Pitt's Heather Lyke helped rebuild Eastern Michigan's program

DETROIT – The Quick Lane Bowl between Pitt and Eastern Michigan on Thursday night held special meaning for Heather Lyke beyond the Panthers’ 34-30 victory.

How could it not?

She hired one coach (Chris Creighton at Eastern Michigan) and extended the contract of the other (Pitt’s Pat Narduzzi).

Lyke, Pitt’s athletic director since 2017, was four months on the job at Eastern Michigan when she ousted coach Ron English with three games left in the 2013 season. Eventually, she hired Creighton, who had been a head coach at three schools for the previous 17 seasons without a losing record. And he’s presided over a football rebirth in Ypsilanti, Mich.

“I felt that Eastern Michigan needed somebody who knew how to be a head coach and had done it and built it somewhere, wherever it had been,” she said before the game Thursday. “You have to learn to become a head coach.

“He’s a guy who had been a head coach for 17 years when I hired him, never had a losing season, won multiple championships at small places, right? And never had an aspiration to be on a stage like this (a FBS bowl game) and is not in it for that reason.”

She called Creighton “an incredible leader, a transformative leader. He’s done things at Eastern Michigan I don’t know that anyone has been able to do or sustain and he’s done it in a first-class way.”

Creighton, who had a record of 136-46 at Ottawa (Kansas), Wabash and Drake, eagerly offered details of his first conversation with Lyke.

“I love telling that story,” he said. “Just a major time in my life and my family’s life.”

Creighton said their initial, unsolicited phone conversation lasted one hour and four minutes. At one point, Creighton’s wife, Heather. wondered who her husband was talking to for so long.

“My wife had come down — I was in the basement — and she had come down the stairs during the phone call basically going, ‘Who are you talking to?’

“I was just like, ‘Just wait, honey.’ But I remember getting off the phone with Heather and I said to my wife, ‘If that woman means what she just said, they’re looking for me at Eastern Michigan.’ ”

When Lyke called, Creighton was the coach at Drake. With six consecutive winning seasons and two Pioneer Football League co-championships, Creighton was happy in Des Moines, Ia.

“A place that we absolutely loved and were not looking to leave by any means,” he said.

“We did not have any ties or anything like that (to Eastern Michigan) at the time, but fortunately we had a few weeks to think through it and to try to figure out if that was the right thing for us as a family,” he said.

Meanwhile, Lyke “got a lot of ‘no’s’ from a lot of other people,” Creighton said.

“In the end, I was the fortunate one to be able to come.

“I just look at that time as, it was her first job as the athletic director and an opportunity for us together to try to come and do something really special at Eastern Michigan. “(It was) something that a lot of people just didn’t think was possible to do. We’re not there yet, but we’re going to keep going until we get there.”

In the eight years before Creighton arrived, the Eagles compiled three seasons of 2-10, a winless (0-12) effort in 2009 and assorted records of 1-11, 3-9, 4-8 and 6-6.

The losing continued under Creighton in 2014 (2-10) and 2015 (1-11). But when he spurred the team to 7-6 finishes in 2016 and 2018, they marked only the second and third winning seasons in the previous three decades.

Eastern Michigan (6-7 this year) earned a second consecutive bowl invitation for the first time in school history. The Eagles lost to Georgia Southern, 23-21, in the 2018 Camellia Bowl.

Creighton’s 25 victories over the 2016-2019 seasons are the school’s best in a four-year stretch since 1986-89. Its 34-31 victory this season at Illinois marked the Eagles’ third against a Big Ten team in the past three seasons (Rutgers in 2017 and Purdue in 2018). All were played on the road.

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