After busy offseason, game week finally arrives for new East Carolina coach Ruffin McNeill

ECU’s McNeill embraces challenge of 1st game week

GREENVILLE, N.C. — The smoke will billow near East Carolina’s locker room, the pyrotechnics will sparkle and they’ll blast Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” over the speakers.

Then, for the first time, Ruffin McNeill will lead the Pirates onto the field.

“Right now, I’m getting little goose bumps,” McNeill said Monday, a full six days before gameday. “You can’t fake that.”

While there’s no hiding McNeill’s passion for his alma mater, there are more pressing things to worry about than making a grand entrance.

Playing a Conference USA rival — not to mention, one that might be carrying a grudge — has a way of creating an added sense of urgency.

McNeill’s first game in charge of the two-time defending league champion Pirates, and his first game as a full-time head coach anywhere, comes Sunday when Tulsa visits in the first C-USA game of the season.

“It’s a conference game, but it’s our first game, and it’s the only game we’ve got this week, so all the focus will be on Tulsa,” McNeill said. “The motivation will be there. It’s the next guy up. It’s the first guy up. That’s enough motivation for us.”

It helps that McNeill has some familiarity with Tulsa coach Todd Graham. McNeill spent the past decade on Texas Tech’s staff, while Graham was a high school coach in a Dallas suburb before he made the jump to college ball, joining West Virginia’s staff in 2001 and later getting his Division I head coaching job at Rice in 2006. He moved to Tulsa a year later.

“I’ve crossed paths with coach McNeill quite a bit,” Graham said. “It’s genuinely the real deal. I’m very impressed with him. … As a former high school coach, just the type of person that he is, he really cares about people.”

The Pirates are 2-0 in the past two seasons against Tulsa, including a victory in the 2008 C-USA title game, and that prompted Graham to call East Carolina “the team to beat in this conference.”

But those teams were settled at quarterback. That is not the case, at least not yet.

McNeill said he has yet to decide whether former Boston College QB Dominique Davis or sophomore walk-on Brad Wornick will take the first snap Sunday against the Golden Hurricane.

The longtime Mike Leach assistant said Wornick at times reminds him of former Tech signal-callers Cody Hodges and Kliff Kingsbury. Davis, Ruffin said, has big-game experience after helping BC reach the 2008 ACC title game, plus the talent and intelligence to run McNeill’s version of the “Air Raid” offense.

“In this offense, and what we do, a strong arm is great, but it’s … when and how you deliver that thing that’s important in this offense,” McNeill said. “Both guys are doing a great job. … Those guys are battling night and day. … You’ll see one guy in seven-on-seven just complete great throws. Then, the next guy in team (drills will) do the same thing.”

For the man known around campus as “Coach Ruff,” it’s been a long wait to not only return home, but to get that elusive first head coaching opportunity.

The Lumberton native and former East Carolina defensive back in the late 1970s spent the past 30 years as a career assistant. He bounced from Austin Peay to Appalachian State to UNLV, before landing at Texas Tech in 2000.

Following a messy divorce between Leach and the school, McNeill was put in charge on an interim basis for the Red Raiders’ Alamo Bowl victory over Michigan State. Tommy Tuberville got the full-time job and didn’t retain McNeill, who was hired by his alma mater in January after Skip Holtz left for South Florida.

“I’m looking forward to seeing our fans and getting around Pirate Nation and getting our football team, more importantly than me, around them,” McNeill said. “They’re not coming to see me. They’re coming to see our football team.

“I’m sure it’ll be emotional, and I’m looking forward to the execution of the game operation. That’s the exciting part of it to me. Let’s see who can beat who. I love that part of the game. But I’ll be excited, I’m sure.”