Paint Holland's new passion purple
Former Virginia coach and administrator Terry Holland spearheads the effort to elevate East Carolina's athletics by using a different approach.

BY DAVE FAIRBANK, The Daily Press

Published June 26, 2005

GREENVILLE, N.C. -- The first public signal that the new athletic director would not conduct business as usual at East Carolina University may have come three weeks after he took office.

Terry Holland, the former University of Virginia coach and administrator and one of the more thoughtful figures in intercollegiate athletics, felt compelled to put an open letter on the Pirates' Web site Oct. 22.

The message was classic Holland. The premise was the importance of scheduling for ECU, but it also touched on several of his crusades - shrinking the increasing gap between athletic haves and have-nots, making wiser long-term financial decisions, maintaining regional rivalries and reducing missed class time.

In the twilight of a long and distinguished career, Holland, 63, jumped the retirement track to take a crack at a place where he thinks his voice can make a difference.

"The more I got to know about East Carolina, the more I said, hey, this place is probably the poster child for a lot of the things I'm concerned about," Holland said. "I get a chance to put my butt where my mouth is."

Holland oversees an $18 million athletic department at a critical juncture. He is a new athletic director, working for a new chancellor, with new coaches in the school's two marquee sports - football and men's basketball - and membership in a geographically dysfunctional conference undergoing massive upheaval.

And that's the good news.

The bad news is that the football program must dig itself out of a 7-28 hole over the past four seasons, 3-20 over the past two years. The men's basketball program hasn't had a winning season since 1997 and has won only a little more than one-fourth of its league games (17-47) since joining Conference USA for all sports four years ago.

Conference USA lost many of its prominent programs and personalities in the most recent round of league realignment. Louisville, Cincinnati, Marquette and DePaul left for the Big East, in response to the ACC raiding the Big East for Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College.

Though those departures may give East Carolina a better chance to succeed on the field and the court, Conference USA's own round of expansion now distends the league from the East Coast to Oklahoma and El Paso, Texas.

ECU is less than 150 miles from anywhere in Hampton Roads, with almost 23,000 undergraduate students and 2,560 alumni living in this region. But the school is surrounded by and mostly overshadowed by the Atlantic Coast Conference - "a school without a country, so to speak, without a home place that makes a lot of sense for them," Holland said.

"... We will do everything we can to develop long-term, all-sport relationships with the eight Division I-A institutions in the three states of North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. ... ECU is one of only three public institutions in the state of North Carolina that has invested its resources into creating a Division I-A athletic program. Establishing a home-and-home relationship in all sports with our sister Division I-A public institutions seems to provide long-term benefits for all three institutions and the taxpayers of North Carolina."

Terry Holland, Oct. 22, 2004 "

To Holtz, 'in-state' includes Tidewater

Terry Holland, who grew up 90 minutes from Greenville in Clinton, N.C., is at the center of a transition at East Carolina with a distinct Virginia flair. Obviously, he has deep roots at Virginia and within the ACC after many years as a coach and administrator in Charlottesville.

New basketball coach Ricky Stokes is a Richmond native and former head coach at Virginia Tech who played and coached at U.Va. Stokes' top assistant, Mack McCarthy, was head coach at VCU, and assistant Chris Ferguson also did a stint at Virginia Tech.

Even new football coach Skip Holtz spent part of his childhood in Virginia when his father, Lou, was head coach at William and Mary. Skip Holtz was the head coach at Connecticut from 1994-99 and spent the past six years with his father as an assistant at South Carolina.

ECU's proximity to southeastern Virginia led the younger Holtz to redraw boundaries and redefine the term "in-state." For ECU football, in-state is defined as from I-95 east to the coast, south to the state line, and north to Richmond.

"The Tidewater area is tremendously important to us," Holtz said. "Virginia and Virginia Tech have come through there and gotten a lot of good players through the years. We need to tap into that talent pool."

The area is important enough that the Pirates have two assistants recruiting Hampton Roads: Donnie Thompson, the assistant head coach, and Steve Shankweiler, the offensive coordinator.

