2008 Woodie Awards
In 2007, ECU trotted onto Lane Stadium's field side-by-side with nationally ranked Virginia Tech. In 2008, the Pirates will once again open with a highly regarded Hokies team-but this season, the game won't be overshadowed by a tragedy; what happens in between the lines is the only thing that matters in this rematch.
5. Is this the year ECU gets a Conference USA title? Any member of the football team will tell you that unless ECU makes it to the C-USA title game then the season is a failure. The Pirates have been close the last two years but have fallen apart at the end of the conference schedule, with losses to Rice in 2006 and Marshall in 2007 costing them greatly.
There is a saying in football that offense sells tickets and defense wins championships-and that is no truer than in Conference USA. All you have to do is look at last year's champion to realize that. Last fall, UCF showed the rest of C-USA the recipe for winning a championship in the league that has turned into the most offense-heavy and unpredictable in the nation, and believe it or not, they did it with defense.
Michael Phelps finally seems to be grasping what it all means. Maybe it started to sink in when the president showed up at the Water Cube and came back for an encore. Maybe he got a better idea when all those NBA superstars - Kobe Bryant and LeBron James among them - actually led the cheers for him.