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AFM Magazine


The Calm After The Storm

Steve Logan has weathered the elements at East Carolina—both of the natural variety and otherwise. But when the \'99 season was over, he had his Pirates on top of the Tar Heel State.
by: Kevin Kaminski
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It was the cruelest possible irony.

Less than two weeks after the worst natural disaster in North Carolina history had crippled 66 counties, caused what was later estimated at $6 billion in flood damage, and cost 51 people their lives, the football forecast at East Carolina called for Hurricanes.

By that time, however, Steve Logan was the last person on which such madness could be lost. He was, by trade, a head coach. But in the days leading up to East Carolina's Sept. 25 date with ninth-ranked University of Miami (Fla.), Logan found himself orchestrating a survival retreat - albeit one infinitely less sobering than that facing the people in and around Greenville.

Three days after Hurricane Floyd slammed the eastern portion of North Carolina, the Pirates' team bus navigated whatever open back roads it could find for a game in Columbia, S.C., against the Gamecocks. Despite practicing only once the week of the storm, ECU managed a 21-3 victory over Lou Holtz's squad.

But while the Pirates were on the road running their record to 3-0, the Tar River was raging back home with unfathomable fury. At its highest point, during the aftermath of Floyd, the Tar would swell to 40.9 feet.

Flood stage was 19 feet.

Seven dams and 24 wastewater treatment plants would be ruined. Nearly 50,000 people were forced to find shelter, with emergency crews called on to perform 1,400 swift-water evacuations. Life had been altered forever in Eastern Carolina.

The Pirates, meanwhile, were stranded.

Unable to return to Greenville after the South Carolina game, the team remained in Columbia - 277 miles from home - and somehow tried to focus on the impending showdown with Miami.

It wasn't easy. Logan had only 65 players (the scout team did not travel to Columbia) with which to prepare for the Hurricanes. All 65, as well as the coaching staff, had packed for a two-day getaway, not a nine-day road trip. But emphasizing communication at all costs, Logan watched his team close ranks.

Yes, the lines for the pay phone in the lobby of the Ramada Plaza were long, as players sought updates on family and friends. But the team managed. They borrowed practice jerseys sent by the Carolina Panthers, worked out some days at the Gamecocks' Williams-Brice Stadium, and other days at a local Episcopal school. Players lifted weights at a Gold's Gym. Walked through plays, on occasion, in the Ramada parking lot. Bowling and movies highlighted the evenings.

It was hardly nirvana. But compared to the horrors unraveling east of I-95, there was little room to complain.

The Miami game was moved to N.C. State's Carter-Finley Stadium amidst some protests that football should not even be a consideration with so many lives in turmoil. But with ESPN cameras about to roll, Logan realized there was a story of national interest brewing.

And that's what worried him.

"Look, every sportswriter already has this story written," Logan told his Pirates before they took the field. "You're going to go and get your brains beat out. And everyone will write about the poor little Pirates team that couldn't go home this week. They were holed up in a hotel. They ran out of underwear. They had no chance.

"OK. We can go out, get crushed, and feel sorry for ourselves. Or we can play this game like I know we can. Like all of you know you can."

Less than 20 minutes into the game, Miami had opened a 20-0 lead.

•••••••

Uphill battles are nothing new at East Carolina.

Shortly after Jimmy Johnson made his first foray into the professional ranks, taking over for Tom Landry at Dallas, then-Philadelphia head coach Buddy Ryan quipped, "Hey Jimmy, there ain't no East Carolinas in the NFL."

But in eight seasons under Logan, who was promoted from offensive coordinator in 1992 after Bill Lewis departed, the Pirates have gone from perennial punch line to a force with which to be reckoned on the national scene. Already, he stands as the school's all-time winningest coach, with a mark of 51-40 that includes above-.500 records in five of the past six years. Not bad for a school that notched only three winning seasons the entire decade of the 1980s.

In the beginning, Logan's plan of attack was simply to corral homegrown talent. Any homegrown talent. In 1990, only two of the Pirates' 24 recruits hailed from North Carolina. By 1998, Logan had secured the largest in-state class in East Carolina history - 19 of 22 signees were North Carolinians. In particular, Logan has scoured his own backyard, with more and more of the surrounding area's top talent coming to Greenville.

"Having a local recruiting base has increased our chances to be successful," Logan, 46, says "You just can't fly to Florida and expect to beat people on enough kids to sustain a program.. . . We're still not powerful enough to go west and get a kid that North Carolina wants. But the kids in this state now know who we are and they respect us. They say, 'Hey, if I do go here, I know I'm going to win'. "

If those kids happen to play offense, they also understand they'll be involved in one of college football's most innovative schemes. Combining a downfield aerial assault with an option attack, Logan's squads have posted five of the top seven total offense seasons in school history.

It's West Coast concepts and Holtz's vintage Notre Dame ground game rolled into one. Logan will tell you the scheme is little more than an attempt to hang with the nation's heavyweights. But credit the philosophy, as well as his engaging, thoughtful demeanor, to influences far beyond simple survival techniques.

Over the years, Logan has worked with such head coaches as the aforementioned Jimmy Johnson (while a tight ends coach at Oklahoma State); John Cooper (as an offensive coordinator at Tulsa); and Bill McCartney (as a running backs coach at Colorado).

"What I took from Jimmy was the value of sheer enthusiasm," Logan says. "Even if something was routine, he brought a lot of enthusiasm to the table.. . . (McCartney), on the other hand, had a really organized way of how to recruit. And when he conveyed it to me, I saw the genius of it.. . . .

"(Cooper) influenced me the most from the standpoint of how to be a head coach. John just had an equanimity that I was attracted to. He never got real high or real low. He had a way of keeping everyone focused without a panic. I try to keep the madness to a manageable level - and John is the master at that."

