East Carolina football, under John Thompson, was going nowhere at a break-the-bank pace. That's why you can dispute the timing but not the wisdom of Thompson's exit after only two seasons.

New ECU athletics director Terry Holland had little choice except to force a quick change.

One more season like 2003 and 2004, and the school's once-formidable fan base would be dangerously depleted. Season-ticket sales for '05 would have nose-dived.

That's the price paid by a school such as ECU for a bad hiring decision in its most important sport.

From the moment he was picked by then-athletics director Mike Hamrick to succeed Steve Logan, Thompson was a long shot to survive. He arrived with no head-coaching experience, no feel for putting together a staff and no knowledge about the school or its recruiting base.

Thompson's enthusiasm and energy could not have been more impressive. He just wasn't prepared to handle the job he landed.

It was a recipe for a losing spiral that Thompson was unlikely to reverse during the remainder of his contract.

If not now, the need to find a new coach would have arisen during or after the 2005 season. Thompson was learning on the job how to be a head coach, but he was learning too slowly for a school so spiritually and financially dependent on a competitive football team.

A costly mistake had been made by the previous administration, but it fell to Holland and new chancellor Steve Ballard to address it.

To fix the problem, Holland won't gamble any more than is absolutely necessary. He won't pull a Hamrick and chase a wild hunch.

Many ECU fans will push for Logan's return. Jim Donnan and Dick Sheridan will have support. So will William & Mary's Jim Laycock and Furman's Bob Lamb. Any of those five would have a much better chance of succeeding than Thompson.

Holland's smartest move would be to raid Wake Forest for Jim Grobe. It probably wouldn't happen. Grobe has declined opportunities to leave Wake in the past.

But he is the perfect hiring model. He arrived at Wake from Ohio as an already experienced, fundamentally solid head coach with a seasoned staff in tow.

Like Sheridan at N.C. State from 1986 through '92, Grobe didn't need 75 blue-chip recruits to make the program competitive. Logan did the same thing at ECU, as did Donnan at Marshall before landing the Georgia job.

The Pirates are never going to out-recruit the top 20 programs or several schools in the neighboring ACC.

At Greenville, games have to be won with coaching and programming more than raw talent. But it can be done.

Plus, the timing could be worse.

The next head coach will arrive with N.C. State coming off its first losing season under Chuck Amato and with North Carolina still fighting its way back up. In the bigger, tougher ACC, it will not be easy for State and Carolina to dominate the regional landscape year after year.

Finally, Thompson's departure allows ECU to at least start the healing process.

The decision to fire Logan made no sense whatsoever, and his many loyalists could not forget it. The unity that made ECU special was lost. Thompson became the lightning rod for those offended. The more he lost -- and lost ugly -- the more that resentment in the ranks grew.

That mood should mellow now. Former chancellor William Muse is gone. Hamrick is gone. And now Thompson.

Mistakes were made, and hopefully lessons were learned.

It's time for ECU to move on and up.

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