HUNTINGTON, W.Va. -- Jack Lengyel remembers sitting in his Ohio home and watching the news that November night, horrified. A college football coach himself, a thick lump rested in Lengyel's throat as the pictures and words flashed across the screen: DC-9 down in Huntington, W.V. No survivors. On board was the Marshall football team.

A little more than four months later, on St. Patrick's Day, Marshall introduced the little-known Lengyel from tiny Wooster College as its new football coach. Suddenly, Lengyel was the man in the middle of the Marshall spotlight, selected to resurrect the program from its ravaged state.

Thundering Back

While there was talk of dismantling of the Marshall football program after the plane crash, the Thundering Herd has stormed back from the disaster. A look at the program over the past 30 years: Baby steps With a team of players who probably has no business playing college football, the Thundering Here struggled to a 22-85 record in the first 10 seasons after the crash. While Marshall reached the five win status in 1976, this era was dominated by one- and two-win seasons. Turning the corner While the first part of this stage was again marred by two- and three- win seasons, in 1984 the Herd earned a 6-5 record. They haven't finished under .500 since. In 1987 they were Division I-AA runner-up and notched 11 victories in 1988 as Marshall finished 57-46-1 in this era. Team of the '90s No team won more than Marshall in the 1990s as Marshall became a national respected name in college football. The Herd won the Division I-AA national title in 1992 and 1996 -- where Marshall was 15-0 -- and were runner-up in 1991, '93 and '95. It moved up to Division I-A and rejoined the MAC in 1997 and won the conference and earned a trip to Motor City Bowl three straight years. Including this season, the Herd is 114-24 over the last 10 years.

The post-crash job was a position everyone talked about, but nobody wanted. Lengyel was the school's third, almost desperation choice. The school's top candidate -- a former Penn State assistant -- immediately said no while its second choice, former Georgia Tech assistant Dick Bestwick, accepted the position, came to campus for about a week, and then changed his mind.

"He sort of looked around at the level of talent that was left after the crash and said, 'No thanks,' " said Nate Ruffin, a senior on the 1971 team. "And you couldn't really blame him."

Lengyel didn't undergo such second guesses. He immediately got to work, assembling a staff that included two assistants, Red Dawson and Carl Coker, who missed the fateful flight on a recruiting trip. After the staff was set, the coaches met with the small group of returning players to better understand their ability and mental state.

When the final roster was settled, it included a Marshall soccer player and three guys from the basketball team. A couple transfers from Buffalo and another from Notre Dame filled in some holes, but it was barely enough for full scrimmages in practice.

Guys like Ruffin and fellow teammates Ed Carter and Felix Jordan, holdovers from 1970, had numerous offers to transfer, but decided on sticking through the troubled times at Marshall. They believed they owed it to their former teammates.

"We signed a contract to play are football here and we intended to uphold that," said Carter, a junior at the time. "The floor was pretty much open for anybody on campus to come play football for us, so our thing was to mentor the young, inexperienced guys."

One of Lengyel's biggest challenges was adopting an offensive scheme to accommodate his green players. Lengyel had run the Split-T at Wooster, but an offense of that complexity was out of the question. So he chose the Veer, an offense he knew little about.

One afternoon, Lengyel and his staff piled into a car and drove to West Virginia University, where then-coach Bobby Bowden and gave the Marshall guys a quick rundown of the scheme.

"Bobby was incredibly kind to help us at that point, because none of us knew that much about the veer," Lengyel said. "But we figured two receivers split wide leaves us with 9-on-9 in the middle, which was better than 11-on-11, that's for sure."

The NCAA gave Marshall special permission to play freshman and Lengyel tabbed his team the "Young Thundering Herd." The group of 89 -- 72 of which were freshman or sophomores -- adopted the song "The Impossible Dream," as a theme. Many of them had little business playing college football, so Lengyel demanded 200-percent from his players for the sole purpose of not being embarrassed.

"We tried to reach down into their personal pride and commitment to excel against the odds," Lengyel said. "It was a situation where we needed every player, every down. And if we had to constantly substitute, then that's what we would do. It seemed impossible at times, but we couldn't allow ourselves to accept that as a benchmark. Without that mentality, things could have been disastrous."

That fall, the talk wasn't about how many games Marshall was going to lose, but by how much. They dropped the season opener to Morehead State 29-6, but the next week, in the home opener against mighty Xavier, something strange happened.

	Bob Pruett and the Thundering Herd will be going for their third straight Motor City Bowl victory.

Trailing 13-9 with the final seconds ticking off the clock in the fourth quarter, quarterback Reggie Oliver threw a 13-yard touchdown pass to Terry Gardner. Marshall 15, Xavier 13. Tears were everywhere.

Ask Lengyel about that game today and he could go on for hours.

"513 Bootleg Screen," he says, referring to the play call. "I just remember yelling, 'snap, snap, snap' because I thought we weren't going to get it off. But Reggie snapped it just as the clock hit zero. Everybody went for the bootleg fake and Gardner just walked into the endzone.

"It was so emotional. After the press conference I remember walking outside and the stands were still filled two hours later. People were just holding onto each other, crying."

That win was the highlight of Lengyel's brief tenure at Marshall. Four years into the rebuilding process, he was fired.

"We were at the beginning," Lengyel said. "The people who followed us have taken that program to great heights. But I'm proud. I told our kids, 'This is an opportunity to play D-I athletics that won't bear the fruits of your hard work until down the line. But it will happen.' "

It took Marshall 13 years, but in 1984 they finished 6-5, their first winning season since '64. They haven't finished below .500 since.

George Chaump, led the Thundering Herd to a pair of playoff appearances in 1987 and '88. But it was under Jim Donnan, now the head man at Georgia, that Marshall climbed on the national stage. Donnan led the Herd to four I-AA championship games and one national championship during his six-year stay.

Former player Bob Pruett picked up the torch from there, leading the school to another I-AA championship and a move to Division I-A. There, they've had a pair of Heisman Trophy finalists in Randy Moss and Chad Pennington and finished 10th in last year's final AP college football poll. Not to mention three straight trips to the Motor City Bowl.

"Every coach that has come here has done all he could do, raised the bar a bit, and then moved on," Ruffin said. "Jack was the same way. And more importantly, he was the one who started it all."

Wayne Drehs is a staff writer at ESPN.com.