Topic: College fb season opener opponents Navy, Marshall connected by Jack Lengyel

[Ovaltine Jenkins]

https://www.capitalgazette.com/sports/navy/ac-cs-jack-lengyel-navy-marshall-connection-20210903-ervykwuronbzlp4xxqrdqhxodu-story.html

When Navy hosts Marshall Saturday afternoon in the college football season opener for both schools, there will be an honored guest in attendance.
Jack Lengyel will perform the pregame coin toss then be recognized during the initial television timeout in the first quarter.
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It is a fitting tribute to the man that binds these two institutions and their respective football programs.

Lengyel is a historic figure in the history of Marshall football, the first head coach following the tragic plane crash that wiped out the program in 1970. What Lengyel did to resurrect Marshall football after being hired in March 1971 was so inspiring it was made into a hit movie.

?We Are Marshall,? starring Matthew McConaughey as Lengyel, was released by Warner Brothers in December 2006, and grossed almost $44 million in theaters. The historical drama biopic remains a staple on cable television.

Lengyel resigned as Marshall head coach following the 1974 season, citing a lack of commitment from the administration to rebuilding the program properly. He became an associate athletic director at Louisville the following year, beginning a long career in administration.

Lengyel?s final stop was the Naval Academy, where he served as athletic director from 1986 until his retirement in 2001. The 87-year-old, who received the prestigious John L. Toner Award from the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame, resides in an assisted living facility in Annapolis along with his wife Sandy.

Current Navy athletic director Chet Gladchuk initially scheduled a home-and-home football series with Marshall in 2012. Navy football was an independent at the time and Gladchuk needed a home game on a future schedule, so he called a close friend in Marshall, athletic director Mike Hemrick.

However, Navy wound up joining the American Athletic Conference and Gladchuk was forced to postpone the Marshall game. It was eventually moved to 2021, which by complete coincidence was the 50th anniversary of the historic 1971 season when Marshall football was brought back from the ashes.

?Considering Jack Lengyel?s personal and professional influence on Marshall University and the Naval Academy, it is only appropriate that he be acknowledged on this special day,? Gladchuk said.

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Lengyel was deeply moved when informed of the game day tribute and thanked Gladchuk for his ?thoughtfulness.? Lengyel and his family will watch the game from a private box and ?hoping for a tie.?

?There are just too many wonderful memories on both sides,? Lengyel said. ?I cannot put into words what Marshall University and the Naval Academy have meant to our family. Both institutions hold a very special place in our hearts.?

An impossible job

Lengyel was head coach at College of Wooster on Nov. 14, 1970, a date that has become known as ?Black Saturday? in Huntington, West Virginia. Marshall football had lost to East Carolina that day and was returning home on a Southern Airways DC-9.

It was a dark, stormy night and neither pilot had ever flown into Tri-State Airport, located near the Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio border.
On approach, the plane clipped some trees, slammed into the Appalachian hillside and burst into flames ? killing all 75 people aboard. Marshall lost 37 players, head coach Rick Tolley and five of his assistants, athletic director Charles Kautz, athletic trainer Jim Schroer, sports information director and radio play-by-play announcer Gene Morehouse along with 24 boosters.

In the wake of the horrific tragedy, Marshall president Donald Dedmon leaned toward indefinitely suspending the football program. However, Dedmon was persuaded to reconsider by Marshall students and Huntington residents who felt the best way to honor those who perished was to field a football team the following season.

?It would have been easy to say: ?Let?s give up.? No one would have criticized Marshall,? Lengyel wrote in his diary of the 1971 season. ?Yet this university, in the face of unprecedented tragedy, stated: ?We will be back. We will field a team next season.? And from the ashes and seemingly insurmountable problems and tragedy, a team was born.?

Newly appointed Marshall athletic director Joe McMullen had coached Lengyel when he played football at Akron. Lengyel was an up-and-coming young coach who had rebuilt Wooster into a winning program that reached the Ohio Conference championship game in 1970.

Lengyel arrived on campus St. Patrick?s Day, roughly one month before the start of spring practice. He had to hire an entire staff, formulate offensive and defensive schemes and put together a roster.

In ?Rolling Thunder,? a history of the Marshall football program, the chapter about Lengyel is titled: Picking Up the Pieces. Sportswriter Ernie Salvatore, who covered Marshall for the Herald-Dispatch in Huntington, prefaced the chapter with the following paragraph.

?When I think of the post-crash era, I?ll always think of Jack Lengyel in the context he represented exactly what Marshall needed at the time. Jack had an excellent reputation in the profession. So, when they saw an honorable guy like Jack Lengyel in here trying to do an impossible job, it really enhanced Marshall?s reputation. He changed it from one of pity to one of respect.?
Salvatore later wrote that Lengyel worked a ?coaching miracle? in 1971.

Lengyel fashioned a makeshift roster consisting of five veterans who had not made the fateful trip to East Carolina and 17 sophomores who had been part of the program and were not allowed to play in 1970 because of NCAA rules. He filled in with numerous walk-ons and students who had never played organized football.

