We Are Marshall (2006) on Netflix
After a 1970 plane crash kills most of Marshall's football team, the surviving players fight to keep the program alive. President Donald Dedmon hires Jack Lengyel to rebuild the roster.
- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb7.1/1068,309 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes48%
Trailer
Plot summary
On the evening of November 14, 1970, a chartered flight carrying the Marshall University football team home to Huntington, West Virginia, crashes short of the runway, killing the players, the coaches and the boosters aboard. The players who missed the flight, led by Nate Ruffin, join students and residents in pressing to keep the program going. University president Donald Dedmon hires Jack Lengyel as head coach. Red Dawson, one of the assistant coaches who was not on the plane, stays to help build a team from returning sophomores, freshmen and athletes from other Marshall sports, and Dedmon asks the NCAA to let freshmen play varsity football.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about We Are Marshall (2006)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- On the evening of November 14, 1970, Southern Airways Flight 932, chartered by Marshall University to fly the Thundering Herd home after a 17-14 defeat to East Carolina, clipped trees on a ridge a mile short of the runway at Tri-State Airport in Ceredo, West Virginia, killing all 75 aboard.
- Real coaches turned Marshall down first: Penn State assistant Bob Phillips took his name out of consideration after visiting the school, and Dick Bestwick, the freshman coach at Georgia Tech, was actually hired on February 24, 1971 but turned down the job two days later.
- Donald Dedmon was Marshall's acting president at the time of the accident, but his involvement in hiring Jack Lengyel is not historically documented, and since John G. Barker was hired as president in early 1971, Dedmon's firing over the return to football is inaccurate.
- As the final credits roll, actual footage from the 1970 season is shown, featuring players who perished in the crash, and each actor is shown standing with the real-life person they portrayed in the film.
