Reconstructing a team and a community

Almost four decades later, it remains the most daunting rebuilding project in United States sports history.

Most of the Marshall University football team died in a plane crash on Nov. 14, 1970. All 75 people aboard were killed. Instead of shutting down the program, Marshall played a full schedule the following year and even won its home opener.

The story of that 1971 team is chronicled in "We Are Marshall," a feature film starring Matthew McConaughey that opens Dec. 22 in theaters nationwide.

"Hollywood couldn't ask for a better script," said Dave Walsh, a quarterback on the 1971 team who went on to cover Marshall athletics as a sports writer for The Herald Dispatch in Huntington, W.Va. "You would think they'd have to make this up. But this is the real deal."

Marshall had to restart its program almost from scratch.

The plane crash had killed 37 players and five coaches as well as 21 local citizens, seven university staff employees and five crew members.

Marshall's freshman football players didn't make the trip to East Carolina because they weren't eligible to play varsity sports under NCAA regulations at the time. A few varsity players also didn't go to the game because of injuries or personal reasons.

First, however, the university had to decide whether Marshall should continue playing football.

After the crash, Marshall canceled its 1970 season finale against Ohio over the objections of the surviving players. There was talk of scrapping football altogether.

"It would have been so easy to say, 'That's it. Let's don't do it. It's too hard to do over again. It's going to cost too much,'" said Reggie Oliver, another quarterback on the 1971 team.

Even after school officials opted to keep the football program, they had to find a coach willing to tackle this extraordinary challenge. Marshall initially hired Georgia Tech assistant coach Dick Bestwick to replace head coach Rick Tolley, who had died in the crash. Bestwick stayed for only a week before returning to his old job.

That left the Thundering Herd to rely on Jack Lengyel, a coach at Division III Wooster (Ohio) who had called to volunteer his services.

"I'm sure I was their last choice," Lengyel said.

Lengyel had no previous connections to Marshall, but the idea of revitalizing the program had intrigued him ever since he heard the news of the crash while watching television at his home.

As a former walk-on player who had gone on to make a living as a coach, Lengyel always wanted to give back to the sport that had given him so much. He saw this as his chance to fulfill that goal.

"There's a Chinese proverb that says, 'When somebody gives you something of value and it benefits you, you have a moral obligation to give that back to others,'" Lengyel said. "So I thought, 'Here's an opportunity to pay back to football what it had given to me.' "

Lengyel had turned Wooster's losing program into a winner, but this job represented the ultimate test of his motivational skills.

He wasn't merely rebuilding a team. He was rebuilding a town.

"The 21 townspeople (killed in the crash) were state senators, city councilmen, doctors and their wives - leaders in the community," Lengyel said. "It left 70 children without one parent and 18 children without two parents. So I came quickly to find out there was a void within the community's leadership. There was a void in the university because we lost an athletic director and a director of admissions. There obviously was a void within the football team and its coaching staff.

"It was a much bigger job than anybody anticipated, but we never really looked back."

Lengyel found himself looking all over campus for potential players.

Dave Smith and Rick Turnbow - a pair of 6-foot-6 Marshall basketball players - decided to join the football squad as tight ends. Blake Smith, a soccer player with no previous football experience, booted the field goal that proved crucial in the 15-13 victory over Xavier.

Lengyel's job got slightly easier when the NCAA granted an exception that allowed Marshall to become the only school in the nation to play true freshmen during the 1971 season.

The ability to play freshmen gave Lengyel a significant recruiting edge as he tried to restock his team. The roster featured so many freshmen that Lengyel renamed this new Marshall team the "Young Thundering Herd."

"That was a big factor," said Allen Meadows, a freshman defensive tackle on the 1971 team. "I grew up at West Virginia. At that point in time, West Virginia was the place to go. It was a big thing for kids in West Virginia. But I would start immediately (at Marshall) and get to start all four years."

Marshall also got some help from its in-state rival.

Lengyel decided a switch to a veer offense would best fit the talent on his roster, but his coaching staff had never used this type of scheme. Bobby Bowden – then the coach at West Virginia – allowed Marshall's coaches to come to Morgantown and see how the Mountaineers ran the veer.

"In three days, we put that offense together," Lengyel said. "We came back and we were teaching it and learning it at the same time."

