The 2000 Motor City Bowl was a National Collegiate Athletic Association bowl game in which the Marshall Thundering Herd of the MAC defeated the Cincinnati Bearcats of the Conference USA 25–14. It was played on December 27, 2000 at the Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan. The Beracats were C-USA runner-ups fresh off the wins from five of their last six games, which included Syracuse and #20 Southern Mississippi. Marshall however was the four-time MAC champion who had also won five of their last six games, one of which was against Western Michigan, who had defeated them earlier in the season, in the MAC Championship Game.
Cincinnati kicker Jonathan Ruffin was an All-America and had won the Lou Groza Award as the nation's best placekicker. Quarterback Deontey Kenner led the Bearcat offense, while 330 lb defensive tackle Mario Monds led the defense.
Marshall's offense was led by future NFL quarterback Byron Leftwich, its defense was led by four-year starter Paul Toviessi. This year marked the 30th anniversary of the tragic 1970 plane crash which took the lives of 75 Marshall football players, coaches, administrators, and boosters on November 14.
Marshall quarterback Byron Leftwich was named the game's MVP.
The game was the 4th installment of the Motor City Bowl, matching the Conference USA against the Mid-American Conference for the first time in its history.
Read more about 2000 Motor City Bowl: Scoring Summary
Famous quotes containing the words motor, city and/or bowl:
“We disparage reason.
But all the time it’s what we’re most concerned with.
There’s will as motor and there’s will as brakes.
Reason is, I suppose, the steering gear.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“I have developed a visionary modern lyric, and, for it, an idiom in which I can write lyrically, colloquially, and dramatically. My subject is city life—with its sofas, hotel corridors, cinemas, underworlds, cardboard suitcases, self-willed buses, banknotes, soapy bathrooms, newspaper-filled parks; and its anguish, its enraged excitement, its great lonely joys.”
—Rosemary Tonks (b. 1932)
“Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or
the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the
cistern.
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit
shall return unto God who gave it.
Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity.”
—Bible: Hebrew Ecclesiastes (l. XII, 6–7)