(02-18-2016 11:52 PM)PirateTreasureNC Wrote: http://eastcarolina.247sports.com/Board/...s-43795975
Some follow up...
http://www.reflector.com/sports/ecu/comp...es-3140447
The most interesting aspects of that are:
J Batt, executive director of the Pirate Club, shared some encouraging, perhaps surprising, numbers with the board. The Pirate Club raised a record $7,768,000 in 2015, an 11 percent increase from 2014 and 26 percent hike over the last two years. Batt added that the 10,325 Student Pirate Club members represent an all-time high and noted the opening of Raleigh and Charlotte Pirate Club offices last year helped as well.
Students make up a large percentage of the 16,828 Pirate Club members but Batt said East Carolina has the largest fundraising booster club in the American Athletic Conference “by several thousand” and that they have not been stingy with their donations to the Pirates’ sporting interests.
“We’ve raised significantly more, to the tune of about $3 million, than our closest competitor,” Batt said.
Compher added, “In our conference, SMU, (Central Florida), others, they may have an annual fund but it doesn’t all go to pay student-athlete scholarships. It may go to debt reduction. It may go to upgrading. It may go to a number of different things. Because we don’t get any state assistance, all of ours goes to the scholarship fund.”
The original $2 million obligation East Carolina had after firing football coach Ruffin McNeill will wind up being “well under a million dollars,” Floyd said.
McNeill getting a two-year contract to be the inside linebackers coach at Virginia, and other members of McNeill’s staff getting jobs elsewhere, helped greatly ease the financial burden for the Pirates.
“It takes care of all but possibly the last three months of our obligation (to McNeill and staff),” Floyd said.