East Carolina canceled its trip to Blacksburg yesterday afternoon, and there are lots of opinions floating around on various aspects of the game, the announcements, etc. I’ll try to talk about some of those topics today.

Perspective: Hurricanes vs. Football

Hurricane Matthew came up the East coast in early October of 2016. Originally a Category 5 hurricane, Matthew was responsible for 47 deaths in the United States, 26 of which occurred in the state of North Carolina.

That hurricane didn’t stop North Carolina from hosting Virginia Tech, or NC State from hosting Notre Dame. At the time, I was surprised that the games were played, because games require emergency first responders to be present. To me, something seems inherently wrong with using a certain percentage of the state’s emergency responders for a couple of football games when people are dying in other parts of the state. Not that that was Virginia Tech’s fault. It wasn’t their home game, and it wasn’t their home state.

I’m probably not the only one who feels that way. I’m guessing that UNC, NC State, and the North Carolina government were all flooded with complaints about the games being played, and I’m guessing that experience caused officials at those schools to err on the side of caution this time around, and there’s a chance they got some pressure from the state government as well. UNC and NC State cancelled their home games on Tuesday, before ECU announced it was not traveling to Blacksburg. That was pretty early for cancellations, consider the forecast could (and did) change a lot.

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