GREENVILLE, N.C. – The kickoff time for East Carolina’s season-opening non-conference home contest against Old Dominion, scheduled for August 31 at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium, has been set for 7:00 p.m. (EDT) to accommodate a live FOX College Sports (FCS) television broadcast according to an announcement from Conference USA and network officials Wednesday.
The Pirates will open head coach Ruffin McNeill's fourth season by meeting an ODU program that finished the 2012 campaign with an 11-2 record and a No. 6 national rank in the Football Championship Subdivision. The Monarchs, who restarted football competition only four seasons ago, will play as an independent during a two-year Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) reclassification period until it moves to Conference USA in 2015.
East Carolina recorded an 8-5 overall mark and were co-champions of C-USA’s East Division with a 7-1 ledger a year ago. The Pirates split their first six contests before closing the regular season with victories in five of the last six games to earn the program’s sixth bowl appearance in the last seven years.
Old Dominion's visit will be one of six ECU contests currently scheduled to air on a FOX Sports entity, joining Florida Atlantic (Sept. 5), Virginia Tech (Sept. 14), Middle Tennessee (Oct. 5), Southern Miss (Oct. 19) and Tulsa (Nov. 9). Broadcast assignments for the latter five games will include FOX Sports Network (FSN) or FOX Sports 1.
FOX College Sports (FCS) offers three nationally-distributed college sports networks - FCS Pacific, FCS Central and FCS Atlantic - that combine to telecast more than 1,100 live NCAA events annually. Key distribution partners include Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications, Cox Communications, Cablevision Systems, Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-Verse, Mediacom Communications and Cable One. FCS is also available on satellite through DirecTV.
