Marshall to honor players killed in plane crash 43 years ago today

[link=( https://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/11/marshall-football-anniversary-morning-win/)]https://ftw.usatoday.com/2013/11/marshall-football-anniversary-morning-win/[/link]

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There wouldn’t normally be much of a reason to pay much attention to a midseason Thursday night game between two Conference USA opponents, especially with one team already out of bowl contention.

But this isn’t any road trip for the Marshall University football team. Tonight’s primetime showdown at Tulsa (2-7) marks the first time that the Thundering Herd (6-3) have played a road game on November 14 in 43 years.

On that day in 1970, 75 people, including most of the football team, perished in a DC-9 plane crash on their way home from a game at East Carolina University. It happened more than 20 years before any of the current players were born and predates much of the current coaching staff.

The tragedy, which remains the deadliest air disaster in American sports history and was memorialized in a 2006 Matthew McConaughey film, still remains a galvanizing force on the Huntington, W.V. campus. Every player will wear the number 75 on his helmet for tonight’s game, which will be broadcast on FOX Sports 1.

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