Marshall’s win over Notre Dame is incomparable in Thundering Herd football lore.
By Keith Morehouse
HQ 119 | AUTUMN 2022
Sept. 10, 2022. There were 4 minutes and 45 seconds left in the game at Notre Dame Stadium, and Marshall had taken a 19-15 lead over the No. 8-ranked Fighting Irish. Notre Dame had the football and was heading toward the Touchdown Jesus end of the stadium. If there was ever a time when Irish quarterback Tyler Buchner and his teammates needed to “wake up the echoes,” it was here and now. Longtime Marshall play-by-play man Steve Cotton had the call:
“Long count for Buchner against a four-man front. Marshall on the blitz … Buchner gets rid of it to the left sideline, and it is intercepted by Gilmore!”
And off Steven Gilmore went. He bolted down the sideline, his hair riding the wind underneath the back of his helmet with Irish running back Audric Estime trying to make up ground. As Gilmore finished his sprint to the goal line, he then took an unusual arc through the end zone and headed toward a big swath of green-clad Marshall fans ready to engulf him should he decide to take the leap.
He did!
“It was a special moment,” Gilmore said. “I always wanted to jump into the stands and do something crazy after a pick six. That’s my first real interception for a touchdown that really counted. I just tried to do something that I’d remember or everyone else would because it was a big moment for our program.”
How big?
That was the question delirious Herd fans were talking about well into the celebratory night. It was the topic of discussion at sports bars and watering holes from the Linebacker Inn in South Bend to the Union Pub & Grill in Huntington. The conclusion seemed almost unanimous. There had never been a bigger win on the national stage for Marshall University’s football program.
On the WSAZ-TV live postgame show from South Bend, Marshall’s former head coach Bob Pruett put this one in perspective. The man who coached the Thundering Herd to many of its all-time great wins told anchor Tim Irr that this one stands alone.
“It’s the best,” Pruett said. “The best team, the best coach, the best everything won today.”
It’s an interesting conversation to be had. Marshall’s upset over Xavier in 1971 the year after the plane crash might be viewed as the most important win in school history. The 1992 national championship victory over Youngstown State was cathartic and emotional, and it was Marshall’s first national championship in football. The 1999 team’s win at Clemson set in motion a perfect season for what many consider the best football team ever at Marshall. And when Bob Pruett’s 2003 team upset No. 6-ranked Kansas State in Manhattan, that marked the highest-ranked team the Thundering Herd has ever beaten in football.
But taking down Notre Dame, a member of college football’s aristocracy, in the house that Rockne built, against the No. 8-ranked team in the nation, in front of 2.5 million viewers on NBC might be incomparable in Herd football lore.
Marshall also had broken Notre Dame’s 42-game win streak over unranked opponents. Immediately after the game, Marshall coach Charles Huff didn’t have time to digest where the win would rank in the annals of Marshall’s record books. But he knew what it meant to Herd fans everywhere.
“You saw the excitement from the guys,” Huff said in his postgame news conference. “You saw the players’ interaction with the fans. Our guys understand how much Marshall football means to the people of Huntington.”
As Marshall fans whooped it up under the shadow of the statue of legendary coach Ara Parseghian outside the stadium, the Herd players filed into the media room. Their celebration would come later. They still seem fixated on the point that this had been the goal throughout fall camp.
“We believed in ourselves,” Marshall quarterback Henry Colombi said. “Obviously not many people did. From the start of the week, from the start of the season, we knew that eventually we were going to have this test. The win was a testament to the offense and defense playing off one another. We have each other’s backs. We’ve got a bunch of camaraderie in our locker room, and it was special to see today.”
The digital reviews came quickly on Twitter.
At 5:35 p.m. ESPN’s Hannah Storm weighed in with this: “As hard as it is to watch as an Irish alum, a ton of respect for #Marshall and how they came into the Bend for the first time ever, and played this game.”
At 5:57 p.m. iconic sportscaster Dick Vitale tweeted: “What a fantastic WIN by MARSHALL ! They were w/o a doubt the better TEAM today.”
At 7:10 p.m. Notre Dame football legend and sportscaster Mike Golic wrote: “Tons of credit to Marshall for their win at ND … they made the plays … ND did not.”
The tweets kept pouring in. At one point “College Football Marshall” was the fifth-highest-trending topic on Twitter, with 23,200 posts.
Back in Huntington, Marshall fans knew what kind of a win it was. That’s why some gathered at the Tri-State Airport to welcome the team plane back home. Still more fans lined the parking lot where the team buses would disembark. Only a win like that brings out fans for an impromptu welcome-back party.
The media exposure intensified during the week. Sports Illustrated writer Pat Forde was in Huntington and sat in on Coach Huff’s Tuesday news conference. He was putting this win in perspective for a program which has seen both the abyss, and the summit.
“The bond is tight between town and team, and has been since that awful day in 1970. This was the best football moment in half a century, and they’re not letting go of it anytime soon,” Forde wrote.
The impact on Marshall’s program, beyond the $1.25 million payday, is tough to quantify. Marshall Athletics Director Christian Spears said the win goes beyond the tangible financial windfalls.
“You know what was more special?” Spears asked. “It was how that game made people feel about our program. For people who have been affiliated with Marshall’s program, to see us come full circle and win that game was surreal. The inspiration is bigger than all of us.”
Huff couldn’t agree more. A few hours after the game he received a text from a longtime Marshall supporter that read, “Coach, I wanted to say that today was one of the Top 10 days of my life. You had the team so confident, composed and ready to compete. I think this is the biggest win in the history of the program. Thank you!!!!”
As Steven Gilmore was finishing his dash into Herd football fame, long-time Herd fans Mark Watts and Danny Woods were screaming their lungs out celebrating the play that would put Notre Dame away. Then they noticed No. 3 was coming straight for them and the entire Marshall cheering section.
“I told Woody, ‘Man, he’s going to do a Lambeau Leap,’” Watts remembered, describing the tradition of Green Bay Packers players who jump into the stands to celebrate touchdowns with their fans. “I started pounding on the padding lining the stands. It was surreal. ‘He’s coming up here!’”
Gilmore was sandwiched between Watts on his right and Woods on his left, and there was nowhere in the football world Watts would rather be.
“It’s one of those forever moments as a fan I’ll never forget,” Watts said.
The question will come up for Herd fans down the road, “Where were you when Marshall upset No.-8 ranked Notre Dame?”
Mark Watts, Danny Woods and Steven Gilmore can always think back to those images that were draped across sports pages across the country and websites around the world — and smile again, remembering a moment and an unforgettable afternoon of college football.
