After my encounters with the younger ECU fanbase today, and in 2011, I'm convinced we've found a new team to have an unbridled hatred for.
I pray to whatever deity will listen that we can remove them from our schedule and never play this series again.
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They burn their own coaches and throw batteries and bottles of piss while trying to impress their sister/cousin/mother?
Being a young fan not having to deal with the cousins made me tentatively post this. But jeering injured players, flipping off everyone around you in Tech's student section and throwing food at VT fans in Greenville all came to a head today for me. ECU's fan base makes my blood boil now.
I made several trips to Morgantown for games back in the day, all the horror stories you have heard are likely true, Worst Fans Ever!
2021....
WVU is worse
I thought they showed a lot of class donating their game check to the Hokie Spirit Memorial fund after the tradgedy at VT. There are assholes everywhere, but the highest concentration ever assembled that I've seen was in Morgantown.
Maybe you get an asshole-free experience at BYU with the mormon angle? But I haven't let ECU slip into the depths of hell hatred like WVU, and probably never will
They are not a classy group of people.
After my experience with them down here, if you sat around one of them at the game today, and you didn't hear at least 1 reference to 4/16, consider yourself lucky.
They really are pretty horrible as a whole, the amount of crap I heard on the way out the stadium was ridiculous. In defeat I want to feel like we at least lost to a group of people that you hope make it home safely from your stadium. ECU and WVU fans definitely do not envoke those kind of feelings.
I thought you meant that they were the new WVU because WVU became very good while being a mediocre team.
ECU's football team this year is last year's Central Florida. They lost to USCe, like Central Florida, then beat a major conference team with a great defense, like Central Florida did to PSU.
Don't be surprised if this ECU team wins ten games this year.
The on the field product, I agree. The plays their WRs were making on occasion made me question reality, or perhaps I'm giving our DBs too much credit for this game.
Their WRs were able to make those plays because our DBs refused to turn their heads around and play the damn ball.
You know, I thought of this during the OSU game when I continually saw Kendall not turning his head around, and instead trying to time a swat to dislodge the ball before it could be caught. I thought he should get his head turned around to see the ball coming. But then I realized that Kendall Fuller is one of the best corners in the country, so what do I know. Facyson did get turned around a couple times during the game yesterday, but we're discussing that ad nauseum on other threads.
Noted. They've been doing it all season and it's been driving me nuts and it finally burned us.
I noticed the same thing during the OhState game - our DBs were consistently faceguarding them and not watching the ball. And it was working for us every time. The OhState DBs were playing the ball and it wasn't as successful. I remember wondering then if our strategy was to now encourage our guys to do that. Because of that, I watched for it this game, and we still did a lot of it. And it didn't work as well.
I understand that a lot of it is situational, so that's not part of the discussion. But I wonder if it is something TG & Bud prefer, or if it is just something our current crop of DBs prefer. Frankly, which preference to take seems to me to be about equal in success. I'd think it is harder to intercept when you're faceguarding someone, but who knows? Seems like more INTs come across the middle than on out routes anyway. Middle routes, you almost have to play the ball, while out & deep routes you can get by with faceguarding. Since OhState ran almost exclusively deep or out routes in their passing game, it's hard to tell. ECU mixed it up.
That might all be a tempest in a teapot, but it was a detail I noticed.
I think a big difference between the OSU and ECU games was that, with OSU, Barrett was severely under-throwing many of his passes, so our DBs having their backs to the ball wasn't a huge deal. Carden is a more accurate passer, and his WRs were doing a better job of getting an extra step on our DBs.
Most programs' young fans tend to be obnoxious. We have our own share of those. Certainly not as many as some schools, but we're not perfect either. As for wanting ECU off the schedule, why? Because they beat us? We beat them almost as often as we beat UVa. They're a good mid-major that tests us. They're a step below us, and we 'should' always beat them. And we do almost always beat them. I'd much rather play them than continually feast on the likes of Liberty, Western Carolina, etc. Lastly, I recall quite a few posters who were happy we got WVU back on the schedule. But we don't want ECU? Hmm...
I want them off the schedule because its a BAD matchup for us. They are a tough team that gets zero national respect, but will challenge you to the final whistle every game. But because they are completely overlooked nationally, you will get absolutely no respect for beating them, and the pundits will hammer you if you lose or play them close. ECU beating us is front page ESPN main headline news right now because nobody respects them, and we're going to get roasted for the loss... unfairly.
Even worse, Weaver made this a very long series, so they've had the time to study us annually so they are very familiar with what it is we do. They are good enough to knock you off each time they play, but if you schedule a long series like this, there's a guarantee they will knock you off, and to set yourself up to be knocked off by teams of a lower conference, is just suicide in a national respect venture. To make things even worse, we're their annual BIG game, so they get absolutely jacked up for us each year, and we treat it like a warmup. We have everything to lose and nothing to gain by continuing this series.
I agree, we'd be better off playing an Illinois or similar.. it would at least count as a P5 team that way, and even though it is a lesser opponent, it would look better on paper... right or wrong, it is what it is .. unless by some stroke of luck ECU gets into a P5 conference
They would have been in a power conference had the committee not decided to demote the AAC.
