‘It’s almost like we’re healed.’ What hosting South Carolina means to East Carolina
The images of a season played amid a global pandemic remain fresh in East Carolina athletic director Jon Gilbert’s memory.
Gilbert previously spent 17 years at Alabama and another five-plus years at Tennessee before taking the athletic director job at Southern Miss and, now, at ECU. He sighs when he thinks back to the empty bleachers at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium a season ago.
The smokers and grills that normally litter the parking lots around the stadium laid barren. The Boneyard — ECU’s aptly named student section — replaced its Bud Light-fueled undergrads that usually call Sections 21 through 30 home in the fall with tumbleweeds.
For a school that, in Gilbert’s words, has never lost a tailgate, COVID pilfered the Pirates’ undefeated imbibing record and the athletic department’s bottom line a season ago.
Saturday’s home opener against South Carolina, though, promises to change that.
“You’ll see a lot of purple and gold in the parking lots,” Gilbert told The State. “You’ll see a lot of people eating and drinking and having a normal college football experience, and we’ve missed that for the last year and a half.”
During the COVID-affected 2020 campaign, ECU only allowed seven percent capacity — or roughly 3,500 fans — at Ross-Ficklen Stadium during football season.
Gone was the raucous and wild fan base that created one of the Group of Five’s most formidable venues. An empty stadium and a few scattered cheers stood in its place.
Matt Maloney, ECU’s assistant athletics director of major gifts and a South Carolina swimming alum, said he was one of only a few hundred people in the stands at Mingles Coliseum when the Pirates men’s basketball team knocked off No. 5 Houston in February.
It only took a handful of minutes to celebrate with each and every person in the arena. The official attendance: 78 people.
“I think I hugged everybody in a matter of two minutes,” Maloney quipped.
Gilbert said he couldn’t put a direct figure on how much ECU lost in football revenue last season due to limited capacities, but he assures it was millions.
ECU eliminated men’s tennis and swimming and diving in a cost-cutting measure that saved the school an estimated $1.2 million according to the school. Athletic department employees above a certain salary range were also subject to furloughs over the summer and again in October. A handful of head coaches even took straight salary reductions.
“(The COVID-19 pandemic) was so devastating from a revenue standpoint that across the country in college athletics you saw pay cuts, furloughs, salary reductions, budget cuts,” Gilbert said. “Just a host of things made it difficult last year.”
For a football program that has floundered away from its storied tradition in recent years, Saturday also marks the latest attempt to resurrect a dormant program.
Between 2006 and 2014, ECU went to eight bowl games in nine years under the direction of, first, Skip Holtz and, later, Ruffin McNeil. After a 5-7 season in 2015, McNeil was ousted. Scottie Montgomery promptly recorded three consecutive three-win seasons before his firing.
Now things fall on former Citadel coach Mike Houston.
A native of Mars Hill, North Carolina, Houston has spent the better part of 30 years coaching in North and South Carolina. His lone jaunt outside the states at James Madison resulted in a 2016 FCS national title.
In three years at JMU, Houston recorded a 37-6 record, where he twice reached the FCS national championship game. Progress has been slower since he arrived in Greenville in 2018. The Pirates were 4-8 in his first season and 3-6 a year ago — though ECU’s 3-5 AAC record in 2020 was a two-win improvement.
ECU opened its 2021 season with a 33-19 loss to Appalachian State last week in Charlotte.
“It’ll obviously be electric (on Saturday),” Houston said during his weekly press conference. “It’s one of the reasons so many of (our players) came here to East Carolina is because of Pirate Nation, Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium and the way it is on game day.”
Armed with a star quarterback in Holton Ahlers — who South Carolina head coach Shane Beamer previously recruited at Georgia — and a tricky and twisting defense, South Carolina isn’t taking ECU lightly.
Beamer has preached all week how crucial Saturday’s trip north is. Gamecocks offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield also lauded ECU for what he and the rest of the staff expect to be a stiff test in a downright rowdy environment.
“I’ve been to every stadium in the Big 12, I’ve been every stadium in the ACC,” Beamer said Tuesday. “And the atmosphere at East Carolina is a whole lot better than a lot of the places I went to in those conferences.”
“It’s the home opener and fans are hungry and excited for success,” South Carolina senior athletic director for facilities and event operations Jeff Davis, who graduated from ECU and spent 14 years working for the school in varying capacities, told The State in an email Friday. “From a (South) Carolina perspective it gives our fans an opportunity to travel and to be there to support our team in a difficult competitive environment; our fans will be there in mass and will be vocal to try to help neutralize the home field advantage.”
Games like Saturday’s don’t come around often in Greenville. This year’s meeting is part of a five-game deal that was initially signed in 2007 but has been updated since.
The 2014 and 2016 contests between ECU and South Carolina were played in Columbia. South Carolina then canceled the 2019 meeting in Greenville due to a scheduling conflict. The game initially slated for 2020 at USC was also rescheduled to 2027 after the Southeastern Conference went to a conference-only slate during the COVID-affected 2020 season.
But for what difficulties American Athletic Conference schools like ECU have had in securing marquee meetings with Power Five schools, tides have slowly shifted — albeit amid swirling conference realignment moves that could leave the AAC in need of a handful of new members in short order.
Oklahoma was supposed to visit Tulane to open 2021, though that was moved after Hurricane Ida hit New Orleans. It’s expected to be made up.
Perennial AAC power UCF and Florida agreed to a three-game series in July that will take place in 2024, 2030 and 2033.
East Carolina also has home games against North Carolina State, BYU, West Virginia, Wake Forest and Boise State on its ledger over the next seven years.
“I think it just speaks volumes that (our) home opener for this football season is an SEC opponent,” Gilbert said. “I’m thankful that it’s worked out.”
Administrators at ECU anticipate a sellout, or close to it, Saturday. Maloney said every box is booked. Pirates mega donor Bill Clark even purchased 6,000 tickets for first responders to attend the contest.
It’s all part of a process that administrators and coaches at East Carolina hope bring a semblance of stability and normalcy after running through three football coaches, two athletic directors and four chancellors — two of whom were interims — since 2013.
It’s also a chance to add another mark to ECU’s stellar tailgating record. If anything, last year was just a tie. The Pirates remain undefeated.
“It’s almost like we’re healed,” Maloney said. “...I think if you took the pulse of the Pirate nation, people will be feeling that.”
This story was originally published September 10, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