We'll recruit up and down the East Coast," Holtz said. "We may not get to a high school in Maryland or New Jersey every year unless they have a player we're recruiting, but I guarantee you we will be in every school in-state every year."

Stokes hopes to mine his Virginia ties, as well, but says that he believes there is plenty of talent in North Carolina.

"Every kid here grows up wanting to play in the ACC, so we have to be realistic and we have to have some sense of patience," he said. "That doesn't mean we won't recruit those kids, because you have to remember that the in-state ACC schools recruit nationally."

Stokes pointed out that North Carolina and Duke recently received commitments from out-of-state players - the Blue Devils from players from suburban Philly and Illinois, the Tar Heels from Pennsylvania and Maryland.

"As a matter of fact," Stokes joked, "we encourage ACC schools to recruit nationally. The pool is larger for East Carolina."

East Carolina is not without assets, one of which is a fairly passionate fan base. Despite pitiful records in football the past two seasons and few games against natural rivals, ECU was fourth in C-USA in attendance each year, averaging better than 30,000 fans per game at 43,000-seat Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.

Minges Coliseum is an intimate, 8,000-seat arena that has worn well despite an overhaul that is more than a decade old.

The Pirates' national-caliber baseball program christened the new, $10-million Clark-LeClair Stadium this spring. The three-year-old Murphy Center is a two-story, strength-and-conditioning and multi-purpose facility adjacent to the football stadium that compares favorably with any in the region.

"If we're going to get into an arms race, there are some things we need to do," Holtz said, "but we don't have a lot of wants in terms of being able to field a competitive program."

Chancellor Steve Ballard, who came on board in May 2004, also has an appreciation for the role of college athletics. He played college baseball at Arizona and was a minor-league shortstop in the Cardinals' system before going into academics.

"The group of people we have now, the total package, is as good as it's ever been to allow us to move forward," said Lee Workman, the assistant athletic director for special projects and a man with almost 21 years' experience at ECU. "The leadership is as good as it's been since I've been here."

"The competitive and financial forces driving intercollegiate athletics today encourage institutions to pursue individual short-term agendas that are often at odds with the long-term strategies that benefit the whole."

-- Terry Holland, Oct. 22, 2004 "

Exit of the former basketball coach messy

Terry Holland didn't arrive at ECU with the idea of putting his fingerprints all over the athletic department immediately, particularly not in the two most visible sports.

"One of the questions I asked was: 'I'm not going to have to make any changes right away, am I?' " he said.

Football, however, was in the middle of a 2-9 season and a two-year span of 3-20 under former coach John Thompson. Holland sensed a staff exodus and didn't want to mislead potential recruits about Thompson's status, so he met with Thompson in mid-November, and the school announced that a change would be made after the season.

Skip Holtz turned down chances to get involved with several head-coaching openings while he was an assistant at South Carolina. After his dad announced he would retire at the end of last season, Skip Holtz wasn't going to be unemployed for long. Among others, he had a standing offer to join Urban Meyer's staff at Florida.

But Holtz was on Holland's radar, and Holland invited him to Greenville. Holtz was not completely unfamiliar with ECU, having worked with several coaches through the years who either attended school or worked there.

"I came here with the attitude of 'What do they have here? Maybe I'll be interested,' " Holtz said. "Before I left, I was knocking on Coach Holland's door asking, 'What do I have to do to get this job?' "

he Pirates' basketball team, under sixth-year coach Bill Herrion, went 9-19 and beat only five Division I opponents after mid-November. Holland said he believed that Herrion put so much pressure on himself and, by extension, the players, to win that it became a counterproductive downward spiral.

Holland met with Herrion in mid-February and suggested that he take another job within the department after the season. Herrion balked, the conversation became public and the split messy.

Some have characterized, and criticized, Holland's decision to hire Stokes as a slam-dunk, given their long association. Not so, said Holland.

"I had to decide whether to hold Ricky's tenure at Virginia Tech against him, or look at what he did as an assistant," Holland said.

Stokes went 46-69 in four years as head coach at Tech before Seth Greenberg's arrival. A successful recruiter at every stop in his career, Stokes landed Carlos Dixon and Coleman Collins, key components of the Hokies' resurgence under Greenberg.

