Forty-eight years ago tonight, tragedy visited college football when a DC-9 Southern Airways (Flight 932) carrying the Marshall University football team crashed near Kenova, WV, killing all 75 passengers on board. It is - to this day - the deadliest tragedy affecting any team in the history of U.S. sports.
I'm sure most of you have at least heard of (or probably seen) the 2006 movie, "We Are Marshall." While it was drastically fictionalized, I found it to be a decent enough movie as it explored the various ways people work through grief.
But what a lot of you may not know (or remember) was that the Marshall plane crash was actually the SECOND in a span of about one month. Wichita State's football team also suffered a plane crash that killed 14 players in October 1970. Wichita State eventually gave up football in the mid-80s. Marshall, of course, became a respected national program in the late 1990s and produced some solid teams with some decent NFL players (most notably Randy Moss).
I'm sure most of you have at least heard of (or probably seen) the 2006 movie, "We Are Marshall." While it was drastically fictionalized, I found it to be a decent enough movie as it explored the various ways people work through grief.
But what a lot of you may not know (or remember) was that the Marshall plane crash was actually the SECOND in a span of about one month. Wichita State's football team also suffered a plane crash that killed 14 players in October 1970. Wichita State eventually gave up football in the mid-80s. Marshall, of course, became a respected national program in the late 1990s and produced some solid teams with some decent NFL players (most notably Randy Moss).
