We Are Marshall
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We Are Marshall is a 2006 motion picture directed by McG dramatizing the aftermath of the 1970 plane crash that killed most of the Marshall University Thundering Herd football team, the rebuilding of the program, and the healing that the community undergoes. It stars Matthew McConaughey as head coach Jack Lengyel, Matthew Fox as assistant coach William "Red" Dawson, David Strathairn as University President Donald Dedmon and Robert Patrick as ill-fated Marshall head coach Rick Tolley. Georgia governor George "Sonny" Perdue has a cameo role as an East Carolina University football coach.
On the evening of November 14, 1970, Southern Airways Flight 932, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 which Marshall University chartered to transport the Thundering Herd football team to Greenville, North Carolina and back to Huntington, West Virginia clipped trees on a ridge just one mile short of the runway at Tri-State Airport in Ceredo, West Virginia and crashed into a gully. The team was returning from their game against the East Carolina University Pirates — an eventual 17-14 loss. There were no survivors. In all, seventy-five people lost their lives. The dead included the thirty-seven players, Tolley and five members of his coaching staff, Charles E. Kautz, Marshall's athletics director, team trainer Jim Schroer and his assistant, Donald Tackett, twenty-two boosters, and five crew members.
In the wake of the tragedy, and having just been kicked out of the Mid-American conference the previous year for over 140 NCAA violations, President Donald Dedmon leans towards indefinitely canceling the football program, but he is ultimately persuaded to reconsider by the pleas of the Marshall students and Huntington residents, and especially the few football players who didn't make the flight. Dedmon hires a young new head coach Jack Lengyel, who, with the help of Red Dawson, manages to rebuild the team in a relatively short time. They were aided by the NCAA's waiver of a rule prohibiting freshmen from playing varsity sports (a rule which would be permanently abolished in 1972). The new team is composed mostly of the returning players and athletes from other Marshall sports programs. The "Young Thundering Herd" won just two games during the 1971 season; their first post-crash victory is a heart-stopping 15-13 home win against Xavier University in the first home game of the season. In reality, the play was a 13-yard screen pass from quarterback Reggie Oliver to freshman fullback Terry Gardner. When Gardner caught the ball, there was no time left on the clock. The extra point was unnecessary. In the film, the pass is longer.
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