ECU Conducts Annual Media Day Event

GREENVILLE, N.C. – On the heels of officially closing fall camp Saturday afternoon, the East Carolina football team held its annual media day event Monday morning in TowneBank Tower. Sixth-year head coach Mike Houston addressed members of the media before each assistant coach and nearly 30 players were available for one-on-one interviews. Below are selected quotes from Coach Houston from media day:

Opening Statement:
"Appreciate everybody being here today. It's an exciting time of the year, first day of school today for the students. I'm sure everybody's noticed the increased traffic around Greenville over the weekend so plan to triple the amount of time to get somewhere that you were using two weeks ago, but the influx of students back on campus brings a lot of excitement. I was able to speak to the freshman class yesterday and was just telling them what to anticipate on August 31 in Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium and that got everybody excited. We're all excited about the season, excited to be at home and ready to get back out on the field in front of our fans. The kids have had a great preseason camp. We ended it with a scrimmage in the stadium on Saturday afternoon. We had some good heat and a highly competitive scrimmage. We'll start preparing for our opener today and it's less than two weeks away, so we're going to blink and it's going to be here."

On His Impressions From Preseason Camp:
"I think the thing that was most impressive is every time we put them in a competitive situation and when I say competitive, it's live, whether it's goal line short yardage or third down competition or scrimmage. Now they really went at each other. There's no lack of fight in this bunch, there's no lack of physicality, and I'm talking about both sides of the football. That was pleasing to see but you have a lot of older players, and you should probably expect that. The things to still iron out are a little bit of our execution cohesively. Looking at our scrimmage Saturday, when we had issues, it was one player here, one player there. That's just getting everybody playing together and on the same page and I think we still have some work to do there."

On How Last Season's Struggles Fueled The Team In The Offseason:
"Well, for me personally, and I think that most of the returning players and the returning staff would feel the same way, is that it was very difficult to go through last year and it's not something that any of us want. It's certainly not an acceptable win-loss record. I think that fueled all of us. I love East Carolina University, and I'm blessed to be here. I don't want that to be the product we put on the field and so for me, it's driven me all offseason. I think that the players feel the exact same way. It's driven them and I think we all feel confident in our ability to go out and play at a much higher level."

On The EA Sports College Football 25 Video Game And The Changing College Landscape:
"I think it's exciting. It's exciting for our players. It's exciting for the sport. My son took East Carolina to the national championship. I think it helps connect kids and some of our fans to our players. I think it gives them a lot more visibility on a national level and so I think it's a good thing for East Carolina and our players. Your other question about the changing college landscape. Who knows what's going to happen with college athletics over the next three or four years? We kind of know what the rules are for right now."

On How Much Of A Factor NIL Played The Transfer Portal This Offseason:
"About 99 percent. It's the difference in our ability to recruit this year versus last year in the offseason. When I say that Team Boneyard and our collective and NIL is the number one factor that will shape the future of our football program, I am dead serious. We have a very talented roster right now as we start to kick off the season and NIL is a big piece of that. None of our kids are making ginormous amounts, but they're able to live comfortably and they're able to pay their bills. We're able to allow them to do some things, which I think is really good, but that is a big piece for the future of our of our program here."

On Naming Jake Garcia As The Starting Quarterback:
"Well, it was a highly competitive competition, and both Jake and Katin (Houser) are very talented players. They will both help our program this year and it was a very tough decision to pick between the two. Just speaking on Jake, I felt particularly in scrimmage settings, I saw a lot of the same things I saw in his film from Miami. He is very poised, cool, and confident. When things break down around him, he does not panic. He's able to make throws and make decisions in the middle of chaos, which you know, as soon as that ball kicks off on August 31, virtually every snap of the season there's going to be some level of chaos and your ability to execute in that setting is going to a long way towards us being successful when you're the quarterback."

On Which Players Have Been Impressive During Preseason Camp:
"It's hard to pick out one. I'm pleased with a lot of players and when you start talking about surprises, it's somebody that you didn't expect to come along the way they have. I think that we have a couple of freshmen who we expected them to be good players in time, but you never know with freshmen. I think on the defensive side of the ball, you talk about DeMarius Hines and Ja'Marley Riddle. We anticipate both of those kids playing for us this year and that's not something that I necessarily anticipated coming into fall camp. You look on the offensive side of the ball at Yannick Smith. I expect him to play for us this year and certainly we had a very high opinion of Yannick coming in, but you just don't know how ready they are to function in that setting out there. I would say probably those three are the biggest surprises for me."

On If Any Players Have Complained About Their Rating In College Football 25:
"Well, I haven't polled any of my players on what their rating is so we haven't had a whole lot of discussion about that, but I would tell them that whatever their rating is going to depend on what they do on game day. If they don't like their rating, they better work a little bit harder."

On His Experience From Last Season's Quarterback Situation:
"Last year didn't go too well in that room. If you wanted to pinpoint one piece, it is that we lost a lot of close ball games last year. We were in the situation to win virtually every game in the fourth quarter, but we did not operate very well at that position. We talked about NIL a while ago. We talked about other factors. I think that going back, I'd probably worry less about keeping the players I had on the roster, and I'd focus more on making sure that we had more known commodities. We had hoped that Mason (Garcia) was going to be a guy that could step in and lead the offense, and it turned out that was not the case. Trying to play two quarterbacks the way we did last year is not something that anybody has in their vision of something that's going to be successful. Saying that, I do anticipate both Katin and Jake will play this year. There's no doubt. In college football, you never know from one day to the next. We're blessed to have both. I would say you've got a chance to see Raheim Jeter at some point this year. He's improved drastically, but I do feel comfortable that we have the talent in that room that we did not have a year ago to successfully lead a highly productive and explosive offense."

Players Mentioned

Jake Garcia

DeMarius Hines

Raheim Jeter

Ja'Marley Riddle

Yannick Smith

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