East Carolina continues to take on top competition, find success
On the five-hour trip back to East Carolina's campus, athletic director Jeff Compher rode the bus.
The Pirates' head coach, Ruffin McNeill, his senior quarterback, Shane Carden, and the rest of the resurgent program's traveling party followed suit, tracing the same line on a map back to Greenville, N.C. The convoy passed within the vicinity of the state's big-brother ACC schools along the way -- Wake Forest, North Carolina, Duke and N.C. State -- but it probably didn't notice. After leaving 62,000 silent and stunned, another high-profile win on the Pirates' purple belts, McNeill's players and staff have a host of reasons to start looking at themselves as gridiron equals to their in-state rivals.
Coming off the program's first road win against Virginia Tech since 1991, a time that predates Frank Beamer's storied turnaround in Blacksburg and before Lane Stadium became a house of horrors for visiting foes, East Carolina's bus ride was short and sweet. When they arrived on the campus that sits 85 miles east of Raleigh, Compher looked out of his window. The school's colors littered the landscape, hundreds of fans greeting the team's return.
"That was a great sight to see," said Compher, who is in his second year in charge of the ECU athletics program.
Over the past five seasons under McNeill, East Carolina has slowly established itself as one of the premier non-Power 5 conference teams around. It's grown from two straight losing seasons to eight- and 10-win seasons in 2012 and 2013, respectively. The 10-win season was the program's first since that '91 campaign, when the Pirates finished the season ranked No. 9 nationally.
With wins over Virginia Tech, N.C. State and North Carolina in the past two seasons (not to mention close losses to the Hokies and South Carolina along the way), the Pirates are positioned to become a significant player in this post-BCS world of college football. There are only nine non-Power 5 teams that have posted back-to-back eight-win seasons and beaten at least two Power 5 teams since 2012, and the Pirates at or near the top of that exclusive club.
If not a realistic threat to challenge for the College Football Playoff -- barring an undefeated season, those chances are slim to none -- they will, at the very least, help to shape the conversation in the coming years and could become one the preeminent powers outside the top five revenue-generating leagues. They are already taking down ACC powers in hostile environments. What's next on the agenda?
"What we tried to do from Day 1 was have a commitment to our team and recruit kids that have coaches that commit to that team concept. That's what I've been raised on and what the team is built on: to get a group of guys committed to staying focused on the vision and mission," McNeill said. "And we've been fortunate to get some guys, and we've stayed with that from Day 1. We have not veered. You believe in what you believe in."
Terry Holland laid down a gauntlet.
East Carolina's former athletic director, who formally retired in December 2012, was successful at continuing East Carolina's tradition of tough scheduling during his tenure in Greenville, and with the way ADs set matchups years in advance his handiwork will play out on an annual basis for this dangerous Pirates program.
ECU schedules like few other non-Power 5 teams in the country: As an independent member of Division I during the 1990s, the Pirates faced the likes of Florida State, Georgia, Washington, Virginia Tech, Auburn and Miami. Even as the program transitioned to Conference USA in 1997, perennial powers remained on the schedule.
And now, due to both Holland and Compher, there are at least two Power 5 teams on the non-conference slate until 2020. Win or lose, East Carolina stands in the path of many top-tier programs.
"Our main goal is conference championships ... but when you look at the non-conference, we do want to go out and get these big games. We want to provide that opportunity for our fans," said Compher, whose program emphasizes locking up home-and-home series and will face Florida, Virginia Tech, BYU, South Carolina, N.C. State and West Virginia in the coming years. "We do want to be in position that if we have a successful season, we could potentially be up for the College Football Playoff (or the other major bowls)."
According to Jeff Sagarin's ratings, East Carolina has faced the 23rd-most difficult schedule to date, one that could improve given this Saturday's matchup with UNC and the decent possibility that Virginia Tech and South Carolina could rebound from early losses. Whereas the power conference teams often rack up strength of schedule points in conference play, from a national perspective, the East Carolinas of the world have to actively seek them out. Toss aside the typical schedule filler that is North Carolina Central, and there aren't many teams out there challenging themselves on a week-to-week basis before conference play quite like ECU.
Perhaps more importantly, the Pirates are winning more than they lose, posting a 6-2 non-conference record over the past two seasons with the losses coming by a combined 15 points to top-25-caliber programs (Virginia Tech, South Carolina).
They may not be the most dangerous non-Power 5 team around -- Football Outsiders ranks ECU 53rd in the country in its S&P+ model, behind Boise State, BYU, Marshall and Central Florida -- but the Pirates are on the short list. There are 62,000 Hokie fans that can attest to that. And there is expected to be, at least in Compher's estimation, a sold-out Dowdy Ficklen Stadium waiting to refresh the collective memory of the ACC's Tar Heels, 50,000 clad in purple and gold offering reminders of last season's 55-31 beatdown in Chapel Hill.