Lengyel convinced a couple of fifth-year basketball players who still had eligibility in football to serve as wide receivers and got soccer player Blake Smith to be the kicker. The NCAA issued a special dispensation for Marshall to use freshmen and Lengyel needed all 13 of his recruits.
Lengyel famously dubbed the 1971 team ?The Young Thundering Herd.?

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?It was one of the toughest things I ever had to go through. It was a tragedy much deeper than football,? Lengyel wrote. ?Marshall had lost great boosters, leaders and administrators. The crash cut a wide swath across the whole town.?
Building a team from scratch and convincing the players they could win was Lengyel?s greatest challenge. He installed the Houston Veer, an option-oriented offense he learned from then-West Virginia coach Bobby Bowden. He decided to employ multiple defenses in an attempt to confuse opponents.

?We didn?t have the talent, so we had to cover up our weaknesses,? Lengyel told The Capital in 1997. ?The veer offense drew two defensive backs away from the middle of the field so that we were only playing nine on nine. We couldn?t play straight-up defense, so we always changed fronts to disguise what we were doing.?
Marshall?s first regular season game following the plane crash came on Sept. 18, 1971, against Morehead State. Prior to the opener, Lengyel received a letter of encouragement from President Richard Nixon, who wrote ?You have already won your greatest victory by putting the 1971 squad on the field.?

Marshall?s home opener proved a landmark Saturday in Huntington with a record crowd of 13,000, including governor Arch Moore, packing Fairfield Stadium to witness a 15-13 upset of Xavier. The Thundering Herd scored the winning touchdown on the game?s final play, which became one of the more memorable scenes in the movie.

?There wasn?t a dry eye in the stands. No one could believe what had happened. The fans were hugging one another and sobbing with joy,? Lengyel said. ?We came out of the locker room an hour after the game and the stadium was still packed.?

There would be many more memorable, milestone moments that season. Game 4 at Northern Illinois marked the first time Marshall had to travel by airplane since the crash. Lengyel brought his wife Sandy on the trip to reassure the team and told players they did not have to go.
Marshall finished 2-8 in 1971, but the record was meaningless.

?There were many victories in the hearts and minds of the players and staff,? Lengyel wrote in the diary. ?I?ll never forget the determination and effort of our players. Every Monday, they came back with the attitude: ?Who do we play this week and how do we beat them??
?If victory is indeed a state of mind, then I submit that Marshall University went undefeated in 1971.?


Lengyel has remained an important part of the Marshall football family ever since. The Thundering Herd won just 22 games in 10 years but turned things around after dropping to Division I-AA. Coach George Chaump led Marshall to the Division I-AA national championship game in 1987 and invited Lengyel to address the team beforehand. Lengyel would later hire Chaump to lead the Navy football program.

Marshall erected a memorial fountain to recognize the victims of the 1970 plane crash. There are two ceremonies held at the fountain every year ? one on the date the crash occurred and another on the date when the program restarted.

Lengyel has already spoken at several memorial services and is scheduled to attend a special dinner on Friday, Sept. 18 before when Marshall hosts East Carolina. He stays in touch with many former Marshall players from the time he coached from 1971 to 1975.
Lengyel was hired as Navy athletic director in 1988 to replace the retired J.O. ?Bo? Coppedge. He had been athletic director at Fresno State (1983-1986) and Missouri (1986-1988).

Lengyel was responsible for reorganizing and modernizing the Naval Academy Athletic Association, which is classified as a 501c3 nonprofit. NAAA is a private organization that administers the 33 varsity sports at the academy.
?What Jack did for Navy athletics was incredibly significant and has enabled the organization to grow into what it is today,? said Gladchuk, who succeeded Lengyel in 2001.

?Jack created a business model that allows for a degree of autonomy within the confines of a government entity ? one with the flexibility and latitude needed to be successful at the Division I level,? Gladchuk added. ?Jack paved the way of meshing the two entities in a way that it gave me a running start toward putting together a program that is characteristic of what you see at a civilian school.?

Lengyel?s love and respect for Marshall football may have influenced his decision to hire Chaump, who did not prove a good fit for the Naval Academy. He was forced to fire Chaump following the 1994 season after the coach compiled a 14-41 record over five seasons.

Charlie Weatherbie was brought in to turn around the program and initially did, leading Navy to a 9-3 record and upset victory over California in the Aloha Bowl in 1996. It was Navy?s first winning season since 1982 and was followed by another in 1997 (7-4).

However, things began to go south when offensive coordinator Paul Johnson left to become head coach at Georgia Southern. Weatherbie promoted Ken Niumatalolo to offensive coordinator for two seasons before he fired him.

Lengyel kept Niumatalolo on the payroll until he could find another job, which proved to be as an assistant to at John Robinson at UNLV in 1999.
?Jack?s a wonderful man and was a great athletic director. He?s very well respected within our profession as both a coach and an athletic director and has been a mentor of mine,? Niumatalolo said. ?I?m grateful for all that Jack?s done for my family. He showed kindness and took care of my family and I?ll always remember that.?

Bill Wagner has worked for Capital Gazette Newspapers for 30 years. He served as beat writer for Navy athletics and general assignment sports reporter.

College football season opener opponents Navy, Marshall connected by Jack Lengyel, who inspired movie ?We Are Marshall?