ESPN Classic - Remembering Marshall 30 years later

ALSO SEE
Marshall: From tragedy to triumph

AUDIO/VIDEO

The Morning Show
Ed Carter, former Marshall football player, tells why he was not on the fatal plane that crashed 30 years ago.
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The Morning Show
Ed Carter recalls hearing about the crash and his relationships with other survivors.
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The Morning Show
Being one of few surviving members of the football, Ed Carter talks about his return to the Marshall campus.
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Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Remembering Marshall 30 years later

SportsCenter Flashback Special 30th Anniversary presentation on ESPN Classic Nov. 14

On November 14, 1970, in a moderate rain and light fog, a Southern Airways DC-9 jet carrying the Marshall University Football team and members of its booster club struck a hilltop outside Huntington, West Virginia, skidded into a valley and exploded. All 75 aboard were killed. On the 30th anniversary of the tragedy, ESPN Classic will present a special SportsCenter Flashback: Remembering Marshall 30 Years Later. The one-hour program will be aired on ESPN Classic on Nov. 14 at 7 p.m.

Remembering Marshall is told by those who covered the story and the team, by relatives, and by those few players and coaches who were not on the plane. It tells how Marshall responded to something that might have destroyed its football program. "The most unbelievable sports story never told," The Marshall University Thundering Herd would become the winningest football team in the nineties after being completely wiped out less than thirty years earlier.

The show will also examine:

How in the late 1960s, Marshall, a team usually dominated by West Virginians, recruited a group of blue-chip athletes from all over the country, and how the school dealt with the racial barriers in college football during that time.

Marshall's NCAA recruiting scandal and suspension from the MAC in 1969.

Huntington, a small industrial town in West Virginia with the neglected second state school - Marshall University.

The final minutes before and the aftermath of the crash - including a transcription of the pilot's final conversation with the tower.

The slow, painful recovery of a devastated community and the way each person dealt with it, including feelings of intense guilt, recurring nightmares, depression and emptiness not just by the players and coaches who did not make the trip, but by the entire community, and how that loss now serves as a source of inspiration.

The rebuilding of the team and the town during the years after the crash up to today's successful Thundering Herd.

"That crash humanized Marshall. You had flesh and blood people who lost their lives. If you'll check your calendars, it was a slow thing, but the transition of Marshall from a small under-funded school to what it is today, began as a result of that plane crash. We suddenly were getting some help, and what you have today is this great school." - Ernie Salvatore, columnist, Huntington Herald-Dispatch, from Remembering Marshall

ESPN Classic's SportsCenter Flashback is the historical offshoot of ESPN's SportsCenter, revisiting landmark news stories through the prism of SportsCenter coverage. For the sports news that happened prior to SportsCenter, SportsCenter Flashback will bring to those stories a SportsCenter sensibility with compelling narratives, fresh interviews, new reporting and analysis of the events' lasting impact. SportsCenter Flashback gives history the feel of breaking news.

SportsCenter Flashback: Remembering Marshall 30 Years Later is produced by Lilibet Foster in conjunction with @ radical.media and ESPN.

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