History
Marshall is a football school with a rich tradition, winning conference titles in 1925, 1928, 1931, 1937, 1988, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2002, as well as I-AA National Championships in 1992 and 1996 and I-AA finalists in 1987, 1991, 1993 and 1995.
Marshall is also known for being victims of a tragic plane crash on November 14, 1970, where all 75 passengers, including 37 members of the Marshall football team were killed. In the wake of the crash, Marshall was given special permission by the NCAA to play incoming freshmen at the varsity level for the 1971 season. Marshall spent a full decade recovering from the crash, and was the nation's worst football program in the 1970s, and did not have another winning season until 1984. Including the year of the crash, Marshall was 23-83 from 1970–79, changing head coaches four times during that period.
Marshall had a winless streak of 0-26-1 from 1965–1969, and began Southern Conference play in 1977 with the exact record through 1981, 0-26-1. Marshall tied Western Carolina on a 59-yard field goal by freshman Barry Childers in 1980, still a NCAA freshman record, and finally broke through with a 17-10 win at Appalachian State in November 1981. Marshall's first winning season since 1964 came in 1984 under first-year head coach Stan Parrish, clinched with a 31-28 win over East Tennessee State in the Bucs' "Mini Dome".
Read more about this topic: Marshall Thundering Herd Football
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“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
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“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)