ECU Brings NCAT It’s Money
The second half of the 2010s in HBCU football belonged to North Carolina A&T. There were several big wins, including upsets over Kent State and UNC-Charlotte in back-to-back seasons.
But A&T’s win over East Carolina on Sept. 2, 2018 might have been the program’s biggest. Outside of the North Carolina’s ACC programs and East Carolina, when its good, is often seen as competing with Appalachian State for secondary status in the state’s college football hierchy. NC A&T was coming off a Celebration Bowl and HBCU national championship and a perfect season in 2017, but it was still looked at as an underdog against ECU.
The game was supposed to be played on Saturday, Sept. 1, but Hurricane Florence had battered southeastern North Carolina, where ECU is located. There was reportedly talk about calling the game off, and legend has it there was a threat that ECU would sue NCAT if it didn’t come back to play the next day.
All A&T did was come in and hold court in Greenville, coming away with a 28-23 victory along with its $330k check.
The biggest moment that came from that game happened in the locker room. First-year head coach Sam Washington joined his team for an electric celebration that climaxed when he yelled “Tell them to bring me my money.”
A quick screengrab of the official NC A&T video later by HBCU Gameday, (we were the first to break it down, look at the time stamp) and the clip went uber viral. Two years later, that video is iconic as the win that it followed.
Moral of the story: Special things happen in HBCU football on Sept. 2.