Eastern Michigan reaching new heights under Creighton
Eastern YPSILANTI, MICH. — Michigan’s football team has stepped out of the shadows cast by the neighboring University of Michigan and four professional teams just down the road in the Motor City.
The Eagles (7-5) will face Georgia Southern (9-3) in the Camellia Bowl today, earning a spot in postseason play for the second time in three years and just the third time since the school started playing major college football in the mid-1970s.
“Five years ago, there were very few people on this Earth that believed that was possible,” coach Chris Creighton said in his office earlier this week. “Now, we have some evidence that it is indeed possible.”
Creighton, his staff and players have taken the program to unprecedented heights.
Creighton, in his fifth year at Eastern, knows what he’s selling to recruits. He is a familiar face in Ypsilanti, a working-class town with 20,000 residents easy to drive by on I-94 if the destination is, say, Ann Arbor. The mighty Wolverines play in the Big House, just 6 miles from the Eagles’ Rynearson Stadium.
Eastern Michigan hired Creighton in 2014 after he led Drake University, Wabash College and Ottawa University in Kansas. He didn’t have a losing record until his debut season with the Eagles in 2014 when they were 2-10 and the next season, they took a step back and won only one game.
Eastern Michigan won seven games two years ago — the most in a quarter-century — and earned a trip to the Bahamas Bowl. This year, the Eagles won enough to make postseason plans again.
Eastern Michigan created a buzz on social media when it posted a video of Creighton asking for his team to be selected for a bowl and setting up his players to lip sync the Grammy-winning song “Say My Name” by Destiny’s Child. Even with seven wins, a Mid-American Conference team can get left home during the postseason.
The Eagles got what they wanted Dec. 2, but they also got less than three weeks to prepare for the trip to Montgomery, Alabama, to play a team for the first time.