The 2001 GMAC Bowl, a college football bowl game held on December 19 at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile, Alabama, pitted the Marshall Thundering Herd, then of the Mid-American Conference, against the East Carolina Pirates from Conference USA. This game featured what was then the biggest comeback in NCAA Division I-A (now Division I FBS) bowl history, as Marshall came back from a 38-8 halftime deficit to force overtime and eventually win 64-61 in double overtime. It was also the highest-scoring bowl game in history, breaking the previous record set when Texas Tech defeated Air Force 55-41 in the 1995 Copper Bowl. Although the record for greatest bowl comeback was broken by Texas Tech when it returned to the Copper Bowl, by then renamed the Insight Bowl, in 2006, the 2001 GMAC Bowl remains the highest-scoring bowl game ever.
The game, with an official attendance of 40,139, was telecast on ESPN2. It was a rematch of one of Marshall's most historically significant games. On November 14, 1970, the two teams met at East Carolina, with the Pirates winning 17-14. That night, the plane carrying the Herd back to Huntington, West Virginia crashed just before landing, killing all 75 on board. The two teams had only met one time since the crash, a 45-0 East Carolina win in 1978. Today, they meet every season, as Marshall joined C-USA in 2005 (the 35th anniversary of the crash) and is grouped with ECU in the conference's East Division.
Read more about 2001 GMAC Bowl: The Buildup, First Quarter, Second Quarter, Third Quarter, Fourth Quarter, Overtime, Records
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“It all ended with the circuslike whump of a monstrous box on the ear with which I knocked down the traitress who rolled up in a ball where she had collapsed, her eyes glistening at me through her spread fingers—all in all quite flattered, I think. Automatically, I searched for something to throw at her, saw the china sugar bowl I had given her for Easter, took the thing under my arm and went out, slamming the door.”
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