Eastern Michigan Athletics
A Walk Through History: Battling Adversity-We Can Make It If We Try
9/26/2019 10:32:00 AM | Football
Author T.C. Cameron tells unknown tales from EMU Football's Past
YPSILANTI, Mich. (EMUEagles.com) -- A quote from Mahatma Gandhi adorns the entrance to Eastern Michigan's team meeting room at the new Student-Athlete Performance Center:
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
After a third win against the Big Ten in as many seasons, no one's laughing at Eastern Michigan anymore. The team's 34-31 win at Illinois two weeks ago was remarkable because it gives EMU more Big Ten road wins since 2017 than six members of that conference.
But how coach Chris Creighton delivered this crowning achievement after 128 years of football at Eastern is the backstory of a program that struggled for three decades against the 'Power 5,' but refused to give up when so many voices, internally and externally, urged, in fact demanded, it throw in the proverbial towel on playing major college football.
"When I got here six years ago, we were not in a healthy spot, physically, mentally or emotionally," Creighton says.
The program has pivoted in all three categories. Radio play-by-play voice Matt Shepard notes the "strong, physical fast bodies" now populating Eastern's roster. After years of losing, Eastern now enters each football game expecting to win, evidenced by the lack of a wild celebration after Chad Ryland's game-winning, 24-yard kick in Champaign.
That was even more obvious the week after beating Illinois. Leading Central Connecticut State, 28-15, with 11 minutes remaining, a 37-minute weather delay ensued. After play resumed, the Eagles found themselves down, 29-28 with 18 seconds to play. That's when Mathew Sexton raced in from the left side untouched, blocked a punt and caught the ball without breaking stride, then streaked 30 yards for the game-winning touchdown with just 10 seconds to play.
It was the play of the day in all of college football. If EMU had no business being down, 29-28, they had no business blocking a punt and scoring with 10 seconds left, either. Somehow, Creighton's crew found a way to win.
"It's adversity," said Sexton to the media following the CCSU game. "Without adversity, it doesn't make a team great"
The Birth of 'E Tough'
The obstacles facing EMU football when athletic director Heather Lyke hired Creighton in 2014 were larger than rebuilding relationships and establishing expectations.
"We needed someone who been a head coach and built success at places where it was hard to accomplish," said Lyke, who described her phone as "blown up" by athletic directors, head coaches and agents advocating for assistant coaches and coordinators in search of their first head coaching job before hiring Creighton. "Eastern was a really hard lift, and I needed someone who already knew who they were as a head coach and wanted to be here not for what Eastern could do for them, but what they could do for Eastern. Immediately, that was Chris."
A myriad of other issues were standing in front of success, too. Dating back to 1991, the Huron logo issue was persistent, Lyke saying, "If I heard about the Hurons once, I heard a 100 more times." There was the excuse of being too close to Michigan to succeed, and because Eastern hadn't been to a bowl game in 29 years, no one within EMU's athletic department had expectations or knowledge of success.
"There was a massive boulder in front of us, a third of it buried in the ground, and we had to dig it up and clear out of our way," Creighton said of a program then performing as a giant, financial blob.
The birth of 'The Factory' concept came in February of that first year, when strength coach Ron McKeefrey, pried away from the Cincinnati Bengals, asked Creighton if he'd like to hold agility drills in Rynearson Stadium, where six inches of snow blanketed the turf.
Creighton loved the idea and the two coaches planned a trap to lure the team outside. McKeefrey began jabbing the players, calling them soft, unable to handle the elements, as they stretched inside the training bubble.
"Our players took the bait and said, 'We'll go outside!' When I heard this, I said, 'Great! We're going outside!'" Creighton said. "At first, they gave me the 'Are you serious?' look, but we had one of the best workouts of my entire career. I start shouting, 'We'll play anyone, anywhere, anytime, in a parking lot covered in broken glass, if that's what it takes!"
A few months later, with Eastern preparing to replace their FieldTurf — it was so old, it was no longer manufactured — Creighton turned his metaphor into reality. Rynearson Stadium looks like Pleasantville on television, but it's no parody to Creighton.
"The decision to put in a $500,000 gray field based on a 6-inch sample swatch had never been done before, but the symbolism for us is real and deep," Creighton said. "Heather and I looked at each other and said, 'We have to go for it.'"
