Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium has been used by East Carolina since opening in 1963; it replaced ECU's first on-campus stadium, College Field, which the Pirates used from 1949-1962.

NC State has an overall record of 2-3 at this field as of 2024, with each match being played as a non-conference game.

  * Non-conference games

Before World War II, East Carolina was titled East Carolina Teachers College, and had seen a primarily-female enrollment. Thanks to the GI Bill, however, as well as an increasingly diverse educational offering, East Carolina was in the midst of a rapid growth in all facets of college life, with the student body increasing rapidly in both number and gender. Sports, too, were on an upward trajectory: after playing an independent schedule for their first decade and a half, ECTC was admitted to the local North State League in 1947, despite some opposition over their lagging interest in athletics.

As the campus grew, so did their athletic and academic profile. In 1950, the school rebranded to East Carolina College, and by 1961 their enrollment of 5,200 rivaled that of major colleges in the state, and outpaced that of the North State Conference foes. Their student body became larger than the capacity of their home football venue, College Stadium (located about the present location of Brewster Building), which sat 5,000. It was hoped a new venue would land the Purple and Gold a coveted spot in the Southern Conference and help them find a better footing in athletics. One anonymous athletic director remarked prophetically (before the Pirates returned to independence in 1962) that "When they get their feet on the ground... the North State [Conference] won't be able to hold them. Perhaps," he mused, "not even the Southern Conference can do it" [1].

In late Fall 1961, plans emerged for their solution: a 16,000 seat concrete structure, to be located just south of their main campus. Named for the late tobacconist, booster, and president of E. B. Ficklen Tobacco Co., the plant was originally known as James S. Ficklen Stadium. Initial concepts called for the a 10,000 person concrete bleacher on the south side of the field with a press box, with the remaining 6,000 seats to be made up of the existing from College Field and placed on the opposide sideline. Preliminary site planning and grading began in late October, with hopes of opening by the 1962 season.

Unfortunately for the Pirates, a state bond for $50,000 (about $520,000 in 2024) towards their stadium construction was defeated. Fortunately, the college organized a highly-successful grass-roots fundraising campaign which secured nearly all of the projected $250,000 required in pledges from local businesses and students. The program was also supported by a "paper penny" donation plan from Liggett & Myers Tobacco, where each empty pack of cigarrettes could be traded in for a 1-penny donation. The bulk of the money was raised by a group of nine men called "The Untouchables," a collection of local businessmen helmed by insurance salesman Waightstill Morehead "Booger" Scales. Unfortunately for the Pirates, initial bids on the project came in high (it was believed this was due to a short review period given to contractors), resulting in a slight redesign and a delayed date [2].

Ground broke on May 3rd, 1962, pushing completion back to the Fall of 1963; much of the work was done by the local Washington Iron and Metal Works company. The stadium was complete enough by the summer of 1963 to host ECC's commencement ceremony, and the first athletic event at Ficklen Stadium was the Boys Home Bowl football game, an in-state all-star game which pitted incoming freshmen bound for smaller colleges against each other to raise money for the Boys Home at Lake Waccamaw in a north-vs-south format. Held on August 10th, 1963 with an 8 PM kickoff, the South team won 26-to-0 before a crowd of 4,500. The Pirates won the dedicatory game, played on September 21st versus Wake Forest, by a 20-10 score in front of a crowd estimated to have been as large as 17,000 [3].

The completion of Ficklen Stadium corresponded with the athletic ascension administrators had been hoping for: The Pirates managed to turn two consecutive 9-1 seasons into a Southern Conference invitation, joining in 1965. With their successes, the Pirates' attendance also increased: during their October 8th, 1965 game against Davidson Ficklen Stadium held over 16,000 persons for just the second time in school history. That season, about 1,000 temporary bleachers were constructed to supplement the seating. Before the 1968 season, all of the the old wooden and steel stands were replaced by a 10,000 person concrete bleacher matching the existing set. Built at a cost of $564,029.46 (nearly $5.1 million in 2024), the venue's capacity became 20,000 persons; the temporary bleachers were relocated to the baseball field. That same offseason, the W M. Scales Field House (named for the leader of The Untouchables) was erected just southwest of the field, and the press box was enlarged [4].

As predicted over a decade and half before, the school's athletic prowess continued to expand above and beyond the confines of the SoCon, and in April 1976, East Carolina announced they would return to independence for the 1977 athletic season. While the NCAA's on-again, off-again stance on whether to downgrade the Southern Conference to a Division IAA league (equivalent to FCS today) was a factor, head coach Pat Dye succinctly captured the essence of the problem: "Money." Cognizant that independence offered ever-diminishing returns compared to the days of old, Dye explained "We get $10,000 or $15,000 to go play at Furman, and we get $100,000 to go to North Carolina State" [5].

Besides a half-million lighting improvement in 1975, modifications to Ficklen Stadium had been minor; Durham columnist Art Chansky derided the plant as "a glorified high school field" in 1977, noting further that just about everything from the press box to the locker rooms to the offices in Scales Field House were too small. ECU was in a catch-22: they needed to draw larger teams to play in Greenville to have the money to expand, but large teams wouldn't come to a small stadium in a small conference with no major guarantees. Fully committed to continuing as an independent team, the Pirates elected to enlarged their stadium, hoping they could parlay continued success into an invitation to a more prestigious conference. "We're adding on to our stadium," Dye said, "and now we've got to go out and fill it" [6].