The American demoted itself.
Figuratively or literally? The narrative I kept hearing was that the CFP committee left them out in the rain.
A little bit of both. After Rutgers left for the B1G and we got Louisville, the American was just a bunch of teams that had recently left C-USA, at which point everyone figured out it was a lateral move.
Interestingly enough, Louisville and UCF stomped Florida and Baylor in BCS games in response. But I guess everyone's minds were made up.
The writing was on the wall anyway, since the Big East was the only conference without a host bowl in the BCS. Most of the time, the Big East champ was the hot potato of the BCS selection process, getting left to whichever bowl picked last.
What kept the BE credible was WV for a while, but they left. Louisville had come on strong when they replaced us, but then fell off for a while before rebounding right before getting the ACC invite. And then, in their attempt to expand, they just lost all credibility by just adding any school that would join, regardless of location. I'm glad the basketball schools took the name with them, because having the Big East cover the entire country would look worse than the Bigs 10 and 12 not knowing how to count.
The familiarity excuse doesn't work because all of our conference members are also familiar with us. Boston College & Miami are familiar with us from the Big East, as are new conference members Pitt & Syracuse. The whining about having to play them rings hollow. Again, it's preferable to playing yet another pudding team, and much better for our geographical recruiting than playing who we guess will be weak Power 5 teams in 8-10 years. You know, the way South Carolina used to be? Or Vanderbilt? Or TCU?
The ECU game goes back to when we were quite similar in our programs, and is convenient for Hokie fans to attend in Greenville. It also gives us a test that SHOULD not result in a loss. The fearful really need to get over it. You can't guarantee but so many OOC wins a year before you get the reputation for having weak schedules.
There's nothing wrong with ECU on the schedule. We just have to beat them, which we almost always accomplish. Too many folks too eager to run from a tough contest...
Agreed.
Besides, would it have been better for us to play, say, Texas A&M this week instead?
Yeah, look at several Power 5 schools that were mediocre 6-10 years ago. If memory serves, A&M wasn't all that. Or, say Missouri or someone else like that. Trying to guess the weak sister is kind of a cheap way to schedule, anyway.
YES , It would have been better to lose to TAM than ECU !
If we lose to Boston College or Miami... not really that big a deal in a national respect case cause they're still ACC, and the ACC is a Power 5 conference. But if we lose to East Carolina, the shit hits the fan because they're in the American, which is in the lesser tier, which is a tier nobody in the P5 should ever lose to (/pundit narrative).
The worst part about the ECU series is that they are routinely one of the better teams we play on an annual basis. In theory, this is a good thing, you want to be playing tougher competition to test the program and to make your schedule tougher for national recognition, but in practice, it fails because East Carolina has no national respect, and as such, the experts (who drive the national perception of your program, which influences voters and recruits) completely overlook the wins over ECU, and absolutely hammer you for the losses.
Hey, if we want to schedule teams as tough as ECU on an annual basis, I'm all for it. But I want those teams to be in the P5, so that we can get the recognition one deserves for beating a team of that quality.
It's only a problem when we lose to them, which has happened twice in, what, fifteen years? As far as scheduling the weak sisters in Power 5 conferences, I already showed why that strategy can backfire FAR more often than playing someone like ECU.
We've lost twice in this current series of 7 games so far.
But, at least three of the wins have been closer than they should have -- and that causes just as many problems.
We're 10-2 against ECU since 1993, when our bowl streak began. Two losses in 22 seasons. SO now the problem is not only that we actually lose every once in a while to them, but that we don't win by enough when we do beat them. That sounds more like a 'We' problem than a 'They' problem. It's extremely weak to claim we are a Power 5 Conference leader when we're afraid to play someone we beat almost every time in the last two decades.
The difference is that BC and Miami have to spend time thinking about other tough teams and have to game plan for the differences between them. This team can just study to beat us all year long cause if they can do that they can beat anybody on their schedule. We are the toughest team they play. Spend all year studying Buds D tactics and exploit. This series is shit cause it gives us 0% credibility and 100% doubt-ability depending on the outcome... FUCK IT!
Because ECU didn't spend any time thinking about South Carolina or UNC?
Not every year for the next 1000 years.... They've played us so much they know what kind of toilet paper Beamer prefers. Then they exploited that to and broke one off in his......... =*(
Agree there's absolutely no benefit to playing good mid major teams. Either pla good or bad major teams or bad mid majors.
Playing ECU is a lose/no-win situation. When weaver announced the 100 game series with them I wasn't super stoked.
Well, there's a benefit if you win and they end up being around a 10-win team.
Not really, no one cares because they're still ECU and they still don't matter.
Exactly. We beat them last year and they finished 10-3, but that win still didn't give us any respect since they're a C-USA team. Not that that farce of a win deserved any respect, anyway...
I think the only way to spin this positively is if they end up 11-1 and take the "Group of 5" spot in the "New Year's Six" bowls, especially if they manage a win there. At least that way our loss came to a top-25 (and possibly top-15) opponent.
But last year, we weren't close enough to anything for our win total to matter.
