Tudor's Take: ECU history lesson

Pressed to choose, some ECU football fans no doubt would still rate the team’s only victory in UNC’s Kenan Stadium, on Oct. 25, 1975, as the most special in school history.

The 38-17 win that afternoon by Pat Dye’s second team has a lot of best-ever competition, of course. But there’s little question that the circumstances surrounding the upset were memorable. A day before the game, ECU football patriarch and athletics director Clarence Stasavich died suddenly. Many Pirate fans didn’t even get the news until an hour or so before game time.

"Coach Stas" as he was referred to almost everyone, including sideline rivals, was a personable but unwavering disciplinarian who went to his grave believing that traditional T-formation, Power-I football was severely flawed. Turns out, he was right, too.

A single-wing genius, Stasavich arrived in Greenville in 1962 and quickly recognized that football was the school’s only hope to gain even standing among the large in-state colleges in sports. He recognized immediately that building a basketball program to challenge the popularity of the sport in ACC would take ages.

Lots of folks laughed at Stasavich and his throwback offensive formation until he convinced Wake Forest to visit and dedicate the opening of Ficklen Stadium, which then seated about 17,000, in  Sept. 1963.

The Deacons had Brian Piccolo at tailback, but they were an awful team. Even so, no one gave the Pirates — then classified as a Small-College program — a prayer of winning against a Major-College foe.

When Stasavich's team won, 20-10, the template was set for the program’s future. By the time Dye’s team got to Kenan for the game in 1975, the Pirates were still trying to rebound from opening-season losses at N.C. State (26-3) and Appalachian State (41-25) and another to Richmond (17-14) in Greenville.

But powered by a quick, deceptive wishbone offense and the emotional fuel of winning one for the old coach, the Pirates overwhelmed Carolina’s defense early and breezed to a 38-17 win. Two weeks later, they went to Charlottesville and routed Virginia, 61-10 and then went to N.C. State early in the '76 season and won, 23-14.

In the years ahead, ECU teams would win a memorable game over State in the '91 Peach Bowl and knock off national contender Miami after opening the 1999 (Hurricane Floyd) season with wins over West Virginia, Duke and South Carolina.

But among older Pirate fans, any trip to Chapel Hill will stir memories of '75 and the weekend Stasavich died.