On an even larger scale, the newly formed American Conference has positioned itself nicely in the non-conference scheduling game, even as more of the five major leagues begin to establish mandates requiring the penciling in of other Power 5 teams in out-of-conference play. Aside from ECU's upcoming opponents, and with particular focus on Cincinnati and SMU, AAC teams will face the likes of Baylor, Miami, Missouri, Ohio State, TCU, UCLA, Texas A&M and Penn State in the coming years.
"The bottom line is you want to do well in your conference play. That's important to (Compher), and I'm glad because it's important to myself and our staff and our team," McNeill said. "But the competitive side of me, you want to do your best in every game."
Ruffin McNeill brought an abnormal focus to recruiting when he returned to coach his alma mater back in January 2010: narrative.
Instead of the number of stars and blue chips and recruiting rankings that other, bigger programs focus on, and often times rightly so given the correlation with recruiting and on-field success, McNeill directed his staff to look for high schoolers accustomed to dealing with challenges. Challenges like back-to-back-to-back games against ACC and SEC opponents. Challenges like unseating Louisville (now an ACC member) and Cincinnati as the conference's top dogs.
Those plans at smaller programs are often formulated not by exact design but by necessity, but the results hold.
"It's sort of premeditated. I told the team this and I said it publicly for the first time, I premeditatedly brought in people with stories," McNeill said. "The reason why is because they're used to having to work hard for everything they've gotten. ... They're not going to be afraid of challenges. They're not going to be afraid of expectations."
That focus has never yielded recognition, at least according to the nation's scouting services. Since McNeill's first class, ECU has never been ranked higher than 66th by Scout. And yet those two- and three-star hauls have yielded a 31-23 record with another 10-win season a definite possibility. When he describes the process, he points to Carden (8,286 career yards, 83 total touchdowns), a former two-star recruit and dark horse Heisman candidate that McNeill believes personifies the program's steady climb.
"I've been around this offense now for this is my 15th years, and I've seen quarterbacks develop within it," said McNeill, who was around prolific QBs Kliff Kingsbury, B.J. Symons and Graham Harrell at Texas Tech. "And Shane ... it seems like all of our guys have a story. He's earned it. He came in as a freshman, redshirted on scout team. Second year, he was trying to earn the backup spot but didn't quite get it and went back to scout team. Imagine that now. He was not only a quarterback, but we saw him at tight end sometimes, running back, he did what he had to do and never complained.
"But when he got his opportunity, he never relinquished it. He exhibits what we talk about every day."
Back when Compher was the athletic director at Northern Illinois, a program that advanced to the Orange Bowl in his final year before he packed for Greenville, he saw a similar model take shape, although their was a coaching change in between. His coach, Dave Doeren, who is now pacing the sidelines at in-state rival N.C. State, picked up on the foundation that his predecessor Jerry Kill set in place, including recruiting a two-star quarterback out of Chicago that would eventually become a Heisman finalist (Jordan Lynch), and started winning with a short supply of top-tier talent.
When McNeill was hired as the defensive coordinator at Appalachian State in 1993, the program that would go on to dominate Division II/FCS football, winning three straight national titles from 2005 to 2007, the program improved dramatically in his first three years on campus: going from 4-7 to 9-4 to 12-1.
When offensive guru Mike Leach selected McNeill as his linebackers coach at Texas Tech after taking the job before the 2000 season, the Red Raiders improved from 7-6 to 7-5 to 9-5 in the first three seasons.
Often times, a foundation has to be in place.
McNeill laid his own in Greenville, his first full-time head coaching job.
He doesn't plan on letting someone else build on top of it, either. Not yet. As he said at his introductory press conference: "This is not a stepping-stone hop for Ruff. This is where I want to be until you tow me away from here. You'll have to drag me away."
While the in-state ACC schools throw around "Our State" rallying cries for bragging and recruiting purposes, there's another name to consider. The last time ECU locked up with Duke (2005), UNC (2013) and N.C. State (2013, it won each respective game, and while the Blue Devils have come a long way since then, the gap looks to be essentially nonexistent. (Sorry Wake Forest, but Appalachian State might give you a run this season.)
The Pirates will look to reestablish their claim on Saturday against a North Carolina team coming off a much-needed bye week. They'll have plenty more opportunities in the not-so-distant future. And, apparently, everyone around the program is buying in. If the ECU of the past three seasons is the ECU of the future, this isn't the last time the nation will hear about Ruffin McNeill's group ... nor the last time that Compher will see so much purple at the tail end of a victory-drenched bus ride.
"You recruit guys and you hire guys that believe in what you believe in. You have to be patient. Just be patient with it," McNeill said. "Stay the course."
