Those wanting to paint a pretty face on the 56-23 debacle eagerly point to what amounted to just empty statistics, like ECU quarterback James Pinkney’s 322 yards passing performance, as some beacon of redemptive hope. Or better yet, we [ECU] outscored them in the second half. Pirate fans, you can choose to look at the Pirates’ football program’s glass as being half full if it makes you feel better, but it’s not even close to being half empty.
ECU head coach John Thompson’s folksiness and generically upbeat coach-speak is starting to wear thin on many within the pirate fanbase. After 13 games now how about some honest assessments of the program’s state of affairs coach? I think the pirate faithful deserve something a little more insightful than “we’re getting there.” I can only imagine what Thompson will say following the Wake Forest game this week. I think it’ll go something like this, “we’re making progress, becoming more competitive, got to eliminate those mistakes.”
Even new chancellor Steve Ballard has added his own words of comfort to the beleaguered pirate fans. Speaking on the radio at halftime of the WVU game, Ballard asked Pirate fans for continued patience and stated that the ECU football program had “bottomed out two years ago” under Steve Logan. That’s a nice try chancellor, but the plain truth is that ECU’s football program is still in a descent mode, and the politics of college football aren’t going to help change that.