Even with a restocked roster and a new offense in place, the Young Thundering Herd had plenty of problems. Their lack of depth forced plenty of position shifts if anyone got hurt. And their inexperience made them prohibitive underdogs every time they took the field.

Then again, many of these players were too young to know better.

"We were cocky enough and believed in ourselves enough to believe we could do it," Oliver said. "I guess we were just that naïve."

Reality would hit soon enough.

Marshall finished the 1971 season with a 2-8 record and was shut out in five of its last six games. The Young Thundering Herd scored in double figures just three times all season.

But the season also included improbable victories on and off the field.

Marshall's victory over Xavier in the first home game after the plane crash remains arguably the most indelible moment in this program's proud history. The game represents the climactic scene of the "We Are Marshall" film.

Oliver threw two fourth-down completions to keep Marshall's comeback hopes alive in the final minutes. On the last play of the game, Oliver threw a bootleg screen to fullback Terry Gardner, who ran 13 yards untouched for the winning touchdown as jubilant fans spilled onto the field.

"When he got to the goal line, (fans) were already coming over the wall," Lengyel said. "And that's an 8-, 9- or 10-foot drop."

The celebration lasted well into the night.

In fact, when the players and coaches left the locker room after changing and completing their postgame interviews, the fans were still at the stadium waiting for them.

"They just didn't want to let go of the moment," Oliver said. "In less than a year, Marshall University had lost its team and come back from that to actually winning a game. That game was the first time a lot of those people had seen those same (uniform) numbers, but new faces. And we were winning.

"We were supposed to be grieving. We were supposed to be down and out and giving up the ghost, (but) we actually had something to sit in the stands and cheer for."

Two weeks later, the Young Thundering Herd would face arguably their toughest challenge of the season. That's when a game at Northern Illinois forced the team to board a plane for the first time since the tragic crash.

Lengyel announced that any players who didn't want to fly could sit out this trip without jeopardizing their position on the team. Only one player didn't go.

"When we went to the airport, they used to have these machines where you could put in 50 cents for insurance," Lengyel said. "The whole team was lined up putting in 50 cents for insurance. And the irony is that as we walk out to get to the plane, there in plain sight in an open bay is a silver casket on a gurney."

Marshall lost 37-18 to Northern Illinois, but there were no problems on the flights to and from the game. Three weeks afterward, Marshall would pull off an upset even more shocking than the victory over Xavier.

Bowling Green had lost only once and Marshall had won only once when the teams met in late October.

"If you had to put odds on that game, we'd have been a 40- to 50-point underdog," Walsh said.

The Young Thundering Herd beat the odds.

Walsh replaced an injured Oliver and ran 2 yards for Marshall's final touchdown in a 12-10 triumph over a Bowling Green team that was ill-prepared for the warm conditions.

"They brought their grass shoes, and we had turf,'' Walsh said. "And they brought their big heavy winter uniforms. I had friends of mine in the student section saying every time we had a change of possession, (Bowling Green's players) were puking their guts out. It was like 80 degrees, and they dressed like it was 20. They weren't dressed for the occasion. And with their grass shoes, it was like they had skates on."

Those types of upsets were few and far between.

Marshall didn't post a single winning season in the 1970s and posted a 23-83 record throughout the decade as school officials discovered the struggles involved with essentially relaunching a program.

But the Herd recovered from those growing pains and went on to win 114 games – more than any other Division I-A or I-AA school – in the 1990s. Marshall won Division I-AA national championships in 1992 and 1996, captured four consecutive Mid-American Conference titles from 1997-2000 and compiled 20 winning seasons in a row beginning in 1984.

Along the way, the Herd produced an assembly line of NFL talent that includes New York Jets quarterback Chad Pennington and Oakland Raiders wide receiver Randy Moss.

That remarkable run of success never would have happened if university officials hadn't taken a leap of faith in the wake of a tragedy.

Instead of shutting the football program down, they allowed Lengyel and the Young Thundering Herd to rebuild a program that eventually blossomed into one of the nation's best.

"Because of what they've done, names like Chad Pennington are household names, Randy Moss and guys like that," Oliver said. "Those names I mentioned, you wouldn't have associated them with Marshall University.

"I'm glad they kept the program going, and I'm certainly glad to have been a part of it."