GREENVILLE — For years now, East Carolina has pursued an invitation to the Big East Conference. The Pirates have expanded facilities, improved men's basketball and have developed steadily increasing attendance in football. All of those factors are viewed within the ECU community as being favorable for Big East consideration.

The Big East, on the other hand, appears to have been doing its best to ignore ECU's overtures and that may work out for the best in the long run for the Pirates.

The Big East is crumbling. Two of its most prestigious members, Pitt and Syracuse, will jump to the Atlantic Coast Conference, a trail blazed by former Big East members Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech.

There is a lack of vision in the Big East, a lack of consensus because of the sheer number of its members, many of which don't play football. The Big East doesn't fit for the Pirates. It's northeastern, metropolitan and basketball-oriented at its core. It's a contrast with ECU's culture.

There is doubt about whether the league will even maintain automatic qualifying status in the Bowl Championship Series when that situation is evaluated in a couple of years. The AQ is the dangling carrot that has driven the Pirates' quest for the Big East.

ECU might be better off staying put in Conference USA if C-USA and the Mountain West get some sort of combined berth in the future structure of the BCS.

The league that makes the most sense for the Pirates is the ACC, although neither ECU nor the ACC appear to see the logic.

The prevailing mindset has been that the ACC would never seriously consider the Pirates and vice-versa. Both the ACC and the Pirates need to get over those stereotypes for their mutual benefit.

A UNC-Chapel Hill grad once told me that the ACC would never have five teams from North Carolina. There's no such rule. It wasn't that way when the Southwest Conference consisted of Arkansas and a slew of Texas teams. Compact is the way to go in an era of spiraling transportation costs.

ECU's sister schools in the state public higher education system, North Carolina and North Carolina State, need to be proactive on behalf of the Pirates. Virginia set a precedent when it lobbied for Virginia Tech at the ACC's last expansion. UVa's effort on behalf of the Hokies led to the league's previous exclusion of Syracuse.

It would help the state's struggling economy to cut ECU a slice of the revenue pie. With the manner in which the Pirates support their teams in person and as television viewers, I can't see where the ACC would lose.

ECU probably graduates four times as many students as Duke and five times as many as Wake Forest annually. They may not show up in the television market data that the ACC has been looking at but they are there and the stream will continue. Having ECU in the ACC would be a great advantage in terms of scheduling proximity. That reduces the cost of travel in nonrevenue sports and, because trips are shorter, there would be less missed class time for student-athletes. That should be a strong factor in the decisions of college administrators.

The Pirates, of course, would need to adjust any academic qualifying standards for athletes that are not in line with those of the ACC. The pool of potential recruits that would open up for ECU with ACC membership would more than compensate for the occasional nonqualifier that gets his grades together and makes it into the program.

The inclusion of ECU in the ACC would be a great statement for UNC-Chapel Hill in particular, which is in need of a public relations makeover in light of pending NCAA sanctions to the Tar Heels' football program. The notion of recognizing the Pirates as competitive peers seems to avulse the Tar Heel nation. Based on North Carolina's 35-20 football win in Greenville on Saturday night, there appears to be little immediate danger of ECU yanking any biscuits off the Tar Heels' table.

The Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium record crowd of 50,610 does indicate the drawing power the rivals have. To North Carolina's credit, the Tar Heels have agreed to play ECU in football in Chapel Hill in 2012 and in Greenville in 2013.

The history of bad blood runs deep between North Carolina and the Pirates. ECU had to take on the Chapel Hill power structure to get a medical school and university status.

The state's transplanted-European history starts in eastern North Carolina, going back to the Lost Colony. When UNC-Chapel Hill was chartered, eastern North Carolina was the most prominent region in the state. That has resulted in a competitive dynamic between the two institutions as ECU has become the university of the region over the last century.

The hard feelings of the past need to give way to helping hands in the future. It needs to happen for more reasons than are written here.

The ACC listens when the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill talks, and ACC commissioner Johnny Swofford, a North Carolina alumnus, still carries weight in Chapel Hill. Swofford's call for reform in college sports at the ACC football media gathering preceded the dismissal of Butch Davis as Tar Heels football coach by mere days. For once, UNC needs to be the University for North Carolina because of the financial impact and trickle down that a conference upgrade would mean for eastern North Carolina through ECU. Reports indicate that Governor Beverly Perdue is up to speed with that school of thought.

Wouldn't it be great if the Pirates were included in the round of expansion that got the ACC to 16 members? Swofford has stated that the league is not philosophically opposed to having 16 members. Two divisions of eight would be ideal for football and a 16-team bracket would work for the ACC basketball tournament as well.

I would think that former governor Jim Hunt would be a lot more influential as an advocate of ECU in the ACC than in the Big East. The ACC connections of ECU athletic director Terry Holland would seem to be of great value, politically, in the ACC, too. ECU chancellor Steve Ballard has developed respect in circles throughout the UNC system, having chaired a study on means to improve compliance in athletics.

I think ECU has been interested in the Big East for years as an end run to what it perceived to be a closed door to the ACC.

That door needs to open. As Ronald Reagan said when Germany was on the verge of being united, "Tear down that (Berlin) wall." Swofford needs to do that sort of moving and shaking. It would enhance his legacy and perception as a visionary, which at the present time is leaning more along the lines of being a hand puppet for ESPN/ABC.

The ACC needs to add East Carolina. It would be a mutually beneficial situation.

Houston, we have a problem

For the foreseeable future, the Pirates are in C-USA and they face a huge challenge next week in Houston as they return to league play. Cougars quarterback Case Keenum generated huge numbers in a 49-42 win at Texas-El Paso on Thursday night. It seems like he's been playing for Houston since Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas. Houston got a head start on prepping for the Pirates with a midweek game plus they're playing at home.

The C-USA schedule makers did ECU no favors on that one.

First half turnovers were ECU's undoing against the Tar Heels but perhaps the Pirates can build on an improved effort in the second half. The Pirates did a better job against North Carolina's running game as the contest continued and outscored the visitors 17-7 over the final 30 minutes.