Construction started in December 1977, shortly after the Pirates' final home game (a 7-9 loss to Southwestern Louisiana), with more than $2.5 million (just under $13 million in 2024) raised for the efforts. Seating was expanded on each side of the field's two concrete stands, while the old press box was removed to make way for a 3-story Chancellor's Box, which would hold press in addition to premium seating; a scoreboard with an electric messaging system was also installed. The enlargement meant ECU's stadium became 4th largest in the state, rivaling foes such as UNC and NC State for the largest capacity in North Carolina. The new press box was widely compared to the one installed at NC State's Carter Stadium. A record crowd of 31,251 persons watched ECU clumsily win against former conference-mate Western Carolina on opening day 1978 by a 14-6 score [7].

In the early 1990s, the Pirates' stadium began looking comparatively diminutive once again. This time, however, improvements faced a problem beyond just finances: the stadium was prematurely showing its age. The university was faced with a $1.6 million dollar bill to repair the south stands, which were literally falling apart. Though the chunks were small in size (golf ball sized at largest, most were described as flakes), the structure was deteriorating in half the time it was expected to. Engineers blamed the failure on an excess amount of calcium chloride, a hardening agent, in the concrete.

The timing was especially unfortunate because ECU football blossomed that season, turning in an 11-1 campaign for a trip to the Peach Bowl. Their success meant that attendance boomed, necessitating the re-implementation of temporary bleachers; this time, 500 seats were placed in the east endzone for the first time in school history. As for the bigger problem at hand, the school elected to do some temporary repairs, patching sections as needed and placing a wire mesh over the concourse in August 1991. Prior to the 1993 season, the entire section was replaced by state mandate, while the remaining stands refurbished and resealed; all the work cost $2.2 million (about $4.8 million in 2024) [8].

Just on the heels of the 1993 improvements, the stadium was revitalized in another way: it was renamed Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium in April 1994 thanks to a $1 million donation by Ronald and Mary Ellen Dowdy. Ronald in particular was an alumnus of the Class of 1966 and owner of Dowdy Properties, an Orland-based real estate company. In November 1996, construction began on an 8,000 seat upper deck over the north stands, though the timetable was delayed early on after one of the support beams was found to have gaps in the concrete. Construction lagged on into the season, despite school athletics having pre-sold seats with a capacity of 43,000 in mind; temporary bleachers were again pressed into service to make up the difference, with 3,500 seats in the west endzone and 1,500 in the east.

The 1997 season -- the school's first as a conference member in 2 decades, with a new home in Conference USA -- came and went, and still the project lagged on. Finally, the much beleaguered addition was completed prior to the 1998 season. The total price tag was $14.1 million (over $27 million in 2024). Throughout the 1998 season, club level seats were added in the north endzone; they originally sat just 1,400 persons, but by 1999 seats in both endzone brought the capacity to 47,700. A new scoreboard capable of video replay was also added in 1999 [9].

The turn of the century also marked the first time NC State and ECU ever met in Greenville despite 21 previous meetings between the two teams, all since 1970. The Wolfpack held a slight 13-8 advantage over the Pirates, and though there was a rivalry between the two scools, the series had been on ice from 1987 to 1996, except for one meeting which was played during the aforementioned Peach Bowl trip. "We know N.C. State would rather beat Chapel Hill than us," admitted ECU coach Steve Logan. "But at the same time, there's a lot of history attached to this game, and them coming here puts a stamp of equity on the situation." Tickets to the game sold out in just 47 minutes, and the 50,092 spectators at the game remained the venue's largest until 2010, when it was (yet again) broken by hosting NC State*. The Pirates went on to trounce the Wolfpack 23-6 [10].

In 2002, construction began on the Murphy Center, a $13 million (just under $23 million in 2024) center located in the stadium's west endzone. The center was named for Lynn and Pete Murphy, the latter being the brother of NC State booster Wendell Murphy, for whom Carter-Finley's Murphy Center is named. On the opposite side of the stadium, the school complete the horseshoe, putting permanent seats on the east side of the stadium for the first time in venue history. Completed ahead of the 2010 season, the 7,000 seat expansion put Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium's capacity at 50,000 persons -- the approximately 4,000 previous endzone seats had been fully done away with. A new scoreboard was installed above the seats as a part of the work [11].

The Pirates began their most recent round of improvements to the stadium in 2018, when a $60 million project was set in motion to add a fourth level to the structure atop the south stands. The work moved the press box from the third to fourth level and created about 1,000 premium seats beneath it. Thanks to a donation by Suffolk, Virgina-based TowneBank, the press box was formally named, creating yet another mirror between the Pirates and rival Wolfpack. Other behind-the-scenes work was done, improving the locker rooms, training areas, and more [12].

* Over half of NC State's visits to Greenville have produced record-setting crowds for the venue, with the most recent match in 2022 setting the current record of 51,711 persons. In total, all 5 of NC State's visits to Dowdy-Ficklen are among their top 15 most well-attended games.

Pictures of Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium