It's in Huntington, a blue-collar town that suffered a devastation when their pride and joy, the Marshall Thundering Herd, lost almost their entire football team, including coaching staff, in an airplane crash. There's a movie about it, "We Are Marshall". They're in the C-USA, a conference that includes ECU who knocked out ranked opponent VT a week ago, and #8 WVU yesterday. Marshall's current pride and joy probably comes in the famous names of Chad Pennington, Byron Leftwich, Ahmad Bradshaw, and of course everyone knows, Randy Moss.
Thanks, Rebel.
That's a pretty good summation of the Marshall story. The movie did a decent job of it too, though they had to take some liberties with the story by creating composite characters so that they didn't single out a certain family over another. Most of the story was true to life, the town debated long and hard about continuing with football or not.
We really did win our first home game of the 1971 season on a pass as time ran out, only it was a screen pass from Reggie Oliver to Terry Gardner, not the throw to the back of the end zone in the film.
It took years to rebuild after the crash, with no winning seasons until 1984. I was a student back then, and graduated during the 1987 season when Marshall played for the 1-AA championship for the first time, losing by one point.
Winning the championship in 1992 was a legend in itself, the Herd went up 28-0 over Youngstown State, they came back and tied it 28-28 late in the fourth and Marshall won with a last minute field goal from a kicker who had never kicked before this game. He was a soccer player and it was his first and only field goal in football. His brother was the team kicker, but was suspended for the championship for missing practice.
The crash in 1970 happened on the trip back from East Carolina. Marshall and ECU will always be linked by the tragedy and ECU installed a memorial plaque in their stadium a few years ago, dedicated to the 1970 team. They are a class act and I am very happy with their success this year, especially knocking off WVU last weekend.
Then there was the 2001 GMAC Bowl between Marshall and ECU that went to two overtimes and Marshall won 64-61 after being down 38-8 at halftime. A three point win......in 1970, ECU won the game 17-14, a three point win.
From 1990-1999, Marshall won more games in Division 1 (both 1-AA and 1-A which we moved up to in 1997) than any other team. A record of 114-25-0 over 10 years.
My sig line below, which comes from the film as Coach Lengyel is speaking with his assistant coach Red Dawson, I think sums it up pretty well.
We honor them each time we take the field.
We are......Marshall.
