ECU

Skip Holtz is staying put. I don't know if he was ever offered the job, but the coach from Central Michigan (Butch Jones) is taking it.

 

CINCINNATI — Central Michigan’s Butch Jones is the new football coach at the University of Cincinnati, the Enquirer has confirmed. According to the Associated Press, Jones will sign a 5-year deal.

UC has not announced the deal or when Jones will be formally introduced.

Jones emerged as the front-runner over East Carolina coach Skip Holtz on Tuesday night. He is the second coach in three years to jump from Central Michigan and the Mid-American Conference to UC and the Big East.

He coached for one year under Brian Kelly at Central before moving on as an assistant under Rich Rodriguez at West Virginia. He then took over at CMU after Kelly left for UC and has gone 26-13 in three years.
Central Michigan is preparing to face Troy in the GMAC Bowl on Jan. 6. It was not immediately known if Jones will coach in that game.

UC is preparing to play Florida on Jan. 1 in the Sugar Bowl. Jeff Quinn is UC’s interim coach and is preparing the team for that game. Quinn, who said he was interested in UC’s head coaching position, has also been linked to jobs at Buffalo and Central Michigan.

Jones was believed to be a target of UC’s Thomas from the beginning because his teams run a wide-open offense similar to the spread offense that Kelly ran at UC.

Jones has three years left on his Central Michigan contract with a buyout clause of $450,000. That buyout clause goes up to $700,000 if he leaves before the Chippewas play in their bowl game.

Jones, 41, was the running backs coach at Central Michigan from 1999 to 2001 and the offensive coordinator from 2002-04.

He left to become the wide receivers coach at West Virginia in 2005 and 2006 then returned to Central to replace Kelly after Kelly was hired at UC.

He’s 26-13 at Central Michigan, with Mid-American Conference championships in 2007 and 2009.

 

Pirates /Arkansas in OT!

Ben Hartman having a ruff night kicking the ball! 1 for 4!

Dag, he just missed another one: 1 for 5!

 

Nick Folk esque.

 

Fuck Petrino

 

Skip's a good guy

Honestly as a devout Wolfpacker, most of the time I'll find a "reason" to dislike any coach at UNC and ECU. But Skip just seems like a guy that's hard to dislike.

 

....hate it for 'ol Ben. ok, its a bowl game that means nothing to win or lose, but when you're a senior kicker and a damn good one who is supposed to be in the NFL draft........and go cold 1 for 5......that will leave a pocketbook bruise!

Fishman

 

CFL or Arena ball at best.

 

Liberty Bowl dessert tray tears East Carolina teammates apart

By Matt Hinton

The Liberty Bowl is one of the oldest active bowl games, and has attracted most of the nation's powerhouses at some point over its 50-year history, including Bear Bryant's last game at Alabama in 1982. But perhaps the true essence of the Liberty Bowl experience lies not on the field, but in the banquet hall, where the pregame spread proved so irresistible on Thursday that a pair of East Carolina players saw fit to throw down in front of coaches, players and administrators from both ECU and Arkansas at the bowl's annual awards banquet, apparently over the last slice of cheesecake:

Two East Carolina players got into a fight at the AutoZone Liberty Bowl's annual awards luncheon Thursday at the Hilton Memphis. Witnesses said the table almost flipped over as the two players -- confirmed by an ECU spokesman as junior running back Jonathan Williams and freshman redshirt [defensive] back Leonard Paulk -- fought over a dessert. One player had the other in a headlock and was hitting him, according to witnesses. (Emphasis added)

Both players have been suspended for today's game. I know coach Skip Holtz said he wanted a team hungry for victory, but this is ridiculous.

Holtz said Friday it would be "premature" to speculate on either player's future at ECU beyond the suspension and promised to announce any future "status change" after the game, a direct reference to the likelihood that Williams' career as a Pirate is probably finished. This suspension is the former Conference USA All-Freshman pick's third in a little more than a year, after being arrested twice in a two-week span in October 2008 for resisting officers during a domestic dispute call and later for two misdemeanor counts of assault with a deadly weapon for allegedly wielding a beer bottle in a fight. (He was also arrested in April 2008 for drunk driving.) Those incidents cost Williams the last seven games of '08, and a knee injury cost him the second half of this season after he logged just a handful of carries in September.

 

I gotta admit that was about the most brutal thing I have ever seen happen in sports.

The whole team played great, coaching staff put together a great plan, we were running the ball and stopping them on offense, everything was fine until 2 ECU players cost us basically 22points. 10pts absolutely gift wrapped to them by our QB (aka Jake Delhomme of college ball) I mean not a WR close and the defender didnt even have to break stride on either INT, and 12 points from our sketchy kicker.

This one's going to hurt for a while. Just hope it isnt something that hangs around a program. Dont need any bad juju.

Could have ended up with 10 wins, top 25 ranking (maybe top 20), etc, etc. Going to take a lot of to get past this one.


I think we'll be OK though. Holtz seems to put together a good staff (Our DC Hudson is leaving for FSU, though). He can get mor out of 2 and 3 star players than a lot of coaches can get out of 4 and 5 star players and he seems to get the whole team to buy into his philosophy.

He'll be here at least next year (Im starting to think for a few more years now, unless he can take the very young team next year back to the conference title, then he'll be the hottest coach out there).

We will have 50,000 in the stands next year (with a new pressbox finally coming a year or two after that).

Hopefully we'll actually have a QB that can make plays for us (BC's old starter Domonique Davis and a JuCo guy that's supposed to be good)