The first football game in Coastal Carolina history came in 2003, well before the school joined the Sun Belt Conference. And yet, the game provided an ending that is still remembered with vivid detail.
“One of the more storybook type games that you could ever have,” recalled Matt Hogue, then the play-by-play radio announcer and now Coastal Carolina’s Athletics Director.
By his recollection, the Chanticleers marched 97-yards down the field for the winning touchdown without throwing a single pass.
“All running plays,” he said.
The decisive score came with less than 10 seconds left on the clock. When time expired, fans stormed the field and tore down a goal post.
A Hollywood ending, Hogue called it.
“That’s kind of how it all started,” he said.
With college football celebrating 150 years of history this season, the Sun Belt is taking a look back at the history of the conference’s 10 football-playing schools.
Despite its brief history, Coastal Carolina has achieved plenty. The Chanticleers won a Big South Conference title in their second season, reached the FCS playoffs in their fourth season and in 2010 began a string of five playoff appearances in six seasons before a transition to the Football Bowl Subdivision level and the Sun Belt Conference.
Coastal completed the 2016 season having been ranked in the FCS Top-25 in 59 consecutive ranking periods, including 37 weeks in the Top 10 and 10 weeks as the nation’s No. 1 team.
Among the more significant wins in program history came in 2005 against defending FCS national champion, James Madison.
“A watershed moment,” Hogue said.
“I don’t think anybody expected us to compete,” he said about the 31-27 home victory in the second week of the season. “That really set the tone for how great our horizon could be. Once we did that, it was less of, ‘Hey, this is (nothing more than) a nice story.’”
Another momentous win came eight seasons later, when Coastal won at No. 4 Montana 42-35 in the second round of the 2013 FCS playoffs. That win put the Chanticleers up against North Dakota State, which won that game and then went on to win the national championship that season.
In Coastal’s six playoff appearances, the season ended with a loss to the eventual national champion three times: to Appalachian State in 2006 and to North Dakota State in 2013 and 2014. By then, the football program showed enough success on the field to earn an invite from the Sun Belt Conference to join the league after a transition period in the 2016 season.
This is Coastal’s third season in the Sun Belt with second-year coach Jamey Chadwell thinking more sustained success is on the way.
“In a short amount of time we’ve reached a lot of success that a lot of programs playing for a long time have never had,” Chadwell said while at Sun Belt Football Media Day. “I think in the FBS level we will eventually get there as well. In the FCS (the success) came relatively quick.”
Chadwell is the third coach in program history. The first two posted winning overall records, with David Bennett winning more than 61 percent of his games over nine seasons and Joe Moglia winning more than 71 percent over six.
Success is coming. In Week 2 of this season, Chadwell and the Chanticleers won 12-7 on the road against Kansas, recording the program’s first-ever win over an Autonomy Five Conference opponent.
Coastal plays home games inside 20,000-seat Brooks Stadium with a turf that is colored teal between the goal lines and bronze in the end zone, a color scheme designed to have a beach-like appearance. “Surf turf,” Chadwell called it.
The stadium also has undergone five expansion projects since the inaugural season with a seating capacity of just over 6,000. The most recent of those projects added second level of seating and premium suites on the west side of the stadium to put the capacity at its current number.
Also included in one of those recent expansion projects was the naming of the field house beyond one of the end zones for current NFL player Josh Norman and his brother, Marrio. The naming of the facility came after Josh Norman’s gift to the school was the largest given by a former student-athlete.
In the 16 seasons since the program began, Coastal has won more than 71 percent of its home games. All this has been part of a formula that has helped the program move to a higher level of college football sooner than many might have expected.
“I don’t think anybody would envision in less than 20 years, we would be playing at the level we are, playing in the type of facility we expanded to,” Hogue said. “It’s a pretty fascinating story in a short period of time.”