer can afford to pay.

A Big East invitation still should be No. 1 on East Carolina's wish list. Though weakened significantly by high-profile defections, the league's leftovers still are more appetizing than the Pirates' current situation.

Besides, my money is riding on another round of Big East expansion with the final membership tally for football at 12. Otherwise, the conference will not be able to maintain the level of respect among elite football circles it enjoyed in the past and it will have little chance of preserving more than four bowl tie-ins.

Next time around, East Carolina can't miss an opportunity to join the conference with which its fans identify most.

Another option would be the formation of a new all-sports conference with schools cut from a similar cloth. Central Florida, Marshall, Memphis, and Southern Miss are no-brainers, and several MAC and Independent schools along with Temple would be interesting candidates.

Not exactly a juggernaut, but the benefits of a break from Britton Banowsky's efforts to recreate a watered-down version of the defunct Southwest Conference — with some geographic anomalies like ECU thrown in to achieve a 12-team league — far outweigh the negatives.

At the very least, the more easterly arrangement would be a football-centric league with geometrically better rivalry and travel considerations. It would also offer the freedom to pursue an improved TV contract on a per-school payout basis and a set of more logical bowl relationships.

From where I stand, those are pretty attractive perks.

If all else fails, East Carolina could always reclaim its independence, perhaps the boldest of statements given the current environment. Of today's football independents, only Notre Dame continues to flourish — records excluded — on an annual basis.

But Independentville isn't uncharted territory for a Pirates program that has spent most of its Division I-A existence without a conference home. Some would attest that ECU's most glorious days were spent pre-C-USA, the era in which that ECU-versus-world attitude was most embraced.

From the 1980s to mid-90s, the Pirates boasted a national schedule that annually included a stout lineup of heavyweights. It was a concept that earned ECU a cult following nationwide, as it drew widespread attention each time the Pirates stoned a gridiron Goliath.

Those status-quo-shattering upsets fueled a surge in ECU's base of support and spawned ambitious aspirations among the faithful usually associated only with schools with much greater resources.

A return to those good ole days of the 'chip' would enable the Pirates to pursue a more appealing schedule built around a few traditional tyrants along with a handful of guaranteed wins. True, it might require ECU to scale back its home schedule to five games, but that would be a minor sacrifice for the hefty paychecks and exposure high-profile games could produce.

No doubt, there are potential drawbacks with independence, which overall would be a major gamble. For one, there would be no guaranteed bowl tie-ins and no league TV contract to leverage. Not to mention the biggest unknown — how independents will factor into the new BCS agreement.

However, with ECU's history of attracting more than its share of media attention and boob-tube viewers, negotiating an individual TV deal shouldn't be a major to-do. After all, such a pact was already in place before the siren song of C-USA beckoned.

As for bowls, Navy proved this season that finding a vacant slot may not be difficult considering the abundance of postseason games.

The BCS is another story.

Ideally, school presidents will adopt a system more inclusive to all institutions, not just a few additional conferences. If so, a return to independence might be the most attractive alternative of all.

If not, it still is one of several options that must be considered if C-USA is given the short shrift by the new BCS contract.

Bottom line, East Carolina shouldn't stake its athletics future on a conference that has lost its sense of direction.

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02/23/2007 01:56:07 AM