“Glory Days”: ECU Edition

friend of not only mine, but also our next guest, Steve Logan, longtime coach at East Carolina. We talked to Mick yesterday about the best era of North Carolina UNC football. I know you used to talk to Mick all the time.

That was a fun conversation. How are you, coach? I'm doing really well. How about you? I'm doing well. Real quick, before we get to the football, was Christopher Eubanks' chance to win the quarterfinal match with Daniel Medvedev just giving back when he lost the fourth set tiebreak? We're going to find out. I'm watching both of them as I sit here.

I've got the dual screen working. These are two great matches. And, you know, every year somebody climbs through these majors that's not supposed to be there supposedly. And, you know, it's just fun to watch. I've always kind of been an underdog guy and it's fun to watch. And I don't know, you know, this Medvedev guy, I'm a big, big, big tennis fan and watch these guys daily. And Medvedev, he's one of those top five guys just mentally, you know, you just can't crack those guys. So it's going to be interesting. So a lot of fun to watch.

Yeah, sometimes he cracks himself, but he always seems to, at least lately, seems to kind of gather himself. All right. You were part of the best era of East Carolina football. You were there as an offensive coordinator under Bill Lewis and then took over. What was special about that run from, let's say, late 80s, early 90s, all the way through your tenure? Well, what was special about it is we had good players. And I've talked to you ad nauseum about, you know, the shift that took place with the BCS in 1990. And that ended it.

And in fact, I may have shared with you the last time we talked, I was at the beach and my youngest son was there. And of course, they get on YouTube and places I don't really ever go. And I walked in the living room and they had the Miami East Carolina YouTube game of 1996 on, where we won 31 to 6 down in the Orange Bowl. And I had never seen that other than when I graded the film. You know, I don't go back and watch that stuff because I've got so much scar tissue.

It's not healthy. So, but, so I, you know, I did sit down and I watched maybe two quarters of it. But what just, it was just thunderstruck me is watching that YouTube, it was the game, it was the broadcast game film. We, East Carolina, looked exactly like Miami physically. Our football team was as big and as strong and as athletic really as Miami's football team was. And that was true in 1999 as well, which was the tail end of the talent that I had access to. After 1999, the talent level fell off.

And I'll illustrate that even further. I left East Carolina, went into NFL Europe, coached for three or four years, went to Boston College. And then I went to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Well, so I think I'm with Tampa Bay. It's now 2008 or something like that. So six, eight, seven years, whatever it is out of college football, but the BCS had time to come in and do its work.

All right. So now I'm evaluating football players for the NFL, for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And I've got hundreds and hundreds of tapes that I've got to go through in the off-season and write up evaluations on football players.

But I had this, again, another moment where I was just thunderstruck. I pulled up, I'm evaluating somebody and I pull up an East Carolina game film. And it was East Carolina versus maybe West Virginia or something like that. So it would have been like a 2008 film. It looked like East Carolina's football team was malnourished relative to the, I think it might've been West Virginia, something like that, Virginia Tech.

It was that game film, but the two teams, it was so physically evident to my eyes. And so all the way back to what you asked me, what was special about it was, what was special is that we had football players that lots of, we would churn out kids that would go to NFL camps, either as a free agent or as a draft pick in equal numbers to the UNCs and the NC States and the Clemsons and the people in this area. And that was really the difference, you know, and, and as we all know, those days are forever gone and exacerbated now in ways, you know, with the NIL thing, holy cow, where's it going to go from there?

It's going to get worse and worse. But anyway, back in the day, you didn't want to play us. You didn't want to play Southern Miss.

Nope. You didn't want to play Louisville back in the day. You know, those three teams popped the mind because we, we routinely beat the devil out of each other. And, you know, it was just really good coaching staffs with really good football players.

They had, all of us had access to them and that was the difference. Steve Logan is joining us here on the Adam Gold show. Your, I've said this before, the night where you guys beat Miami in Raleigh because you guys couldn't get back to campus in Greenville was one of the great, forget about sporting events, it's just one of the great emotional evenings that I have ever been present for.

Can you walk us through that? Hey, honey, can we talk? Of course. What's up? Well, I just thought you should know I've been curious about the new doctor. Pepper, strawberries, and cream. Have you felt this way a long time? No, I just think I'd really liked the taste of Dr. Pepper swirled with layers of flavor. If you feel that way, I think you should try it, babe. It's amazing. I mean, you're amazing too.

New Dr. Pepper, strawberries and cream, the new flavor you deserve. Well, yeah, I can. I still get a little bit emotional about it because it's one of those things where you ride it out for Hollywood and they go, well, nobody's going to believe that. But in fact, it was extremely real. But we had an event, we go to South Carolina and to be honest with you, that's the victory that I cherish the most is beating the living daylights out of those guys. Lou Holtz was the coach, right?

