Baby steps. That’s what it takes to build a successful and sustainable college football program from the bottom up. You can’t microwave things, as former East Carolina coach Ruffin McNeill used to say, or try to turn things around with one giant leap with a roster full of graduate transfers. It has to happen organically and gradually, with the centerpiece of the process … [Read more...]

Are you a glass half empty kind of person or is your glass half full? How you answer that question will likely shape your perspective on East Carolina’s 19-7 win against William & Mary at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium on Saturday. Either you came away encouraged by a victory earned primarily through the efforts of a stout defense, something that hasn’t happened often since … [Read more...]

As was the case with East Carolina's season opener at N.C. State, Saturday’s 42-10 beatdown at the hands of Navy had an uncomfortably familiar look and feel to it. If it wasn’t already obvious before this weekend, it should be now. Turning the ECU football program around and restoring it to its past glory isn’t a quick-fix proposition. “The day I took this job, I was not … [Read more...]

Mike Houston has spent the nine months since he was hired to rebuild East Carolina’s broken football program preaching values such as mental and physical toughness, perseverance in the face of adversity, character and, most of all, family. They are some of the foundations upon which most winning programs are built. But for all he has said about those things both on the … [Read more...]

RALEIGH — There’s no more fertile breeding ground for knee jerk reactions and hot takes — both positive and negative — than the first game of a new season. There were plenty of extreme conclusions to be made based on the result of East Carolina's 2019 opener at N.C. State on Saturday. But we’ll leave those for social media and the message boards. Except for this one … [Read more...]