And we lost to Duke at home. That sort of trumped anything else we did last year.
No. Nobody even notices if ECU wins ten.
If we beat them and they win 11, it benefits us not a single iota.
If we lose to them and they win 13, it kills us.
See: State, Boise.
Totally agree, 2050 when they go off schedule can't come soon enough.
Not so fast my friend, we get them off the schedule in time to add ODU and play them for another eleventy-one years. We even play ODU and ECU both 3 years. We're going to lose at least one of those games every season and be stuck in the same position.
WVU is in the same tier of football as we are. ECU is a step below, so yes, we should beat them every time. When we don't, it's a bigger step back for us than it is a step forward for them.
It's a case of high risk, low reward.
Very level-headed post, swvadon. I had a feeling I'd hear the 'get them off the schedule' talk this evening at some point. To be clear, I don't really want to play them as much as we do since, as another poster above me said, it's a high risk-low reward proposition. But I do think it's important to play someone in the group of five so the rest of the teams in college football don't get the total shaft. Maybe not every year for a decade, but, sure, every now and again.
As for the young fans being obnoxious, agreed that everyone has 'em. I have only interacted with ECU fans since a couple have come up here to stay with me (a friend of mine knew them from frat days) for a PSU game, and they were good guys. But the large majority of posters here are really saying the fan base is obnoxious.
I think the appeal for Frank & Weaver in scheduling all the ECU games was that it would give us an entry into the eastern half of NC for recruiting. Also, it is a relatively simple trip down from the 757 for parents of players & recruits. Then, toss on top of that the low travel expense, and you've got lots of additional reasons that made them attractive to Weaver as well as Beamer.
I'm like you, though. I just want to see us play schools from the group of 5 conferences. If they're close enough for fan travel, all the better. We can switch them around, and that's fine, too. I've no particular affinity for ECU, just a familiarity with them after all these games all these years. That can transfer to any other like program pretty easily.
We already play at UNC and Duke regularly, plus the occasional NC State, it seems like overkill to schedule ECU for recruiting purposes, and having it scheduled so far in advance hinders our ability to now schedule ODU (which would arguably be better for both recruiting and also the 757 parents)
We don't owe anybody anything. They can rot for all I care (non power conference teams). CFB is a look out for number one industry, time to play the game.
I respect the on the field challenge they provide and overall I had a great time being in the stadium watching the event being put on. I want them off the schedule purely because their fans attitude and actions significantly diminish what should be a great event. I shouldn't have to focus on the almost uniformly obnoxious imbeciles whose sole mission is to troll and heckle the opposing school.
ECU has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
Yeah, I did not have a pleasant time interacting with the ECU fans today. However I had a great time making fun of the guy in front of me because of his hideous purple and yellow diamond pants.
Hmmm, Alabama has Auburn, Michigan has OSU, Georgia has Florida, Texas has Oklahoma.... and VT has ECU?
Damn.
Thank you! You put that into perspective and that makes me want to "Ray Rice" Weaver....
Actually, it's a terrible comparison. Every matchup that yak lists is an intra-divisional (i.e. required) pairing. VT-ECU is OOC.
It may be OOC but it is very much required at this point thanks to Weaver making sure we thought of him annually and reminding us why we thought he was a douche.
Thanks again Jim Weaver... for nothing
just when I thought I was getting to a point in my life where I was done getting Overly upset at stupid losses. I am ashamed of myself. Part of the reason I'm worked up is I'm working in Ohio right now. (I live in S.W. Virginia). So I'll get to hear about this shit for the next couple months from the Buckeye fans on the job (WHO I'VE BEEN NICE TO). That's part of the reason I'm upset. At least OSU lost to a Major football program. Not a Mid Major Ms. Nancy team.
That's what also pisses me off. LOLUVA pulled a W today against Loserville (another team I loathe) while we couldn't even outscore fucking ecu. Fuck this entire weekend. So I guess it's settled. We despise
1. Wvu
2. LOLUVA
3. Ecu
4. Klempson
5. MD
6. Loserville
7. Unc
8. BC
9. Cincy
10. JMfU
At least that's my list. ODU gets a dishonorable 11 and we haven't even faced them yet.
You left off one of the worst.....scUM.
The old Orange bowl held some of the worst fans ever !
Whoa whoa - where is the U on this list??? As you see below they're number 1 on mine!
Just no man, if you're saying that it tells me you weren't really around for when we played WVU regularly.
I wasn't. That was my point lol
I think I read that a 10 point favorite translates into a 75% chance of winning the game. We are likely around a 10 point favorite most of the time we play ECU so losing 1 out of every 4 games should not be a huge surprise. You can't argue the numbers.
Get that logic out of here! this is not the time or place for that!
ECU no matter how long weaver doomed us to play them will never be the new wvu...I hate playing this team that has nothing to give us and has the potential to take soo much each year. Their fans suck as a whole unless u grew up with someone or something like that. This series is garbage and should hit the dumpster with the rest of the cursed WHITE effect crap! Along with nooners...1230 kickoffs...and loluva. That said wvu can fall off the map for all I care! i have never witnessed anything close to the insane and assine behavior of that fan base. Rant complete!