Stokes spent the past two years at South Carolina under Dave Odom, collecting himself in the event another opportunity arose.

"After I was fired, I never worried about the next job," he said. "I had a very strong faith, knowing that I would be led somewhere."

Stokes' ability to recruit played a large role in his hiring, as did a conversation Holland had with McCarthy. McCarthy, who besides his stint at VCU took Chattanooga to five NCAA tournaments, told Holland that he had declined an offer from Stokes to come on board at Virginia Tech three years ago, and said he would be willing to do so this time if Stokes were hired at ECU.

"That made me feel even better about hiring him," Holland said, "knowing that he would have someone like Mack with him."

Besides the security blanket that McCarthy, Chris Ferguson and assistant Larry Dixon provide, Stokes himself is more comfortable the second time around.

"Experience gives you confidence," he said. "With experience comes knowledge and resourcefulness, and just the idea that you've been there, done that. You're a little more relaxed. I spoke at an officials' camp recently and I said, this time I won't be on the officials as much. They said, we'll believe that when we see it, but I think that'll be true."

"Every sporting event has rules for fair play with oversight from officials to enforce those rules. The same fundamental concept of rules and oversight is the foundation that allows our free-enterprise system to work in this country. When these fundamental concepts are violated or circumvented for short-term gain, then the whole system is endangered - Enron and other financial collapses are examples of the danger of pursuing short-term individual agendas."

-- Terry Holland, Oct. 22, 2004 "

Holland makes best of tough league situation

Officiating is one aspect over which coaches, and athletic directors, have little control. Much like conference affiliation.

Conference USA is the Pirates' home for the foreseeable future, so Terry Holland and his staff have worked diligently on non-conference scheduling.

In football, the priority is scheduling multi-year, home-and-home arrangements with state and regional opponents such as North Carolina, N.C. State, Virginia Tech, Virginia, West Virginia and Navy. Starting in 2006, the Pirates will play Virginia Tech six straight seasons, including two games in Greenville.

The basketball program is trying to do the same thing with the state's Big Four programs, as well as maintain regional series against opponents such as Old Dominion, UNC Wilmington, UNC Greensboro and Winthrop.

"In the old days, your conference gave you your local rivalries and you had to go out and schedule non-conference games nationally," Holland said. "Today, conferences are more spread out. In the case of the ACC, it's the whole East Coast, and in the case of Conference USA, it's from the East Coast to UTEP. Our local rivalries have to be really important to us, and we have to create those local rivalries."

The aim is to follow the lead of schools such as Florida State and Virginia Tech. Florida State parlayed its football success in the 1980s and early '90s as an independent into ACC membership. Tech used its Big East football membership and success in the 1990s as a springboard for all-sports membership, first in the Big East, then when the ACC expanded.

Conference USA certainly does not have the cachet of either the ACC or the Big East, original members of the Bowl Championship Series. The BCS loosened its perimeters just a bit to give other Division I-A leagues - C-USA, the Mountain West, the Western Athletic Conference and the Mid-American - avenues to major bowl games and the accompanying eight-figure payouts.

"While we are very loyal to Conference USA, we have to be aware of everything that's happened throughout the country and be ready to position ourselves for anything that happens in the future," Holland said. "I don't think there's going to be a lot happening in the next year or two, but I certainly think that (realignment is not) completely over. If there are future realignments, we at least need to be aware of what impact they may have on us."

Holland wasn't looking for a soft landing place heading into retirement, giving East Carolina a five-year commitment. "I don't anticipate shortening that up in any way," he said.

He will rail about the inequities of college athletics to anyone who will listen, while trying to lift East Carolina into the upper tier. He has no illusions about the difficulty of affecting change in either area.

"Our mantra is that Conference USA is really important to us because of the competition. But the people we compete against every day, for students as well as athletes and media attention, is the ACC, the SEC and the Big East. And we have to look at ourselves in that regard. We've got to be able to put together staffs that can compete with those people. We've got to be able to put teams out there and play significant games and compete in the games that those people play." -- Terry