Like the big kid in the neighborhood who didn’t need the company, Whit Babcock has took his football and gone home.
Virginia Tech’s series with East Carolina was a one-sided need. The man paid roughly $1 million a year — plus a lot more in bonuses for field and court work as compared to class work — to make decisions for one of the ACC’s 2004 expansion parties decided he’d had enough after a fiasco of a fall centered around Hurricane Florence. Saturday before Christmas, he said Virginia Tech would not go to Greenville in 2019 as scheduled, or 2023 and 2025.
Depending on which story is believed, there’s plenty of blame to go around on why ECU didn’t go to Blacksburg, Virginia, the week of Florence and instead trekked to its next foe, American Athletic opponent South Florida.
At this point, the story with the most truth doesn’t matter so much. Nor does the bad optics from the spiteful move by Babcock.
East Carolina will be fine, and Virginia Tech will play a lesser team in 2019 to achieve seven home games that do nothing to move the needle of college football. The Hokies got what they wanted.
There’s also no reason to believe ECU will go to Virginia Tech in 2020, 2022 and 2024. Babcock hinted as much, but left the door open for the Pirates to come anyway while saying hurry up and let us know so we can get someone else on the schedule.
These programs once were on a parallel, albeit about 35 years ago. When the upstart but strong basketball-based Big East Conference decided football was more than a nice complement and a financial requirement, the Hokies were picked to join and ECU left out.
The parallel of the programs’ trajectories ended there, but not the good regional football series.
The Hokies weren’t alone. In addition to playing the Big Four, the Pirates had entertaining matchups with South Carolina, West Virginia and, in a lesser volume, with Tennessee.
ECU has always felt the need for the strongest regional rivalries, no matter if it played as an independent in the 1980s, in the Liberty Bowl Alliance that predated Conference USA in the 1990s or the American Athletic that arrived in 2014. If a Pirates team was to recapture the 1991 magic and make a run up the AP Top 25, their fans if no one else believed a chance at national acclaim was directly tied to the schedule.
Cue 2017 and 2018, when Central Florida of the American Athletic didn’t lose a game. Either year. They beat No. 8 Auburn in the Peach Bowl last year, and will play No. 11 LSU in the Fiesta Bowl on Tuesday.
Nice games, mind you, but no national title beyond their own proclamation. Not even a playoff spot. And they’ve won 25 straight.
So, there’s an argument ECU doesn’t need Virginia Tech either. Oh, the Hokies travel well and it’s a good series for the Virginias and Carolinas.
But they’re just another team really. And ECU’s best season in the future, even if undefeated, is so many uncontrollable hurdles apart of the Power 5 conferences’ grasp on the biggest games and the recognized playoff for a national champion. Central Florida is really good this year, was last year, and serves as a solid indicator of the present landscape.
Sure, things could change such as more playoff teams. But while more bowls and the playoff itself are new over the last quarter century, the haves and have-nots of major college football — meaning programs and leagues — really haven’t changed.
Jon Gilbert, the new ECU athletics director, gets an opportunity. He was still at Southern Mississippi in September, and we don’t know what calls he made to rectify the situation while still warming his seat in December negotiations.
Fans can embrace the opportunity as well. New blood can come to the schedule, much the way Brigham Young did in 2015.
So Whit took his ball and went home. Fine. He looked horrible in doing it, and nobody is going to care about that.
Good riddance. ECU will be fine.
The Pirates are used to finding a way to make lemonade from lemons. They’ll do it again.
And they won’t have a need for the neighborhood meanie at the stand either.