Purple daze.
Author | Mildenberg, David |
Position | Organization overview |
Spurned by bigger football conferences, nothing conies easy at East Carolina University. Ruffin McNeill is making the most of that underdog status.
Talk to East Carolina University folks for more than a few moments, and the conversation inevitably turns to a well-worn phrase. Greenville Mayor Allen Thomas, a former ECU student body president, says, "We're used to having a chip on our shoulder. We just thrive on it." ECU Board of Trustees Chairman Steve Jones says, "We've always had a chip on our shoulder. It's not UNC or N.C. State, and we've always had to fight for everything." Pirates Club Executive Director J. Batt says, "Part of our DNA is that we've done more with less. We have a chip on our shoulder."
Ruffin McNeill knows how to use that drip to motivate the 120 players on the Pirates football team, which ranks with beaches and barbecue as the most beloved features of eastern North Carolina. Since returning to his alma mater almost six years ago, McNeill has emerged as the most prominent representative of the institution that UNC System Board Chairman John Fennebresque and others call the region's most important asset. He's also the school's highest-paid employee at $1.4 million annually, if he hits his bonus targets. With tobacco and textiles no longer packing much economic punch, much of the eastern third of the state is increasingly reliant on ECU, prompting Chancellor Steve Ballard to emphasize "regional transformation" throughout his 11-year tenure. It has the third-biggest enrollment among the 17 UNC System campuses, employs almost 7,300 full- and part-time workers and spends about $800 million annually on personnel, goods and services, according to a system study in January. With Ballard retiring next year, the UNC system is poised to add a new, enthusiastic leader capable of expanding ECU's importance. Ruffin McNeill's approach might just provide a model.
Started as a teachers' college in 1907, ECU's profile soared in 1974 when state lawmakers agreed to open the UNC system's second medical school there instead of Charlotte. Brody School of Medicine now ranks as the 25th best primary-care school nationally, according to U.S. News & World Report.
A school of dentistry opened in 2011 with a mission of training more students for rural, small-town practices. While Fennebresque praises Ballard as among the top-performing UNC system leaders, his successor will have plenty of work to do. Though school pride is as ingrained in Pirate alumni as any North Carolina campus, ECU boasts a relatively small $170 million endowment, including its medical affiliates. The school's in-state undergraduate tuition rate is the lowest among UNC campuses at a time when the state is cutting spending on basic university expenses. "From the perspective of everyday ordinary operations, we are still on the short end of the stick," says Rick Niswander, chief financial officer.
ECU also isn't attracting many of the state's best students. Less than a third of in coming freshmen in 2013 ranked in the top 20% of their class, while their average SAT scores ranked eighth among system campuses. "SAT scores are predictive of whether a student will actually graduate," says Jenna Robinson, president of the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, a Raleigh-based research group affiliated with the conservative John Locke Foundation. "If you let in students with lower GPAs, they tend to be less prepared to succeed than their counterparts at other campuses."
The underdog role fits McNeill, who was among the first African-Americans to integrate his Robeson County high school. He earned a football scholarship at ECU, where he played for four years, and then spent 25 years building credentials, much of it in the backwaters of college football, that enabled a triumphant return to Greenville. He has continued ECU's tradition of playing above its weight against rivals with more money, clout and top-ranked athletes. ECU rarely attracts more than a couple of the highest-rated high school football players in the Carolinas. Most head for the "Power 5" conferences, including the Atlantic Coast and Southeastern, which to date have refused to accept ECU as a member able to share the hundreds of millions of dollars in annual television-rights revenue. The result is a "have-and-have-not" disparity that McNeill predicts will widen. ECU spent about $39 million on its athletic program in 2013-14, compared with $84 million at UNC Chapel Hill and $64 million at N.C. State, according to NCAA data compiled by USA Today. ECU's athletic booster club takes in about $10 million...
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