MORGANTOWN - Fresno State gets a lot of attention - and deservedly so - for its football scheduling motto:

Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere.

East Carolina isn't quite that ambitious, but the Pirates don't exactly back down from too many challenges.

How about this: Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere within driving distance.

For East Carolina, Saturday's game with No. 8 West Virginia is really nothing out of the ordinary. The Pirates' four non-conference games, all within the first six dates of the season, are with Virginia Tech, West Virginia, North Carolina State and Virginia.

Granted, most Conference USA teams play at least a couple of teams from Bowl Championship Series conferences. A handful play three, including Marshall this season. But they also sneak in at least one lower-division team or a Division I-A bottom feeder.

Not the Pirates.

Fourth-year ECU coach Skip Holtz doesn't control the schedule. That's left up to athletic director Terry Holland, the former Virginia basketball coach. And Holtz doesn't get in his way.

"As I told him, 'You schedule them and I'll play them,' '' Holtz said. "I'm not going to complain or moan or groan or gripe. This is who we have to line up to play and it's our job as coaches to get competitive, roll our sleeves up and get into the meeting rooms and find out what we have to do to be competitive.''

East Carolina's schedules have always been ambitious. Before joining Conference USA in 1997, Steve Logan's teams would routinely play the best teams from the ACC, SEC and Big East. In 1995, for example, four of ECU's first five games were road games at Tennessee, Syracuse and Illinois and a home game with West Virginia. In 1987 the Pirates played Florida State, Miami, Virginia Tech, Illinois, South Carolina, N.C. State and West Virginia.

MORGANTOWN - Fresno State gets a lot of attention - and deservedly so - for its football scheduling motto:

Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere.

East Carolina isn't quite that ambitious, but the Pirates don't exactly back down from too many challenges.

How about this: Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere within driving distance.

For East Carolina, Saturday's game with No. 8 West Virginia is really nothing out of the ordinary. The Pirates' four non-conference games, all within the first six dates of the season, are with Virginia Tech, West Virginia, North Carolina State and Virginia.

Granted, most Conference USA teams play at least a couple of teams from Bowl Championship Series conferences. A handful play three, including Marshall this season. But they also sneak in at least one lower-division team or a Division I-A bottom feeder.

Not the Pirates.

Fourth-year ECU coach Skip Holtz doesn't control the schedule. That's left up to athletic director Terry Holland, the former Virginia basketball coach. And Holtz doesn't get in his way.

"As I told him, 'You schedule them and I'll play them,' '' Holtz said. "I'm not going to complain or moan or groan or gripe. This is who we have to line up to play and it's our job as coaches to get competitive, roll our sleeves up and get into the meeting rooms and find out what we have to do to be competitive.''

East Carolina's schedules have always been ambitious. Before joining Conference USA in 1997, Steve Logan's teams would routinely play the best teams from the ACC, SEC and Big East. In 1995, for example, four of ECU's first five games were road games at Tennessee, Syracuse and Illinois and a home game with West Virginia. In 1987 the Pirates played Florida State, Miami, Virginia Tech, Illinois, South Carolina, N.C. State and West Virginia.

Times have changed dramatically in recent years, though, with the creation of the BCS, conference realignments and the expansion to a 12-game schedule. Teams are scheduling differently, and almost everyone buys wins.

But East Carolina's future non-conference schedules don't include one yet. The school is scheduled fully through 2011 and in part beyond that, and the only non-conference opponent that isn't from an automatic-qualifying BCS conference is Navy, which certainly does not qualify as any slouch.

The philosophy of Holtz and Holland is apparently that if the system is set up to make it difficult for non-BCS schools to get into a BCS bowl, why not just schedule those teams right up front?

"With the bowl games structured the way they are and the BCS games structured the way they are, it's very difficult for a school like East Carolina - or any school in Conference USA or the MAC or the WAC - to be able to play in a BCS game,'' Holtz said. "I think Coach Holland's attitude was, 'You know what, if they won't let us play in those games at the end of the year then we'll schedule them during the year.' ''

Where the Pirates differ from a team like Fresno State is that they aren't making long trips, and there are two good reasons for that. For one, Conference USA stretches from Marshall down to Central Florida and all the way to Texas-El Paso, so league teams are traveling plenty already.

Just as significantly, though, East Carolina is surrounded by plenty of BCS schools in the ACC, SEC and Big East. There's no need to travel to find an opponent.

The bottom line, though, is that while playing the bigger schools might reduce East Carolina's chances for success, that's the level at which the Pirates want to play themselves, so why not jump in with both feet?

"It's not saying, 'Let's just line up and beat them all.' I think what it is is that this will be a great measuring stick for where our program is,'' Holtz said. "Three years ago we had won three games in two years. And now all of a sudden we're lining up and at least trying to compete with some of the better teams in the country.

"I think it's a tall challenge for our football team, not only to learn how to win against the schedule we were playing, but to come over that hump and raise the bar that much more and be able to compete at this level.''

Reach Dave Hickman at 348-1734 or dphickm...@aol.com.