The gray turf was part of a much larger re-brand. The birth of the block "E" as the primary athletic logo was Lyke's answer to unite former Hurons with the current Eagles. Every symbol, like the diamond-plating, the brick-busting entrance and the massive pipe wrench, as well as color codes and fonts on uniforms from adidas, comes with an uncanny amount of thoughtfulness. Creighton even requisitioned gray infill instead of black to ensure the field accurately matched his parking lot metaphor.
The Breakthrough Season
In the spring of 2016, Creighton's staff already faced the challenge of recruiting with a 3-21 record, an earthquake occurred. An HBO "Real Sports" story aired in late March detailed all that ailed EMU's football program. Much of Creighton's work went unspoken, and there was nothing real about the report's speculation about dropping football or dropping down to FCS or Division II. It triggered an avalanche of hardcore, negative press from Detroit's local media, the negative falsehoods parroted over and over. Literally every decision Eastern made was met with abject criticism.
"When the story broke, Chris walked into my office — it was very late in the evening — with a single piece of paper and handed it to me, and he had written 'Undeterred' on it," Lyke said. "That became our mantra. We had to be willing to take risks, but at the same time, stay focused and move forward in our mission of building a football program that would become a source of pride."
EMU Athletics' External Relations team created the "COMM1TTED" campaign to reassure EMU's fanbase. EMU wasn't surrendering its' Division I status or membership in the Mid-American Conference, and the campaign highlighted successes such as winning more overall MAC titles than any other conference school than more salacious reports obscured.
Undaunted, the Eagles secured the program's first bowl bid in 29 years when they beat Central Michigan, 26-21, at Rynearson. The Eagles also won three consecutive games for the time since 1994.
"In terms of our response to all that was against us, that season was magical," Creighton says.
Finally!
No one knows how far Eastern has come more than Jim Streeter, EMU's sports information director from 1975-2012. He watched Alex Agase, a college football Hall of Famer, refuse to use his influence to get Eastern plugged into a big-name game during Agase's tenure as athletic director from 1977-1981.
"Alex thought leaning on his contacts was beneath him," Streeter said. "Once we started to struggle in the early 1980s, it was impossible to get one of those games."
A big-name game finally came in 1988. Eastern lost, 44-0, at Arizona, and over the next 34 seasons and 42 more losses, the misery continued. After a hard, strategic look at scheduling — buoyed by her belief Creighton would have EMU in a competitive place by his fourth season, too — Lyke wrote the contracts with Purdue and Illinois. On the Tuesday before the 2017 game at Rutgers, Associate Athletic Director for Media Relations Greg Steiner told Creighton EMU had never won a Power 5 game.
"I decided to tell our players and use it to our advantage," Creighton said, "and suddenly, our guys, who love a challenge, had nothing to lose."
Paulie Fricano kicked the game-winning 24-yard field goal early in the fourth quarter, and EMU's defense made a pair of defensive stands to ensure a 16-13 advantage stood up.
With an $860,000 payout, the Associated Press declared the win EMU's biggest regular-season ever and described the celebratory scene to that of winning a major bowl game or a national title. But the slant favored shaming Rutgers more than celebrating Eastern's accomplishment.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you…"
"I'll never forget it," Creighton said. "We're 30 minutes from the media capital of the world, we win our first Power 5 and Big Ten game in school history, and the AP reporter is the only one in the room."
In 2018, Ryland's 24-yard field goal on the final play gave Eastern a 20-19 win over Purdue while netting EMU $550,000. The Boilermakers were stunned; another wild scene unfolded on the field…but no one showed up to talk the winning coach.
Another shaming was taking place, but the narrative pivoted after Purdue slaughtered No. 2 Ohio State on national television, 49-20, while Eastern won five of its last six games to earn a second bowl game invite in three seasons.
In defeating Illinois, the Eagles were more disappointed than elated in needing a game-winning drive to secure the win after leading the Illini, 31-17, in the fourth quarter. The victory came with a $1 million payout, but again, no one wanted to talk with the winning coach.
Creighton walked into the media room with Steiner singing Grover Washington's Just the Two of Us.
"This is what we've come to expect, so we just laugh about it," Creighton said.
You have to go back to the late 1980s when Eastern Michigan won more than 20 games in any four-year period, but after 22 wins in three-plus years, the message ought to be clear: ignoring EMU these days comes at your own peril.
— T.C. Cameron is the author of Miracle Maples (2019) and Navy Football: Return to Glory (2017). A 1995 graduate of EMU, he's lived in Annapolis, MD since 2009. Twitter: @ByTCCameron
