East Carolina football will be looking for a new coach for the 2025 season after firing Mike Houston on Sunday, effective immediately. The Pirates lost 45-28 at No. 23 Army on Saturday, falling to 3-4 on the season and 1-2 in the American with five games left on the schedule.
Houston was 27-38 with ECU in five-plus seasons, including a 15-28 record against American competition and was bowl eligible for just two seasons.
Defensive coordinator Blake Harrell has been named the interim coach for the remainder of the season.
“After a comprehensive evaluation of our football program, I informed Mike Houston this morning that we are making a change in leadership,” ECU athletic director Jon Gilbert said in a statement. “This was a very difficult decision. Mike has led our program the last five plus seasons with tremendous class and has positively impacted so many student-athletes. After earning back-to-back bowl invitations, we looked poised for continued success. Unfortunately, we have not seen the results we all want, and a change is needed to move the program forward. We have high expectations and those are not changing.”
Houston brought high expectations upon his arrival from James Madison, where he won an FCS national championship in 2016, finished as the national runner-up in 2017 and as a top-10 team in 2018. But finding immediate results proved difficult and it took a couple seasons for ECU to finally break through with their first bowl invitations since 2015 in 2021 and 2022. But reloading after that 2022 season proved difficult with a depleted roster, and the Pirates took a major step back with a 2-10 campaign in 2023.
The offseason heading into 2024 included a change at offensive coordinator as well as the addition of two new quarterbacks and several other contributors through the transfer portal. But in the first seven games were a couple of disappointing and potentially devastating results for Houston’s future. ECU held halftime leads at Liberty and against Appalachian State at home, and earlier this month got blown out by in-state conference rival Charlotte in a 55-24 defeat. The Pirates entered 2024 with a schedule that set up for an impressive win count and bowl contention, but failing to capitalize on those early opportunities has the school looking to get the process started on a new direction for the program.
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