It was at Tulsa, however, that Logan occasionally drove Cooper mad during his two-year (1983-84) stay. Fascinated by the West Coast ideas being unleashed by Bill Walsh with the 49ers, Logan began to "beg, borrow and steal" any tapes of the San Francisco offense on which he could get his hands. Before long, Logan was implementing bits and pieces of the West Coast attack into Cooper's split-veer set.

"I'd sneak them in without John knowing," Logan says. "We began to throw the ball nicely with the little short routes and shallow crosses. Actually, John was OK with that and gave me the freedom to do it.

"But I remember one night we threw for more yards than any John Cooper team had ever thrown for. I told him after the game we had broken this record. And he looks at me and says, 'We really need to run the ball next week'. "

By then, Logan was addicted to Walsh's ideas. His brief stint at Colorado proved torturous with the Buffaloes running the wishbone. He would move on to Mississippi State as quarterbacks coach, but the entire staff was sacked following his second season with the Bulldogs.

As fate would have it, however, Bill Lewis, then-defensive coordinator at Georgia, saw something he liked in the Mississippi State offense. Namely Logan. He watched late in the season as MSU rolled up 500 yards and 35 points against his unit. Shortly after the axe fell at Mississippi State, Lewis was hired as head coach at East Carolina - and promptly called Logan.

By 1990, Logan was offensive coordinator at ECU and infusing the unit with West Coast principles. In '91, with quarterback Jeff Blake throwing for 3,073 yards, the Pirates reeled off 11 consecutive wins after an opening loss at Illinois, including a Peach Bowl victory over N.C. State.

Lewis left for Georgia Tech in 1992 and Logan struggled through two losing seasons before the program turned the corner with the emergence of quarterback Marcus Crandell. The all-time passing and total offense leader in East Carolina history, Crandell accounted for 7,641 yards from 1993-96.

Logan's novel concepts bore considerable fruit in '96, an 8-3 season during which running back Scott Harley set a school mark with 1,745 yards, the offense averaged 438.2 total yards, and the Pirates handed Miami its worst loss at the Orange Bowl (31-6) in 12 years.

"We still don't line up with the best players on Saturday," Logan says. "We just don't."

In 1996, Miami had Kenny Holmes and Kenard Lang coming off the edges - two first-round draft picks. You should have seen the tackles we were protecting with. Believe me, they're not in the NFL. But Crandall took one sack and was 17 of 23. . . they chased him all over the field.

"When we drop back to pass, some West Coast concept will unfold. But when we run the ball, about 70 percent of the time it's going to be some form of the option. Most people are very resistant to this. It's too much. They say you can't be good at both. Well, we have to be good at both. Because we can't line up and knock people off the football."

One thing about Logan's teams, however. They refuse to go down without a fight.

•••••••

"Even behind, 20-0, people weren't leaving," Logan says. "There was like this demand that we play hard."

Midway through the third quarter, after one of the most draining weeks in the state's history, the Pirates began to oblige their faithful.

Led by junior tailback Jamie Wilson's touchdown runs of 24 and 18 yards, and a defense that stifled the Hurricanes in the second half, East Carolina climbed back into its game with Miami. With 4:51 remaining, quarterback David Garrard capped one of the most improbable comebacks of the college football season by launching a 27-yard touchdown pass to Keith Stokes.

East Carolina 27, Miami 23.

Only 20,000 people were expected to make the 85-mile trek to Raleigh that night. Instead, over 45,000 packed Carter Finley Stadium - none of who would have missed this evening for the world. For one glorious moment, football had offered a touch of cathartic relief to a group that desperately needed it.

"I remember before the game, standing outside the locker room and watching this marching band, about 40 kids, wearing blue jeans and t-shirts," Logan says. "I asked someone who it was. And here it was our band. There were kids in that group who had lost everything. But they decided to wear jeans and shirts and just play. Even now, there's something emotional about that.

"After the game people were crying. . . it was all just surreal. The game had some kind of tangible meaning for a few of the people really in dire straits. It gave them a little emotional something to hang on to.. . . College football was started to provide spirit - a vehicle for a coming together of the community. In this instance, the game served the ideal purpose."

Logan's work, however, was just beginning.

On the drive back to Greenville, the reality of what the Pirates had watched on television for the previous nine days began to hit, and hit hard.

The state's tobacco crops were ruined, with agricultural losses totaling just short of $1 billion. Livestock fared no better as 737,000 turkeys and 2.2 million chickens died in the storm and its aftermath. Nearly 17,000 people, meanwhile, saw their homes either destroyed or left uninhabitable.

Of that figure, approximately 17 players returned to campus housing that was washed away by the flooding - all their material possessions gone. Logan spent the remainder of the season tending to players who were starting, literally, from scratch.

"You come home and your apartment isn't just under water, it's under sewage," says Logan. "And it's shocking. There are still a ridiculous number of people living in campers provided by the federal government.. . . We had to relocate players, get them shirts, socks, underwear - trying to restock their lives with essentials, while still preparing for games."

Incredibly, the Pirates finished the regular season 9-2, earning a trip to the Mobile Bowl. Just a sophomore, the 6-3, 235-pound Garrard threw for 2,359 yards and rushed for another 493, giving Logan reason to believe the immediate future appears bright offensively. Meanwhile, a defense that was once the team's Achilles, held five opponents to single digits in 1999, finishing as the nation's No. 13 unit in average points allowed (17.9).

Add it up, and Logan is convinced that East Carolina has once and for all shed the albatross once hung around the program's neck by Ryan's thoughtless cheap shot.

"Maybe, finally, we'll be able to play a football game and people will say, 'Hey, that's a good football program.' That's all I want."






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