FutureRensics: East Carolina

It is a dark time for the Hokie Nation. September 20, 2025. The Hokies return to a boisterous Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium to face their arch nemesis East Carolina, as the entire country waits with baited breath. Many are calling this a de facto play-in game for the college football playoff. Many more are saying the result doesn't matter; they'll both be in the playoffs once more; this is merely an appetizer, a chance for the two most dominant football programs of this decade to square off in what some consider to be the greatest rivalry of our time.

It wasn't always this way. Ten short years ago, this game was an afterthought, an annoyance; a piece of pork butt bark stuck in teeth of Hokie Nation. What was to be gained by playing an also-ran in the conference time forgot? Win and you get no credit. Lose, and you're a national punchline. Athletic Director, and ECU alum, Vince McMahon changed everything in 2016.

McMahon sought to rewrite the rules of college football, or at least bend them an exploit every loophole. And while some of his strategy became the butt of millions of twitter jokes, enough came good to bring East Carolina to the forefront of modern football. His first big move, hiring a coaching staff of his former WWE superstars and associates didn't pan out. Lawrence Taylor, William Perry and Dwayne Johnson were long on inflammatory press conferences, moving locker room speeches and illegal supplements, but short on actual coaching and wins. McMahon also ran afoul of the NCAA by signing his prized recruits to large WWE contracts, attempting to sidestep the cap on the cost of living allowance. The program nearly received the death penalty in 2017. (And yes, the NCAA still existed in 2017.)

Luckily for ECU, McMahon remembered the easiest thing for a rich man to do is to buy success. Thus in 2018 he assembled a staff led by diminutive co-head coach and defensive coordinator Nick Saban¹ and pious co-head coach and offensive coordinator Urban Meyer. An annual salary of $25MM brought Meyer around to the "unique challenge of bringing a program with a history of moderate success into the national title conversation on a consistent basis". Saban was turned for far less.

Intense media scrutiny was immediately focused on ECU, helped by their annual rivalry with Virginia Tech. After all, to analogize ECU with their recently departed coach, where would The Rock be without Stone Cold? To whit, the Hokies had just dropped a Stone Cold Stunner on LOLUVA to the tune of 223-0 that caused the Hoos to disband their football program². With Dwayne Lawson at the helm of a unique offense with four running backs deployed behind him to ensure they all got enough snaps, the Hokies finally paired an unstoppable offense with an immovable defense. After Frank Beamer shotgunned beers at midfield after winning the 2017 National Championship before turning the mantle over to Bud Foster, Hokie fans could already smell what Vince McMahon was cooking in Greenville.

Scott Stadium was subsequently demolished and replaced with something more attune to LOLUVA students

ECU shocked the Hokies in 2018, and the series tipped back and forth from there. Saban and Meyer played the heel to perfection, assembling fearsome recruiting classes and making snide comments about the competition in every press conference. Although McMahon appeared to work against himself by stealing away some of the recruits for big paydays in the ring³. The script took a very weird turn when ECU was invited into the ACC to replace Virginia. Duke and UNC attempted to resign from the conference in pretentious disgust, but buyout fees kept them at the table, as well as the tens of millions of dollars ECU brought into the conference coffers by setting up the ACC Alumni Wrestling Federation⁴.

The winner of the ECU-VT game every year represented the Coastal and invariably dropped an elbow off the top ropes on whatever jobber the Atlantic put up. The two teams never lost to any other opponents aside from each other, leading many other conferences to call the ACC top heavy since they couldn't field a team that could beat either of these two squads. SEC coaches called for the four running back formation, which Shane Beamer won the Broyles Award for, to be made illegal because they couldn't stop it. The teams regularly met twice per year; one regular season game and one playoff game, with the semi-final in 2022 regarded as one of the greatest college football games of all time. The Hokies went on to beat Notre Dame 31 to negative 7 to hoist their most recent National Championship trophy.

Since that year, ECU has won four straight against the Hokies; twice in the regular season, once in the semifinals and once in the National Championship game last season. Bud Foster found these losses tough to stomach, engaging in a crazy eyes competition with Vince McMahon on the field of the Orange Bowl after the National Championship⁶. But this year...feels different. When Bud Foster ripped a bench in half after the Hokie backups finally gave up a first down against Wisconsin in the 3rd quarter last week, the tension seemed to boil over. Everyone knows what's coming; a cage match in Dowdy-Ficklen. Let's just hope Bud brought the steel chair.

¹McMahon first approached Bud Foster, but was DDT'ed into the turf of the Beamer Barn

²Or as Mike London phrased it at the time, "Take a timeout"
³Rumors persist he only took the ones who failed to academically qualify. Drew Harris's WWE persona is The Timeless Phantom, because he never actually shows up when he's supposed to
⁴Honestly, the ACC excels at sending alumni into pro wrestling. Hell, the entire coaching staff McMahon hired that first year all went to ACC schools
⁵In some years, you might even say...the People's Elbow
⁶Even Vince McMahon knew better than to try to out-crazy eyes Assistant Coach for Dork Magic Sam Rogers