New American Athletic Conference commissioner Tim Pernetti introduced each football coach before it was their time to speak on Tuesday during the AAC football media days.
Before East Carolina coach Mike Houston took the stage, Pernetti heaped praise on the gameday atmosphere surrounding Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. Pernetti also mentioned that he is optimistic the Pirates’ down season a year ago was just a fluke.
“There’s no better environment, I think, in our conference,” Pernetti said of ECU. ”When you talk about teams that are capable of making a jump in the standings this year, I think we have some real optimism about East Carolina. And that home field advantage is a huge part of it but, certainly, coach Mike Houston is an even bigger part of it.”
The Pirates were picked to finish tied with Rice for seventh in the preseason media poll. Memphis was voted the favorite in the 14-team conference as the Tigers are coming off their third 10-win season since 2017.
Memphis received 23 of 30 first-place votes. UTSA was second after the Roadrunners went 9-4 in their first season in the AAC. Tulane was third, South Florida was fourth and Army finished fifth and received one first-place vote ahead of its first season in the conference.
FAU was sixth, one spot ahead of the Pirates.
Finishing seventh would be an improvement for ECU, which is coming off a 2-10 season that prompted an overhaul to the program. Houston highlighted the numerous changes surrounding his team, including a fresh quarterback battle featuring transfers from prominent schools and a new offensive coordinator.
Houston fielded a question from the on-site media about the similarities between Tulane’s turnaround from going 2-10 in 2021 to winning 12 games in 2022.
“No one was surprised by the turnaround and what (coach Willie Fritz) did,” Houston said. “It was about getting healthy and getting on the same page. For us, it was getting the right people in a couple positions and getting the right offensive philosophy for us. I very much feel like you could see the same kind of turnaround from our program to what you saw from him.”
ECU brought in transfer quarterbacks Katin Houser from Michigan State and Jake Garcia from Missouri as part of the overhaul at the position. Houser started the final seven games at MSU, while Garcia got on the field at Miami before heading to Missouri.
When asked whether either player has separated himself to be the starting quarterback, Houston said the competition is tight although a decision will be made before the first game of the season on Aug. 31.
The position was the main focus of the offseason and the Pirates hope they hit on one or both of the incoming signal-callers.
“We didn’t play very well at that position last year and that was kind of our Achilles heel,” Houston said. “We knew we had to bring in some talent in that room. And so we brought in two because we felt like we needed the competition and we didn’t want to just have everything on one guy.
“We’re very excited about those two going into the fall. And I know you guys don’t believe us coaches most of the time, but it’s a toss-up right now. It really is. And for me, that’s a good thing, because I think we have two capable guys that can go win in this conference.”
Aside from a new quarterback room, ECU has leaned into a new offensive philosophy behind coordinator John David Baker.
Houston said the Pirates had to be active in the portal to retool the roster to play up-tempo and fast. He also had to take a leap of faith in a way as the new style is far from the previous, more traditional control-the-clock offenses of the past.
“This is a pretty dramatic adjustment,” Houston said. “Coach Baker has a lot of influences, whether it’s Graham Harrell or Art Briles or Mike Leach or Lane Kiffin. I think he’s taken a lot from all those guys. But this is his offense and so this is his version of the things that he has taken from all those offenses and put together.
“We are going to be extremely aggressive. We are going to spread the field vertically and we’re going to attack horizontally and we’re going to do it at a high rate of speed. But we go into the fall camp feeling like we have the tools around the quarterbacks to run the system and so that’s why I can’t wait for Aug. 31 and every week after that to see what this staff and these players can do on that side of football.”
Only about five weeks to go.
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