ECU selling tickets to "virtual bowl" - great idea!

[Southern Miss Alum]

Sunday, December 14, 2003 12:00AM EST

ECU selling tickets to 'virtual bowl'
Fan comes up with way to raise money

By AL MYATT, Staff Writer

GREENVILLE -- East Carolina went 1-11 in the 2003 football season, but bowl tickets are becoming the rage among Pirates fans since Doug Groome of Charlotte expressed a novel concept with an Internet post Wednesday.

The Pirate Club did $1,600 in bowl ticket sales Friday, said assistant director Matt Maloney, and the impromptu promotion may be just getting started.

"I was looking on the Internet at the number of players we were recruiting in Florida and realized the additional cost of out-of-state scholarships at ECU," said, Groome, 46, a financial advisor who graduated from ECU with an accounting degree in 1979. "I thought we need to help pay for these guys, and I thought about the money that people were used to spending when we go to bowls."

NEWS OBSERVER: Pirates selling tickets to "virtual bowl"