Rough game as you all know, or I should say rough 3rd quarter. I’m not going to dwell on the game here, the turnover machine started and we couldn’t stop the snowball..by the time it finally ended the game was just about out of reach. However we still had a fun roadtrip and I’m glad we were there to support the Knights.

Some thoughts on the trip, since it’s a lot I bolded the bullet subject for skimmers:

• As we knew from our trip up in 2005 ECU has great local support. Signs supporting ECU are everywhere and even when you go into the grocery store the colors they use to mark aisles are in purple and gold. Great to see! We’ve made some progress but hopefully one day East Orlando will be like this!
• ECU has a fantastic tailgate scene, I rank them right up there with UCF. I think we win in a toss up just due to the fact that we start tailgating at 7am even for night games and the Memory Mall on campus is dream tailgate land. However make no mistake ECU knows how to do it, we got there shortly after the lots opened at 1:30pm and there were already hundreds of tailgaters in our area just north of the stadium. Later on we walked around the stadium and everywhere you looked there was great tailgating going on. Again ECU and UCF are similar in the fact that there are a ton of donor pass only lots surrounding the stadium, which unfortunately is not the same for all our C-USA brothers, UAB quickly comes to mind.
• Lots of great tailgate games at ECU, very comparable to UCF with lots of corn hole, beer pong, and flip cup games going. We also saw some frisbee game where you tried to throw it in a trash can with the help of a teammate, hard to explain but looked fun. Didn’t see any washer or lasso golf sets that are also common at UCF tailgates.
• ECU fans overall were wonderful, we had many great encounters with fans in fact some almost too friendly. The ECU fans next to us even let us use one of their tables for our tailgate! The only negative is some old woman busted my UCF flag stand thingy that we had by the road to attract other Knight fans, but a ECU student later was very nice and apologized for her actions. There was one funny encounter where some little two year girl old yelled UCF sucks as we were walking past her. I must say though in all the road trips I’ve gone on (and there are MANY) I’ve never been asked where UCF was more than this trip. I think when I go back in 2009 I’m going to where a shirt stating UCF is in Orlando, FL on the front with a map of Florida and a star where our campus is on the back.
• There was some UCF vs ECU duels in tailgate games of corn hole and beer pong in our lot, to my knowledge UCF fans were a collective 0-3 in the games. My buddy Mike and I of course had to pick the best corn holers in the state of NC, although we did put up a good fight in the first half (sound familiar?). Important lesson here kids, scout your opponent before challenging them when school pride is on the line.
• This is the first time I’ve watched a football game since being in Bright House and let me tell you it only reaffirms how much I love our stadium. Don’t get me wrong this is no knock on ECU’s stadium because it is a great stadium, but I love having an enclosed stadium where it feels like everyone is right on top of the action. And believe it or not, I’m so glad now that we DID make our stadium of steel, it was frustrating not to be able to make noise with your feet on concrete after being used to it for three games with steel/aluminum. ECU’s crowd was very loud, but if you put those 43,000 in our enclosed steel constructed stadium I think it would have been twice as loud, honestly.
• I think we have a very similar game atmosphere to ECU, its a party during the game. They have a great student section, the crowd is very involved, and they play a lot of fun stadium music to get people moving. Plus we didn’t hear their band a lot which seems to be a complaint from some UCF fans depending on where you sit. The key is they’ve been doing it like this for a long long time, so we need to make sure our great atmosphere continues on past this year…
• The flyover was great (see video below) and I enjoyed all the videos from soldiers fighting overseas showing support of their Pirates back home. It’s good to be reminded of the hard work they do.
• ECU has an awesome entrance as they blast Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix and they players run out of a pirate ship like replica as purple smoke and sparks shoot out. Crowd is very involved and the whole stadium gets into it, very cool. No doubt they beat UCF on the pregame entrance, we really need to improve ours. (See video below although it doesn’t do it justice)
• Here’s the food report- after I tasty tailgate lunch I had the best cinnamon pretzel I’ve ever had at the stadium and liked the fact that they had Chick-fil-A kiosks in the stadium.
• I have to call out some of our fans here for a second. There was one guy that actually called other Knight fans idiots repeatedly just because they were shaking their keys on kickoffs. I had to step in and say something because even though I’m not a fan of the keys I don’t understand the idea of hating on other UCF fans that are actually big enough fans to make the long trip to North Carolina to watch their team play. These are obviously not idiot fans, but GREAT fans that are supporting their team. If you don’t want to shake your keys don’t shake them but no need to be so rude to fellow Knights. Come on guys…
• As for the football game only a couple quick comments. Had that blocked punt stayed in bounds we might be looking at a different ballgame, just maybe– momentum is a tough thing to figure out. Our QBs need to just throw the ball out of bounds when nothing’s there, we have a good defense and a great punter– let them do their job and live to fight another day. Speak of defense, they really took some bad angles in the game, not sure where that suddenly came from, ..maybe underestimating ECU’s speed?
• Our crew tailgated with the family of one our players and we wanted to walk them back to the car after the game to make sure they got there safely. Obviously they stayed after to talk to their son and so while waiting we got to see the utterly somber faces coming out of that locker room, every single one of them. It wasn’t pretty…my heart goes out to those kids. I guarantee you that no one wants to win more then they do, no question. Those players and coaches put a ton of hard work, sweat, and blood into practicing and planning each week all with the one goal of coming out with a victory. When they fall short of that goal it’s got to hit them like a ton of bricks, especially if they feel they let their teammates down in any way.
• Somewhat funny story here. We also drove to the NC State game 4 weeks ago which is just the exact same drive, minus the last two hours. By pure coincidence we stopped at the same exit on the way up to NCST and the way down from ECU. Conversely we stopped at the same exit on the way down from NCST and the way up to ECU. Well it made us chuckle at least…
• Overall I have great respect for ECU and what they have going on there in Greenville, I’ll probably be back up every two years. It’s a top notch program with top notch community support and that’s great to see! We talked about the possibility of conference shifts on the ride up and many of us agreed that if we ever did move to a different conference we’d like to still be with ECU and Memphis for sure. Of course I’m not focused on other conferences, its just talk to kill a 9 hour drive– I’m focused on C-USA, we obviously have a lot of work to do to get where we need to be. I have faith we can do it, oh and GO UTEP (beat ECU!)

Click this link for the pictures from the trip

Here is a quick video of the military flyover before the game:

Here is a video of the ECU pregame entrance:

I’m already ready for USF, it’s time to paint the town of Tampa BLACK & GOLD!

GO KNIGHTS!