Well, you said it for me. So anyway, you know, we went down there and beat those guys. And once again, I'm telling you now, that football team we had in 1999, you didn't want to play us. And we went down there to South Carolina in front of whatever they got, 70,000 people. And it was us against the world, which is where we did our best work. And, you know, all of a sudden, you know, we win that game and we get word that we cannot come back because Greenville is underwater. And all of all of our players apartments were underwater.

And I mean that almost literally. And so, you know, we just stay there and do our prep for the next week. And guess what's waiting for us?

Well, it's Miami. And we find out we're going to play there and Carter Finley. But, you know, it just became from that point, internally from from my point of view, it was just another business trip. I had a lot of things to take care of. I had a lot of I had to be very contingent and everything we did contingency move for practice. Where are we going to practice? How are we going to practice? How are we going to travel? What are we going to eat? Where were you going to eat? You know, where's the underwear?

Where's where's the socks? You know, just every single thing you can imagine. It was truly insane. And I'm kind of unprecedented, really.

No, no models, no game plan to go off of. But, you know, we rolled into the stadium. And I remember we were literally talking to each other. I was talking to my staff. I said, I want to come to this game. They know where it is.

We don't even know where we're going. And we rolled up and it was, you know, look like the World's Fair was waiting on us. It was there wasn't a seat left. And I think that, you know, everybody from East Carolina that could showed up. And then I think that there was a lot of like you. I mean, what were you doing there? You know, other than the fact that, you know, this was a unique moment that a lot of people wanted to be a part of just to see.

And so that, you know, that kind of helped the atmosphere. But, you know, that game, we I think we were behind, I don't know, 24 to three or 20 something and have to something bad. It was bad. But we weren't playing bad. I know that we were not playing badly. And I do remember at halftime telling the kids that, you know, we built our program and this goes back to 1991. And if you have time, I'll tell you, you know, some more inside baseball. When I was an assistant coach for Bill Lewis in 1989 and 1990, we would routinely play Florida State, Miami.

It didn't matter. We'd play all those people. And at the end of three quarters, you know what the you know what the score would be? It'd be 17 to 14. And then at the end of four quarters, the score would be 40 to 14.

And I did a research project and I broke all this down for Bill and I presented it to Bill and I presented it to our football team for the 1991 season. That, you know, we're good enough, but we we don't know how to play and to the last play of the game. And you have to be able and willing and able to take any competitive competitive situation to the last play of the game.

Or you're just never going to make any progress. Well, that became our motto when the game on the last play of the game. Well, 1991, we won eight of the 11 games on the last play of the game. So there was a mindset that took hold in our program there.

So fast forward to 1999. Now you're talking, you know, almost eight, nine years later, I could go into the locker room and did go into the locker room and told our players, we're playing good. You know, they're not better than us.

We've made some mistakes, blah, blah, blah. But you know, and I know that if we will take them to the last play of the game, we can crack them. And, you know, Miami had a reputation, as we all know, you know, they didn't give up. I mean, they like to bully people. That's what they like to do.

They like to bully people. And one thing that the East Carolina group from 1991 forward that I was part of, nobody bullied us. We embraced that, you know, we wanted to fistfight. And we and we were willing to take those people that routinely didn't go deep into the fourth quarter.

We wanted to get them there to see how they would react. And over and over and over again, we would take West Virginia, Syracuse, Miami, South Carolina deep into the fourth quarter, and they would indeed crack. But we were built, you know, emotionally and I've talked to people about that a lot, you know, head coaches, I happen to be an offensive coordinator, quarterback coach, play caller.

But really, the main job of the head football coach is you've got to have an offensive game plan, defensive game plan, special teams game plan, but the head coach has got to have an emotional game plan for your team. It's got to be specific to each week, but it has to have an overall bedrock and the overall bedrock that we had at East Carolina was win on the last play of the game. Well, we open the second half and here we go. Bang, bang, bang.

We kept chipping away, chipping away. And I can remember the last play of the game, a little defensive back to play for me, Forrest Foster, knocking down a pass that, you know, some kid that went on to be an all pro forever and ever for Miami. What was his name? You would know Andre Johnson.

Was it Andre Johnson? No, so many great. There was there were so many great. Exactly. There's so many of them.

Doesn't matter, right? They're all the same guy. But, you know, a little force went up, knocked the pass down and we win the game win on the last play of the game. And then that was really that was really the essence of the whole journey of the 90s. We have to go. But my last impression was your fans storming the field, tearing down the goalposts and leaving Carter Finley with them.

And I would love to know where those posts are right now. It was one of the great scenes I have ever been witness to. Steve Logan, I appreciate your time. I'll talk again. We'll talk blues, red wine and tennis another time. All right, man.

We'll see. You got it. Steve Logan here on the Adam Gold show. It's one of the most memorable nights I have spent in my 25 plus years of living in the triangle. That night was awesome. And I never get tired of hearing Steve Logan talk about it.