News, Analysis and Opinion from Bonesville's Denny O'Brien

Pirate Notebook No. 116
Wednesday, March 19, 2003

By Denny O'Brien
Staff Writer and Columnist

After months of silence, NCHSAA executive director Charlie Adams and East Carolina director of athletics Mike Hamrick recently re-opened the communication lines and are beginning to bridge the gap that had separated the two.

The relationship between Adams and Hamrick was strained last summer when East Carolina moved its home football game with Cincinnati to Friday, December 6, putting it in direct conflict with the state high school football playoffs.

The two discussed the issue for the first time on March 8 in the banquet hall of East Carolina’s Murphy Center at the high school basketball Eastern Regional finals and now appear ready to move forward.

“Charlie and I had a very productive, positive meeting,” Hamrick said. “He said some things he felt like he had to say; I said some things I felt like I had to say. In general, Charlie and I shook hands and agreed that we're going to move forward, work together, do what's right, and have an outstanding relationship.

“We had a very good discussion and talked about a lot of different things and came to an understanding that we are going to work together. We're going to work together and do what's best for both his association and East Carolina University, but more importantly, what's best for the young athletes that are involved at both levels.”

The decision to move the game, which was in response to a request by Conference USA to accommodate ESPN, angered an overwhelming majority of the state’s high schools, which voiced their displeasure through Adams. Some schools banned members of the East Carolina football staff from their campuses, while others returned blank tapes to Pirates coaches instead of footage of potential prospects.

Those high schools felt the actions were justifiable because Hamrick promised the NCHSAA a year before — after a comparable conflict — that there would not be a repeat. The 2001 ECU-Southern Miss game was at one time scheduled on a Friday night before being moved to earlier that same morning to quell the uproar from the preps.

When that original dispute was solved, Hamrick told Adams that if the Friday night issue were to arise again, the two parties would consult before any announcements were made. Instead, when the 2002 schedule change was made, Adams learned of it after an ECU press release was issued. The result was an avalanche of negative publicity for East Carolina, which for the second year in a row found itself on the losing end of a public relations tug-of-war with the NCHSAA.

Despite any sense of estrangement that may have existed between the two, Adams attended the regional finals a few weeks ago in anticipation that a meeting could take place.

“I intentionally went to Greenville with the idea that maybe Mike and I would bump into each other and then we could have a conversation,” Adams said. “We had a good conversation.

“We went back and addressed the issue from this past football season and then talked in terms of moving forward. I told him, ‘You know our position; you know why we were upset; you know our feelings about protecting high school football.’ I said my point is, we need to move forward.

“I told him that East Carolina and the state association were a lot bigger than the two of us and that long after we were gone that they were going to need to be working together. We needed to get on the same song page. I felt like it was time to mend some fences and move forward.”

A glance at the Pirates’ 2003 schedule is a small indication that, perhaps, progress is being made to protect high school football. East Carolina doesn’t have a Friday night game on its slate, but that doesn’t mean ESPN and C-USA won’t request the school to make a change, much like it did last year.

Nonetheless, Adams is optimistic that measures — including the resolution against Friday night football games adopted last Fall by the ECU Board of Trustees — have been taken to keep East Carolina off ESPN's schedule on the nights North Carolina's high schools consider their own.

Hamrick noted that, while the ultimate decision on when TV games will be played is out of his hands, he has made the university's stance against playing on Friday nights known to decision makers.

“As I've indicated from day one, I've told Conference USA and ESPN that East Carolina would prefer not to play a football game on a Friday night,” Hamrick said. ”However, I cannot guarantee that that will happen.”

With the high school basketball season over, Adams says he plans to play a leading role in the fence-mending process.

Among the items on his agenda will be to inform the high schools that progress has been made and the two sides are focusing on the future. Adams says that notification will come either by e-mail or fax, drawing special attention to East Carolina’s resolution and the productive meeting between Hamrick and himself.

Next, Adams would like to begin researching ways the two parties can strengthen their relationship, which, with the exception of the Friday night football issue, have been mostly positive. Ideas have already begun circulating and Hamrick says he would definitely like to host the Eastern Regionals in baseball once ECU's new stadium is built.

Discussions on bringing more events to Greenville could begin as early as this spring.

“I would like to go down and sit down with the folks down there sometime this spring and talk in terms of 'Here’s what’s a possibility, here’s what’s available'," Adams said. "What I would like to do is look at all sports – baseball, volleyball, wrestling – and look at what can be brought into Greenville because of their fantastic facilities.

“East Carolina is sitting in just a wonderful regional position geographically. We’ve always said that Hickory was the western regional, Greenville was kind of the eastern regional. They have everything that a city needs – hotels, motels, restaurants, shopping centers – to make it a tournament type of atmosphere. They do a great job with the Eastern Regionals.”

So good, says Adams, that he hopes the basketball regional remains in Greenville long after the current pact runs out in 2005. Some have suggested that the NCHSAA should pursue other sites, but Adams is showing no interest in making such a move.

"We hope to renew that," Adams said. "That is the ideal regional setting. Not to single out Wilmington or Fayetteville or anybody else, they just don't have the regional setting that Greenville does for Eastern North Carolina.

"We'll be working on that probably in the coming year. When that contract runs out, we'd like to have an automatic roll over on it."

Even though the NCHSAA and East Carolina have made significant strides in repairing their ties, many Pirates fans won't be satisfied until Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium becomes an annual stop during the high school football playoffs.

For over a decade, the University of North Carolina has hosted state title games, which many fans feel has been an unfair recruiting advantage for the Tar Heels. After years of crying foul, North Carolina State became a host site last year, and next year, Wake Forest and Duke will join their ACC brethren in the championship mix.

The NCHSAA maintains that East Carolina's location is the primary reason it hasn't been pursued, though Adams says he likes the idea of the Emerald City hosting the Eastern Regional finals and will probably re-open that discussion sometime in the near future.

“That probably needs to be revisited again,” Adams said. “The last time we brought it up, we thought it would be a great idea, in football, to play a regional concept and then bring them into the state.

“The coaches were not at that time in favor of that because they saw that as a means of giving up a home game and going to a neutral site. There are many now who have played in the state championships over the years who have a different feeling now about neutral sites and playing in college stadiums and seeing the amount of money they take home with their gate share. I think we will revisit that issue."

And now that East Carolina appears eager to avoid scheduling Friday night games, those talks will likely be more productive.

"Obviously it would have been very awkward to talk about playing football at East Carolina when they were infringing on Friday night," Adams said. "If they're not on Friday night, it's much easier for us to communicate this to the membership."

As for hosting a state championship in football, the NCHSAA hasn't closed the door on that possibility, either.

Though Adams prefers hosting in the central part of the state, he said East Carolina would definitely be taken seriously if it issued a strong proposal to bring a championship game Down East.

"It absolutely would get due consideration," Adams said. "Anytime that someone wants you, you have to look at what they have to offer.

"We'll entertain any proposal that any group, whether it's a university, a sports consortium, or something in the lines of a city consortium. Anybody that's interested in us, we'll take a good look at their proposal. I don't think anything's etched in stone."