50 years later, Marshall remembers worst US sports disaster
HUNTINGTON, W. Va. – After a plane crash killed most of Marshall University’s football team in 1970, school administrators could have resorted to the simplest choice – dropping the losing sport altogether.
They didn’t. They couldn’t bring themselves to do it.
From the 75 lives lost in the worst sports disaster in U.S. history, the program slowly rebuilt and eventually triumphed. A half-century later, those who lived through the tragedy – some by happenstance, others by fateful decisions that seemed mundane at the time – marvel as they recall the feeling that they had to keep playing.
“We felt the guys would want us to go on,” said Ed Carter, a sophomore offensive lineman who was supposed to be on the team plane but wasn’t. “We just felt we needed to continue the program.”
The team’s long, determined crawl back to success was chronicled in the 2006 movie “We Are Marshall ” – a title borrowed from the chants that resonate at Thundering Herd games. Today the team is undefeated and ranked No. 16 heading into Saturday’s home game with Middle Tennessee.
“It has been real special to see how that program has been turned around.” Carter said.
In the first season after the crash, Marshall won just two games. The first winning season didn’t come for another 13 years. Then success occurred in streaks.
Marshall captured Division I-AA national championships in 1992 and 1996 and amassed the most wins of any team in the nation in the1990s, many of them during a step up into Division I-A under coach Bob Pruett. An athlete named Randy Moss started a journey there that would redefine what was possible in terms of speed, power and size at the wide receiver position.
The success continues now in the Bowl Subdivision under coach Doc Holliday, who is 6-1 in bowl games and won a Conference USA championship in 2014.
The plane crash redefined comebacks and helped shape the identity of the public university that serves 13,000 students in Huntington.
“It’s who we are,” said athletic director Mike Hamrick, who played linebacker from 1976 to 1979. “There’s not been a comeback story like Marshall football.”
Marshall’s chartered DC-9 was returning from a game at East Carolina on Nov. 14, 1970, when it slammed into a hillside in rain and fog just short of the Huntington airport runway. The jet burst into flames, leaving a charred swath of trees. Investigators concluded that the plane was flying too low, either because of faulty altitude equipment or the pilots’ failure to read their instruments properly.
Everyone on board perished: 36 football players, 39 coaches, school administrators, community leaders, boosters and the flight crew.
It happened a month after a plane carrying the Wichita State football team crashed in Colorado, killing 31 people, including 14 players.
The Shockers football program was discontinued in 1986.
Those not on the Marshall plane have spent the last five decades dealing with heartache, self-doubt and unanswerable questions about why they were spared.
Three players – linebacker Dennis Foley and linemen Carter and Pete Naputano – were among the living but were mistakenly listed with the victims in newspaper obituaries and hometown tributes.
Foley, who was sitting out the 1970 season after hurting an ankle playing summer basketball, was one of several injured players who stayed in Huntington.