Great article! I am watching the ACC very closely and I think it is eventually going to collapse with some teams (UNC, Miami, Florida State, etc.) going either to the SEC or Big 10. I think the rest of the teams will join together and ECU will have an opportunity to join that league.

Without a doubt it is for the worse. Coaches should not be one of the highest paid people in the entire state. How many companies have employees make more than the people they report to. Student athletes should at most get paid around what they would make if they worked a part time job like other non athletes. College athletes should go to schools they want to play for not to schools that pay the most.

I remember my freshman year at ECU, we were paying Pat Dye $24,000 per year to coach our football team. It's incredible what the financial picture of college athletics has evolved in that time period. For better or worse?

Kudos to the Pirates’ head coach for addressing staff needs, and to the entire staff for making the effort to upgrade the talent level in the locker room. Thanks to the NCAA’s lack of leadership, college sports has become a casino where players can spin the roulette wheel and land almost anywhere they want, for any reason they have. Legitimate concerns over playing time are one thing, but using a one year enrollment at a mid-level FBS school as an audition for more lucrative NIL offers is quite another. The NCAA has turned many athletes into gunslingers who troll for the bigger payday. I don’t blame the players for the mismanagement resulting in the current toxic stew called recruitment. So here’s hoping ECU can navigate the shoals and obstacles put before it. To do this, the days of recruiting promising high school student-athletes and growing them up, “in the system”, may be rapidly coming to an end, or sadly, diminished. I hope I’m wrong. However, the current recruiting environment may force schools to invest available scholarship dollars in the transfer portal.

ECU has always had to do more with less. What if we just do better? Coach better, recruit better, and be bolder. No excuses. Every school is facing the same transfer portal. If Liberty can have a respectable program in this environment, and Duke and Wake Forest are competitive. Why the woe-is-me attitude in Greenville?

It's hard to know who was behind the new transfer portal program that waives the one year sit out rule. The transfer portal will do to college football what the NBA did to college basketball. The complaint from fans, even fans of the Power five is you never get to know who the players are because they gone after one year. It hard to see who wins but easy to see who loses. My fear is the death of small college football. With the new NCAA / ESPN contract, there is no going back.

On a good day, the present system is a crap shoot. ECU cannot, at present, compete on a grand scale in the present system. I doubt whether that will ever be possible. The NCAA has reduced the major sports of college athletics to a pay-for-play collection of college casinos. It’s not hard to tell the “top shelf” establishments from those who struggle to afford the permits. The mid-majors, like ECU, should break away completely from the NCAA and form a new organization. I know this will not happen, but it would be nice to see the NCAA have to scramble for its big contracts when the majority of members become competitors. March Madness would take the hit first. Football would soon follow. I’m betting the Power Five would soon realize the NCAA had been transformed from “all powerful “ to “all useless”, and jettison the org soon after. Al, you gave us a great article. Rather bleak, but it is the truth. With football having so many players and personnel involved, one can only hope the Pirate Ship can stay afloat.

Thanks, Sammy Your reports are excellent !!

It would be nice to see ECU and the other North Carolina universities sign more in state players. Just the talent on the field of the 2A championship game that's going to the SEC and BIG 10 would make the pirates the dominant team in the AAC.

Congratulations to the Quiet lineman you chose a great school for your education and to play for the Pirates! I know I enjoyed my 4 yrs here way back in 1978 until 82. I taught for 32yrs of college 5 an HS27 J R TITSWORTH

I would love to see this pledge hold, but wherever Coach Mogridge is, loyalty to your recruiter may win out. The Lord knows, the Pirate offense could use him.

To know Eric was to be his friend,” read a statement from the Montross family, “And the family knows that the ripples from the generous , thoughtful way that he lived his life will continue in the lives of the many people he touched with his deep and sincere kindness.

Great Report Thanks, Sammy

Thanks go to Coach Cliff for a great 10 years. We could not ask for a better man to coach for ECU. Coach is doing it right. Here's to another 10 but I'm thankful for every day that Cliff Godwin is the Head Baseball Coach at East Carolina University.

P. S. It doesn't help matters that his starting middle LB has entered the portal; hopefully there won't be more to follow.