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"After [Bestwick] left, I called the Marshall athletic director Joe McMullen and asked to be considered," Lengyel said. "I think I was hired out of desperation and lack of time to get a program started." It's not like Marshall was a high-profile program before tragedy struck. It had been put on NCAA probation, was temporarily booted out of the Mid-American Conference in 1968 and 1969, and had only three winning seasons in the previous 17 years. When Lengyel arrived, the magnitude of this rebuilding job really began to sink in. He had 22 players from the 1970 freshmen team, three returning varsity players (cornerbacks Nate Ruffin and Felix Jordan, and offensive tackle Eddie Carter) who weren't on that plane due to injuries or personal reasons, and a special exemption from the NCAA to play freshmen on varsity, which was prohibited at the time. Of course, by the spring, Lengyel and his coaching staff had only a small picking of leftover recruits. "Our selling point was immediate playing time and contributing to the foundation for Marshall's future," Lengyel said.  The just-released film "We Are Marshall" proves the human spirit always survives. Three assistant coaches and an equipment manager who weren't on the plane returned to assist Lengyel in the reconstruction. One of them was wide receivers' coach Red Dawson (played in the movie by actor Matthew Fox), who drove to East Carolina because he didn't like flying. The others, defensive line coach Carl Kokor and backfield coach Mickey Jackson, were on a scouting trip to Penn State at the time of the crash. "We had 43 players for the first spring practice," Lengyel said. "We didn't have enough to scrimmage. We did a lot of shadow and bump drills. Seldom did we do full contact because we couldn't afford to get people hurt. We had full-contact practices but once or twice a week." To make up for a lack of experience and depth, Marshall's coaches instituted a Houston veer offense, spreading the field to give the Thundering Herd a chance to be competitive. Lengyel and his staff went up to the University of West Virginia for three days to consult with its second-year head coach, Bobby Bowden. Now at Florida State, Bowden is the winningest coach in Division I-A football. "In the beginning, we wondered whether we would play or not," said Walsh. "The facilities weren't the greatest in the world, and we had just come off a year of [NCAA ] probation." Marshall's interim president, Dr. Donald Dedmond, decided to give it a go. Amazingly, Marshall won two games in 1971, including a 15-13 victory in the home opener against Xavier on the final play, a 13-yard screen pass from Reggie Oliver to Terry Gardner. The Thundering Herd failed to get out of bounds to stop the clock on the previous play, so they had to rush to the line of scrimmage to get the last play off with one second remaining. "That wasn't a Hollywood script, that was the real deal," said Walsh. But Hollywood did take some liberties with the real-life script. In the movie, the game-winning pass against Xavier is a catch in the back right corner of the end zone. Lengyel's character, as played by McConaughey, also has mannerisms in the film that Walsh and Lengyel agree were never a part of the coach's repertoire. Other than that, they believe that the movie was done with great sensitivity, especially the early scene of the plane crash. For almost everyone associated with the Marshall tragedy, how that part was treated caused the most apprehension. "A lot of people were concerned about how that would be portrayed," Walsh said. "It's tough to watch, but they get in and out of it pretty quick and go on to the rebuilding process. "[Warner Bros.] said they wanted to do the film with taste, dignity and accuracy. For the most part, they got it down. I knew the 37 players who died. I don't know how other people will view it, but I thought it was tastefully done. It was justifiable and dignified."
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