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Primary Source Proposal: We Are Marshall

Decent Essays

For my primary source proposal, I would like to use the film We Are Marshall. This movie directed by Joseph McGinty Nichol was released on December 22, 2006. The PG film is based off of the true story of what happened to the small town of Huntington, West Virginia in 1970. On November 14, 1970, the Marshall University Thundering Herd football team lost a nail biting game to East Carolina University Pirates, 17-14. Returning on the plane after the hard lost game, the 37 football players were accompanied by: head coach Rick Tolley and five members of his coaching staff; Charles E. Kautz, Marshall's athletics director; team athletic trainer Jim Schroer and his assistant, Donald Tackett; 25 boosters; and five crew members. The Southern Airways …show more content…

The tragic loss of these 75 total community members made the Marshall University President Donald Dedmon question keeping the football program. During the triumphs and failures throughout the movie, the football team came together at last and brought the gloomy community back to the up-spirited, football loving community they always were. Upon finishing the movie, I discovered how important college football is to Eastern United States of Appalachia. Finally I came to the question of asking myself: How has sports, in particularly college football, strength the Appalachian communities across these eastern states? To answer this question I will first begin to break the film down into the key scenes and turning points in which define the film. The first scene I plan to use involves one of the only three returning varsity players who weren’t on the crashing plane, team captain, Nate Ruffin. In this scene, Nate rallies together any student or community member he could find to convince the University President to keep the football program. Him and the other two returning players successfully created a crowd of thousands of students and community members chanting, “We are Marshall” who were

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