Topic: Movie inspires Marshall grad Nolte to pen 'College Football'

[ShawHerd]

Movie inspires Marshall grad Nolte to pen 'College Football's Greatest Comeback'
By Rodney Manley
TELEGRAPH STAFF WRITER


Rick Nolte figured it was only a matter of time before Hollywood brought Marshall University football to the big screen.

"We Are Marshall," scheduled to hit theaters in December, revisits the aftermath of the devastating 1970 plane crash that killed 75 players, coaches and fans. The film stars Matthew McConaughey as the coach trying to restart the team.

"Everyone who knew that story felt it was worthy of theatrical treatment," said Nolte, a Marshall graduate and sports editor at The Telegraph.

Nolte, 51, has co-authored two books on Marshall football. A third, "The Marshall Story: College Football's Greatest Comeback," is on its way and will be released weeks before the film.

"You've got a movie that tells a major part of the program to pique some interest, but it only deals with one segment of the program that includes so much more," Nolte said. "There's a lot more to Marshall football than the plane crash and coming back to win a couple of football games."

The book, which went to press last week, focuses not only on the tragedy but also on the triumph that eventually followed. Marshall rebounded from scandal and then the crash to become one of the winningest college football teams of the 1990s.

"The book tells the rest of the story, the whole story," said Henry Beers, CEO of Indigo Publishing in Macon, the book's publisher.

"There's a lot of humanity in it," Beers said. "There are some chapters that are very emotional when you realize the scope of what happened."

The book is expected to hit stores nationwide in early November. Beers said the potential tie-in with the movie helped sell Indigo on the book.

"We look at every project that comes in the door based on marketing," he said. "It was just a no-brainer. You don't get to do a whole lot of books that have movie interest nationwide."

The latest book combines parts of the first two with new material that spans Marshall's 1992 championship season to the present. That new era includes some familiar faces and names, such as former Marshall and University of Georgia head coach Jim Donnan and NFL stars Randy Moss, Byron Leftwich and Chad Pennington.

"It had a lot of good elements - it just needed to be packaged," Beers said of the project.

Indigo is perhaps best-known for its "showcase" photography books, but this is not its first venture into sports books. The company also published "It Can Be Done: The Billy Henderson Story" and "The Pride of the Panthers"

"The difference here is (this is) more of a coffee-table-style book, and that's our specialty," Beers said.

Nolte said news of the movie inspired him and co-authors Mickey Johnson, Dave Wellman and Tim Stephens to reunite. All four are natives of the Huntington, W.Va., area - where the university is located - and either graduated from or attended Marshall.

"I don't know that we would have done another book without something of the magnitude of that movie," Nolte said. "Once we found out what the movie would entail, we just felt it was a natural that some people are going to want to know more."

For example, he said, following the plane crash in 1970, Marshall went 13 years before having a winning season.

"Once they did, it was 20 years before they had a losing one."

Sounds like the kind of stuff movies - and books - are made of.

http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/living/15799316.htm

[ShawHerd]

This would be a good book to have along with the We Are Marshall DVD.