Assessing East Carolina Football's Struggles in Cold Weather

Some things aren’t made for cold weather. Take for example North Carolina’s state tree, the Pinus palustris, which is more commonly known as the longleaf pine, and can be found as far west as Texas to the southeastern parts of Virginia and is even known to go as far south as Florida. However, if you try to take this particular tree out of its naturally warm habitat, it simply can’t survive.

The ECU football team can relate to the regional specialization that its in-state pine enjoys. This season alone, the Pirates have coincidently picked up victories in a couple of those states—at Virginia Tech and South Florida—but when they were taken out of their preferred environment and thrust into a cold, rainy and windy Lincoln-Financial Field in Philadelphia, ECU withered away at the hands of Temple.

This probably wouldn’t have been as alarming last season when the Pirates were members of the Conference USA and their most geographically northern opponent was Marshall. And it’s worth noting their last trip to Huntington, W.Va., didn’t go so well. But ECU is no longer a member of the centrally based C-USA. Instead it is a newly christened member of the American Athletic Conference and while the American is also mostly made up of warm weather schools, it still boasts teams like Temple, Cincinnati and Connecticut.

On paper, ECU is the better than all three of those teams and if they played in a neutral environment, the Pirates would probably take care of business. But no team is given the luxury of playing every game at a neutral site and like everyone else, ECU has to deal with less-than-ideal weather from time to time.

The Pirates were introduced to Philadelphia’s unforgiving weather last Saturday and it wasn’t exactly a warm reception. The 20-10 loss to the Owls was a product of bad penalties and five lost fumbles. The offense couldn’t finish off drives and quarterback Shane Carden had his worst game of the year with a season-low 217 passing yards. Give the chilly conditions some of that credit.

 It’s a sentiment that was acknowledged by multiple ECU players. “The weather impacted us a lot,” running back Chris Hairston said following the game. Even Carden mentioned the bad weather and how tough it was to get going in the first half.

But the game against Temple wasn’t just an anomaly for the Pirates. Since Ruffin McNeill has been at the helm, ECU has accumulated a 1-4 record in games that have been played in states northern than North Carolina. In those five games, the Pirates have been outscored 199-123.

This isn’t a new development but it is something that McNeill and his team needs to correct, especially considering that they are about to travel to Cincinnati next week, which could feature even colder weather.

If the Pirates want to be welcomed back to the national stage, they will need to break away from the confines of their warm region. Because unlike the longleaf pine, this team can learn and adapt to the the cold weather.