Marshall's Emotional First Win After the 1970 Plane Crash

On September twenty fifth, nineteen seventy one, following the devastating loss of over seventy football players, coaches, and administrators due to a plane crash, the Marshall football team comes back and brings hope to the Huntington area and the team in the school, honoring those they lost by winning just their second game back, the gas savier, showing that Marshall may have been down, but they certainly were not out. We're dive into how Marshall came back today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your daily guide to sports history as you daily increase your sports and knowledge. And today's trivia question is what NCAA rule was changed following the nineteen seventy one Marshall season. Now, Marshall had been around for a long time. Their first football season was in eighteen ninety five. In nineteen fifteen, they actually gained notoriety running the tower play, which is a very unique play where one receiver lists another one on his shoulders to complete a pass. It sounds like something out of a Globetrotters game. But though they've been around, they haven't always been the best team. Their overall winning percentage is above fifty percent and they won a total of six hundred and twenty nine games. And in nineteen ninety two they actually won the one doublea national championship and did the same thing in nineteen ninety six, and this was the pinnacle of the team as the nineteen ninety six team included future NFL players In Wade and John Wade, Chris Hansen, Air Kesser, Doug Champion, Pro bowler Chad Pennington, and Hall of Famer possible greatest receiver of all time Randy Moss. But since the to the Football Bowl Division and struggled at times, but have been adequate in their pursuit of greatness. In the nineteen sixties and seventies, the team was a lot different. In nineteen sixty nine, Marshall hired Rick Tolly, coming in from Wake Forest. His first season was a struggle as they went three and seven, and the following year they were struggling as he went three and six, but he didn't get to finish that year. After a game against Eastern Carolina, the team took an airplane back to West Virginia. The plane would crash on the way home and all seventy five passengers would pass away, including Rick and four other coaches in thirty seven players, as well as administrators, family friends, and the whole flight crew. It was a devastating moment for Marshall and really the nation. Seeing how easy it is for a team to just be lost in a moment was tough and it was the single worst air tragedy in NINTAA sports history. And despite the thought of just disbanding the team and no longer having football at the university, but the team lost their athletic director and head coach. So the first thing I had to do was hire new aflet director, and they hired Joe mccollin, who was actually a head football coach before taking over the AD role at Marshall, as he had struggled previously at San Diego State with the record of three and ten, and the first thing he had to do was figure out how to bring back this team, and he actually initially hired Georgia Tech assistant coach Dick Beswick to take over the role, but two days after he actually returned back to Georgia Tech and they actually named will Red Dawson as the acting head coach. Now, if you've ever seen We Are Marshall. This was the coach that did not go onto the plane, and that part is true. He was one of the few members not on the plane as he had a recruiting trip to go on too, and that's where he really helped, as he would go on to sign twenty one prospects from five different states just this season alone. But he didn't want to coach the team. He just was filling in until they found a new replacement, and that replacement was Jack ling Yell, who started coaching as an assistant in nineteen seventy nine at Akron University with Joe McClellan, the new ad at Marshall University, and he went on to coach at Hingelberg, Cornell, and Worcester and would also coach baseball and lacrosse during his coaching tenures before coming to Marshall, where his former colleague was now the ad. Any part of his agreement he had to help recruit for baseball and basketball while he was at Marshall. But one thing they had going is they had fought for that season to be allowed to allow freshmen to play, which up until nineteen seventy two, the NCAA did not allow freshmen to play varsity sports, so you had to at least be a sophomore to participate. The NCAA granted them the chance to allow freshmen to play in order to fulfill their team, and this gave them a huge advantage as no other team in the country could allow freshmen to play, so they had a unique recruiting pitch that no other team could offer, and that really did help them as they would get players who turned down Notre Dame in West Virginia and other major colleges to come play as they could play as freshmen. But the problem was, even though they could get more talented players, they still weren't as big as juniors and seniors in college and it's especially hard on the offensive and defensive lineman where you need big bodies to have success in college football. But they didn't just only have freshmen on the team. They actually were able to have three players on the previous varsity team come back due to the players missing the Eastern Carolina game due to injuries, and they also had the freshman group from the nineteen seventy season there as well, as they weren't allowed to play, so they didn't go to the Eastern Carolina game, but they did feature a lot of walk Ons, former military men, three basketball players who used their fifth year of eligibility to play on the football team, and fifty players would end up trying out for the team and thirty five of them would be accepted as Walkon's and Coach Jack would label them as the Young Thuddering Herd, which to this day is still used from the alumni from this team as many of them are still in contact and friends across the world, and they even received a letter from President Richard Nixon saying, friends across the land are rooting for you. But whatever this season brings, you have already won the greatest victory by putting a team on the field And this was read the first day of practice, and the team was a difficult team to put together as they only had five coaches, two on the defense, two on the offense, and head coach. And as you can imagine, having such a young team made up of sophomores and freshmen meant there was a lot of growing pains, and they changed the offense and the defense to make it more simplified, and they had their first game on September eighteenth against Morehead State, which is known as the Oxy four rivalry, and they struggled in this game as Morehead State dominated through a majority of the game, but late in the game, the Herd was able to finally score their first touchdown, which prompted a standing ovation even though they were at Morehead State, as even though they were competing, President Nixon was right as everyone was rooting for them. The following game was their first home game since the loss of their teammates and coaches, facing Xavier on their home field. It truly makes sense why this was the pivotal moment in the movie We Are Marshall, because it was one of those moments where it goes like it was written for the movies. As Marshall was down nine to thirteen against Xavier on the final drive and they had time for one more play and they were just thirteen yards away from the end zone and their quarterback Reggie Oliver tossed a thirteen yard touchdown pass to fullback Terry Gardner as time ran out, giving them the lead and the win fifteen to thirteen. As the crowd of thirty eighteen thousand rushed the field. This really showed that Marshall was back and truly one of the most resilient stories in football history. But sadly they could not continue the success as they would only win one more game that year, finishing two and nine, and they would struggle for the next couple of years under under coach Jack as he would have a record of nine and thirty three and it wouldn't be till the late eighties early nineties when they would finally start to turn things around, winning those two DOUBLEA championships and joining the FBS. Marshall truly showed you can go from the bottom of the barrel and still work your way back to the top. But it's not a quick fix and it takes time and Herd fans know this. And if you want to learn more about Marshall and the Thundering Herd, you can listen to The Thundercast, a great podcast hosted by Kadi and Russ, two huge Herd fans, there to give you all the information you want to know about the Thundering Herd through this season and beyond. We'll put a link to their show in the description so you can check them out. And if you enjoyed this episode of Daily sports History. Please share this with a friend or share on your social media Say hey, check out Daily Sports History so we can continue to grow and give you more great sports history every day. And the answer to today's trivia question what in Cuba? Rule was changed following the nineteen seventy one Marshall season. The rule to allow freshman the chance to play was changed in nineteen seventy two, following the success in the previous year of Marshall allowing freshmen to play on their team. They now would allow all in Cuba teams to allow freshmen to play