Ruffin McNeill Relishes Opportunity to Return Home and Coach at East Carolina

GREENVILLE, N.C. -- Ruffin McNeill hurriedly taps a text message on his cell phone as he sits in his office next to Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium on the campus of East Carolina University. A steamy August morning practice has ended and meetings are ahead.

It's a happily busy time for McNeill. He is doing what he has done for each of the last 30 years, maybe what he was born to do: Coach football.

In that sense, nothing has changed. And yet everything is different. That McNeill is sitting in this head coach's office, on this campus, leading this team, is beyond anything he could have planned or imagined a year ago when he was defensive coordinator under head coach Mike Leach at Texas Tech.

"Me being here and now is not by accident, it's too coincidental to be coincidental,'' said McNeill, 51, a North Carolina native whose faith assures him that it all must have been guided by a greater power.

Maybe one with a gallows sense of humor.

A lot had to play out for McNeill to wind up at his alma mater in Greenville, some of it glorious, some of it fortuitous, some of it downright ugly. But as he prepares East Carolina for its season opener against Tulsa Sept. 5, instead of leading Texas Tech as he once thought he should, McNeill would rather marvel at the path that led him here than seethe over it.

"There's no anger in me,'' he said. "I had no regrets and I learned that a long time ago: If you do your best, the one satisfying thing in life is being able to say I have no regrets.''

He is perhaps one of the few who could say that after all that happened in Lubbock beginning last December. That's when when Red Raiders wide receiver Adam James sustained a concussion in practice. James claimed he was mistreated by Leach and was forced to stay in a "closet" while sitting out practice. Leach denied the claim, but was suspended by the administration on Dec. 28, six days before the team was to take the field against Michigan State in the Alamo Bowl. McNeill was named interim head coach. Two days later, Leach was fired.

The firestorm that followed could have sidetracked and sunk the team. But it didn't. It was McNeill who kept the Red Raiders from folding, according to some.

"I never felt like he aspired to be a head coach, but that week of the bowl game, having the opportunity to be the interim head coach, I saw a level of expertise, a level of charisma, a level of want there that I hadn't seen before and it just seemed natural,'' said Brian Mitchell, the cornerbacks coach at Texas Tech who is now defensive coordinator at East Carolina.

"And you're usually looking to those head coaches to have some of those intangibles that most people don't have, that CEO-type quality, with the wisdom, the knowledge, the humility, he bottled all that up in five days and put his arm around all of us and here we go.''

McNeill walked arm-in-arm with his players into the Alamodome and led the Red Raiders to a 41-31 victory against Michigan State on Jan. 2 in front of a national television audience.

"It was exciting,'' McNeill said. "It was the most challenging time of my coaching career. At the same time, it was the most rewarding time of my coaching career.''

And none of it made a difference. Not the poise. Not the professionalism. Not the performance. In the end, the university decided against making McNeill the permanent head coach. Instead, it chose Tommy Tuberville, who was 85-40 at Auburn, including 13-0 in 2004 before resigning after a 5-7 season in 2008.

A week after leading the Red Raiders to that emotion-filled victory, McNeill was suddenly out of a job.

"It was one of the toughest weeks of my coaching career,'' McNeill acknowledged. "I felt like we had done everything we could, not just that week but the nine years prior of being a stronghold in the community, doing the right things.''

At the annual American Football Coaches Association convention in Orlando the following week, McNeill received an outpouring of support. He said he was approached by hundreds, maybe thousands, of coaches.

"When I attended the coaching convention every coach came up to me and they were angry,'' he said. "And I was not. Disappointed, but not angry.''

Maybe that's because McNeill didn't read the internet message boards after Tuberville was hired. More than a few suggested race could have played a role in the decision. McNeill is African-American. Tuberville is white.

"The thought crosses your mind, yeah, because, he had done everything you could ask a guy to do,'' said Lincoln Riley, the inside wide receivers coach at Texas Tech who was hired as offensive coordinator at East Carolina.

"He put his heart and soul into that program and he was a big part of why we were. We went from just having a good offense to having a good football team. He was a big part of that, because the defense dramatically improved.

"Yeah, it crosses your mind. That's just the world we live in today, unfortunately.''

But it's not the world McNeill chooses to see.

"I hope that wasn't a factor,'' he said. "I know it's 2010 now, so I hope race did not enter into it.''

For McNeill, it didn't matter why he was not hired. All he knew was that he needed a job.

It didn't take long to find one. Within days, he accepted a position as co-defensive coordinator at Stanford. He was on his way to California.

Or so he thought. McNeill had earlier brushed aside a call from Terry Holland, the athletic director at East Carolina, before heading to Stanford for an interview with Jim Harbaugh. While McNeill was en route back to Lubbock, Holland called again.

Funny, a few weeks earlier Holland knew nothing of McNeill, a cornerback at East Carolina from 1976-80 who also coached there in 1992. That was until the Alamo Bowl.

"I did not know his name before that,'' Holland said. "He's been gone from this area so long. I don't think many people who followed East Carolina knew Ruffin when he played."

East Carolina needed a head coach because Skip Holtz, 38-27 with four bowl-game appearances in five years, had just skipped town. Holtz grabbed the head coaching job at South Florida after its coach, Jim Leavitt, had his own Leach moment. Leavitt was dismissed after being accused of grabbing and slapping a player.

Convinced that East Carolina was serious in its pursuit after Holland's second call, McNeill flew in for the interview on Jan. 20. He was hired on Jan. 21.

McNeill brought several assistant coaches and other staff with him, all of whom will likely never forget what they went through at Texas Tech last season.

"I think it's really tough for all of us,'' Riley said. "I can live with getting fired or not having a job if I don't do my job. But if we do all those things like we did there, when you get fired, it gives you a chip on your shoulder. It was hard for every one of us. Every one of us on that staff, most of us that are now here, we have a chip on our shoulders from that.''

If that chip is on McNeill's shoulder, it doesn't show. He is where he wants to be. At his press conference, McNeill promised that he would not treat this like a steppingstone job as his predecessors had done. This was his final destination after 30 years mostly on the road.

The impact was immediate. McNeill's hiring, and the decision to bring Texas Tech's high powered offense to Greenville, helped convince former Boston College quarterback Dominique Davis to recommit to East Carolina. Among the happy training campers is wide receiver Dwayne Harris, who is on the Biletnikoff Award watch list. He expects his production to soar.

"If you think about it, it's too wild. You couldn't make it up. What happened to us, my wife, my family, my daughters, has been a blessing. You couldn't write it up any better."
-- Ruffin McNeill, East Carolina head coach "This is like a dream come true,'' he said. "I would have never thought they would have brought the spread offense to East Carolina.''

Harris isn't the only one whose dream came true.

"It's home,'' said McNeill, who grew up not too far away in Lumberton, N.C., where his father still lives. Much of his family is in North Carolina, including one daughter in Greensboro and another who attends Appalachian State in Boone. "We were coming back home.''

After his mother died in 2007, McNeill said he had prayed for a chance to move back home someday. Now he's sitting in the head coach's office at East Carolina.

Who would have figured that a year ago?

"If you think about it, it's too wild,'' he said. "You couldn't make it up.

"What happened to us, my wife, my family, my daughters, has been a blessing.

"You couldn't write it up any better.''