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Sitcking it out
One of the guys I’ll miss most after Friday’s Liberty Bowl is a guy who will forever be an unsung hero in the East Carolina football program.
J.J. Milbrook never took a fair share of the credit for the turnaround that’s happened at ECU, one largely made possible by a core of fifth-year players who stuck it out when everyone was telling them to get out of ECU while they still could.
Instead, people like Milbrook, a strong safety, and linebacker Pierre Bell decided they didn’t want to run away from the disaster that was a 3-20 football team in the two seasons with coach John Thompson at the helm.
The players who did flee the scene have long since been forgotten. The ones like Milbrook who stayed have forever etched themselves into the program’s history.
Ever polite and well spoken, Milbrook is often overlooked despite his tenacity, willingness to play hurt and ability to lay serious licks on opponents. Milbrook beginnings at ECU was a much different time than the present.
“It was at a time when the previous coaching staff got released,” said Milbrook, who came to ECU from Miami’s Pace High. “A lot of us wanted to transfer, but we stuck it out. We thank God every day that we stuck it out because look at where we are now. We’re playing for another title.”
Although he’s been forced to split time with fellow senior Leon Best because of injuries, the No. 20 jersey has been a constant for ECU the last four years.
When he arrived, Milbrook was part of a team that has been stripped of its pride, and it’s ability and will to win.
When Skip Holtz arrived in 2005, many players were understandably still on the fence about their futures at ECU. Milbrook was one of them.
“Back then, being a part of East Carolina football, we didn’t have a coach, we didn’t know who was going to be our coach. We didn’t know what to expect. We were pretty much just working out on our own until coach Holtz came in. It was kind of a dire period because a lot of guys didn’t make it as far as grades, a lot of guys transferred, and he had a small handful that stayed.”
Milbrook, like most of his teammates, believes everything happens for a reason.
That’s why even though his Flordia friends at schools across the country were telling them to head their direction, he stayed.
“Transferring crossed my mind a lot,” Milbrook said. “But the word got back to coach (Steve) Janski, the assistant coach that recruited me in ‘04, and told me not to transfer, that things would work out.”
Bell, too, became a star at ECU because of his steadfast devotion to the ECU program.
Like many of his teammates at the time, leaving was naturally a consideration at the end of the 2004 season.
“There’s probably only four or five of us left from that class out of 26 people,” Bell said. “Everybody left for their own reasons. That was a dark period of time for ECU football. But thank God (athletic director) Terry Holland hired the right man.”
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