From The Desk Of Terry Holland
September 23, 2005 | Football
Sept. 23, 2005
Below is an excerpt from a story which appeared Friday, Sept. 23 in the Syracuse Post-Standard that addressed a development in the Orange's future football scheduling efforts. The story can be viewed by clicking on the newspaper's website.
... Syracuse University is waiting for East Carolina to decide if it will honor a game it contractually owes the Orange. The Pirates would serve as Syracuse's final non-conference home game in 2006. Should East Carolina back out - and there are suggestions the Pirates will - Ohio University is waiting to fill the void.
Jackson said it's his understanding that East Carolina has been under contract to give Syracuse one more home game for more than a decade. He said if the Pirates refuse to honor the game next season, Syracuse will cut its ties with East Carolina for good.
"It's been enough of headache, not just me, but Syracuse has been trying to get this game for awhile," Jackson said. "We won't pursue it any further. Whether we play them next year or not is up to East Carolina. I don't say it negatively. As the schedule fills up, we're going in a different direction ...
Last winter, we informed Syracuse and Wake Forest that we would honor the 2006 contract terms with each institution in one of two ways:
1. We would play the last game of the contracted series AT Syracuse and AT Wake Forest in 2006 if those institutions would agree to play us "home and home" in future years.
The 2006 games were the last games of contracts that required ECU to play an "extra" game at the opponent's home site in order to schedule games with that particular opponent.
In both cases, we left open the possibility of moving the games to later years after our current scheduling needs had been addressed and stabilized.
2. If Wake Forest and/or Syracuse determines that playing ECU in the future is not "in the best interests of their institution" then we would feel obligated to do what would be "in ECU's best interests" - and that would be to honor the "buy-out" terms of the contract for that last game in order to schedule institutions who would agree to play us "home and home" in future years.
In both cases, we offered to do all we could to mitigate the impact of the "buy-out" on each program, even to the point of offering to allow one of them to use a home game that Ohio University owes to ECU in 2006.
When Wake Forest and Syracuse would not commit to future home and home agreements, we replaced the two 2006 away games with games at Virginia Tech and at Navy. Those two institutions have agreed to play ECU a minimum total of 12 games in future years with ECU being the home team in six of those games.
Syracuse and Wake Forest have since agreed to play each other to replace the game each had with ECU and both have been negotiating with Ohio University as well.
ECU intends to honor the terms of the contract as written and will continue to go well beyond the contract terms to mitigate the impact of our decision on these two institutions. We are open to any reasonable resolution that does not prevent ECU from moving ahead to protect its total athletic program.
We have respected the right of other institutions to do what is in the best interests of their own athletic programs, even when some of those decisions have had a tremendous impact on ECU's athletic future. It is my hope that other institutions will respect ECU's current need to protect itself from some of that impact, particularly since we are willing to go beyond contractual obligations to resolve such issues fairly.
Terry Holland
