Opinion: VT win solidifies quest for respect

Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer started his postgame press conference last Saturday by saying, "Give ECU a lot of credit. They are a good football team."

At that moment, ECU's national image changed and the residue from the John Thompson days was officially gone.

"Coming in, I knew ECU was going to be good," said Beamer. "They are a solid football team and that quarterback puts them at another level."

Gaining respect from coaches like Beamer and from college football's national figures isn't easy for teams like the Pirates, who don't play in a BCS conference. Recently, teams like Boise State, Hawaii and Southern Miss have earned respect from college football's "big boys," but ECU now headlines that list.

The win over Virginia Tech coupled with last year's bowl win over Boise State vaulted the Pirates into Conference USA's record books and landed them right outside the Associated Press' top 25. ECU became the first team in C-USA's 13-year history to record back-to-back victories over nationally ranked teams.

ECU now has consecutive wins over two of the nation's top-five winningest programs in the past ten years. Boise State has the best wining percentage of any team in the country in that 10-year span, and the Hokies check in at number five.

"It was a great win from an image standpoint, when you look at it on the national stage," ECU coach Skip Holtz said on Monday. "I think we got a lot of people's attention around the country and they're saying, 'Wow, maybe what they're doing in Greenville is for real and maybe we ought to look at what ECU is doing.'"

"After the [Virginia Tech] game last year, I pulled the team onto the field and I talked to them about remembering what that atmosphere and national stage was like. I told them that you belong on this stage, but nobody is going to give it you. The only way that we are going to earn respect from people around the country and from a lot of the big-time programs around the country is to go out and win one of these games."

That task started as soon as Holtz stepped foot in Greenville.

In the 1990s, under Head Coach Steve Logan, ECU was well respected around the country and was consistently in the top 25 and playing bowl games at season's end. However, Logan only won four games in 2002, and was fired at the end of the season.

Then things got even worse.

The Pirates hired John Thompson, a defensive coordinator from Florida. Thompson won a total of three games over the next two seasons and ECU's national image hit rock bottom. ECU's football program had suddenly turned into a laughing stock and was severely frowned upon by its ACC neighbors.

Thompson's last game at ECU was an embarrassing 52-14 loss to a mediocre N.C. State team in Charlotte, which concluded the 2004 season.

Holtz took over that off-season and his mission of gaining respect from the local teams in bigger conferences started with Duke. As a three-point underdog, the Pirates beat the Blue Devils 24-21, kicking off the Holtz era with a win over an ACC team, albeit a bad one. The next season, ECU beat Virginia and N.C. State. Last year, ECU beat North Carolina in the first home game of the year and had a 4-1 record against ACC opponents under Holtz at the time.

Last December, the Pirates traveled to Hawaii to play Boise State in what was supposed to be one of the most lopsided games of the bowl season. Once again, Holtz garnered respect for his program, defeating the nationally-ranked Broncos, 41-38, and finishing the 2007 season with an 8-5 record.

That brings us back to Charlotte and back to the stadium where ECU was pummeled in Thompson's finale by its bitter rival, N.C. State.

ECU stood toe-to-toe with Virginia Tech in Charlotte, proving it belongs on the national scene.

Holtz started his tenure with a win over Duke back in 2005 and now has a win over the ACC's best team, gaining respect along the way.

"It was a great feeling, especially beating a team of their caliber," said senior linebacker Pierre Bell of the Virginia Tech win. "It's been a long time coming."

The hard part now is maintaining the national respect that ECU has recently earned.

Holtz has stressed the importance of that this week, noting that ECU didn't do a good job of that last season. In 2007, the Pirates followed their win over UNC with a home loss to Southern Miss and an extremely humbling 48-7 loss at West Virginia.

The win/loss outcome of Saturday's much-anticipated game with West Virginia might not be as important as how ECU is viewed by the Mountaineers after the game is over. The Pirates will have to prove that the wins over Boise State and Virginia Tech were not flukes, and they can only do that by showing that they belong on the same field as a team like West Virginia.

Proving his team belongs is something Holtz is getting used to-he's been doing it ever since he took the program over nearly four years ago.

This writer can be contacted at sports@theeastcarolinian.com.