First off, had you followed this blog on Twitter, you would have heard this news at about 4:20 p.m. Wednesday. If you’re on Twitter and you want breaking Liberty sports news, I encourage you to follow. I also post updates during football and men’s basketball games, and you’ll be the first to know when the blog is updated.

Moving on, Liberty football coach Danny Rocco—heavily rumored to be in the running for the vacant East Carolina job—signed a two-year contract extension that will keep the coach at Liberty through the 2014 season. That effectively ends his interest in that job. I’ll have a full story with more details and color in tomorrow’s News & Advance, so look for that.

Some notes on what’s gone down the last few days:

* East Carolina athletics director Terry Holland did contact Rocco on Monday to gauge his interest in the job. At that point, Middle Tennessee coach Rick Stockstill was still considered the favorite for the post. But Tuesday, Stockstill pulled out of the running, deciding to remain in Murfreesboro. At that point, Rocco became one of Holland’s major targets.

* Rocco said that reports that he was “pursuing ECU hard” were “comical,“ noting he never asked any of his coaching colleagues—most notably former Virginia coach Al Groh, who hired Rocco in Charlottesville—to stump for him.

* Rocco said he has been contacted by several FBS schools this offseason but he hasn’t interviewed with any of them, including East Carolina. He did say, though, that he was “a serious and legitimate candidate” at ECU.

* Rocco will not receive a raise in yearly salary with the contract extension, so that debunks the theory that he was using ECU to milk more money out of Liberty.

Two quick quotes from Rocco:

“What happens in this competitive business is if you in fact want that job, you have to go after it. Really, in theory, I didn’t go after any jobs this year. Therefore, despite my name being out there and the chatter of my name and people expressing interest in me, despite the communication I’ve received from athletics directors and search firms, I never interviewed for one of these jobs this year.“

“As for the East Carolina job, I would say it was the one I was most attracted to and the most interested in of the different jobs that were out there. I had a previous relationship with Terry Holland and I do have a bit of history with the university, being in the state of North Carolina for a number of years.“

Again, read tomorrow’s dead-tree edition of the paper for the full story, which will have more quotes from Rocco and Liberty AD Jeff Barber.