Remembering Marshall: 30 Years Later 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 presented this special SportsCenter Flashback. The story is told by journalists, 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. Remembering Marshall portrays how that loss now serves as a source of inspiration.