ESPN: East Carolina-Marshall game moved up to remember 1970 tragedy

BleedGopher

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 11, 2008
Messages
60,885
Reaction score
16,465
Points
113
per ESPN:

East Carolina and Marshall have been granted a waiver by the NCAA to play their season opener on Aug. 29 -- a week earlier than originally scheduled -- at ECU's Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium as a tribute to the 75 people who died almost 50 years ago in the Marshall plane crash.

Jon Gilbert, East Carolina's athletic director, said ESPN has committed to televising the 50th anniversary game on one of its networks.

"We plan to invite family members of the players from both teams who played in the game," Gilbert told ESPN. "Both programs will forever be linked, and we are honored to recognize the 75 people who lost their lives."

A chartered jet carrying the Marshall team was returning from a game at East Carolina on Nov. 14, 1970, when it crashed into a hillside 2 miles from the Tri-State Airport in Kenova, West Virginia. All 75 people onboard were killed in the worst disaster in American sports history.

Included in the waiver letter submitted to the NCAA by East Carolina, in conjunction with Marshall, was a bio of every person who lost his or her life in the crash. Marshall football players, coaches, team doctors, athletic administrators, media members and university boosters were among those killed in the crash.

A portion of Gilbert's letter read: "The NCAA can help celebrate the victims and their legacy, including Jim Adams, a football student-athlete who never met his daughter because she was born on the day he was buried; and Jeff Nathan, a very optimistic student reporter for The Parthenon, who didn't have the chance to write his 30th 'Hoof Beat.' ... These 75 people and their families deserve to be recognized in a special way."


Go Gophers!!
 

It's nice... but I've got a weird feeling that moving the game to get on ESPN ... seems like "honoring the victims" is awfully close to "man it would be nice to be on TV"...

"These 75 people and their families deserve to be recognized in a special way."

Like on ESPN, people "deserve" to be on ESPN?

I don't know that anyone involved has bad motivations here, it just ... I duno.
 

It's nice... but I've got a weird feeling that moving the game to get on ESPN ... seems like "honoring the victims" is awfully close to "man it would be nice to be on TV"...

"These 75 people and their families deserve to be recognized in a special way."

Like on ESPN, people "deserve" to be on ESPN?

I don't know that anyone involved has bad motivations here, it just ... I duno.
You're not wrong, but on the flip side, if you have a program that's not on national TV then the 15,000 people in the stands see it and that's about it. This is a way to get the program out to a much broader audience to remember and memorialize the victims. A lot of folks saw the movie We Are Marshall and know of it, so I'm sure there's a lot of casual sports fans that would like to see how they honor the victims.
 




It's nice... but I've got a weird feeling that moving the game to get on ESPN ... seems like "honoring the victims" is awfully close to "man it would be nice to be on TV"...

"These 75 people and their families deserve to be recognized in a special way."

Like on ESPN, people "deserve" to be on ESPN?

I don't know that anyone involved has bad motivations here, it just ... I duno.

Hopefully they do it right and not just for attention. I'll assume they have good intentions.
 

Hopefully they do it right and not just for attention. I'll assume they have good intentions.
Every single "memorial" encompasses basically the same situations.

Who's moral compass gets to decide which one is "for the victims" and which are for "attention"?

The dead are dead. The only witnesses to a memorial are alive. Their mere presence implies attention to themselves. Any memorial is really for the survivors and to salve their thoughts and feelings. Otherwise, there would be no memorials. The dead don't care.

There's really no moral compass here.
 

Who's moral compass gets to decide which one is "for the victims" and which are for "attention"?

I am sure family members of the dead wouldn't be thrilled to see others profiting off of the deaths of their loved ones.
 




Top Bottom