Yet they still hate..... Amazing if you think about it.
"When most people assess Bobby Bowden's legacy as a football coach, they likely remember him most for turning Florida State into a national power and being the winningest Division I-A coach in history.
Jack Lengyel sees it much differently.
The Bowden he will always remember is the guy who, in the spring of 1971, played a significant role in helping the Marshall University football program rise from the ashes. A compassionate coach saw a team in desperate need.
He proceeded to open up his playbook, his film room and his heart to Lengyel and the Marshall coaching staff.
Four months after the plane crash into a West Virginia hillside that killed 75 people, including nearly all of the Marshall players and coaches, Lengyel was hired to direct the most daunting job of rebuilding in college football history.
Lengyel devoted four years to that task, which gains national exposure in the movie We Are Marshall. But he's quick to credit Bowden, who had just completed his first season as West Virginia coach, for assisting Marshall in the comeback process from the worst sports-related disaster in U.S. history.
"There's no way we could have recovered as well as we did without coach Bowden's help," the 70-year-old Lengyel said in an interview from his home in Arizona. "We were pressed for time, and [Bowden's staff] gave us all the teaching points for a new offense."
When Lengyel arrived at Marshall, he had only 31 days until spring practice. With only 43 players, Lengyel didn't have the depth or talent to run his power-I offense.
Marshall's only chance to be competitive (it won two games in 1971) was to institute the Houston veer offense, an option attack that relied more on the quarterback reading defenses and less on great run-blocking. Lengyel wanted to spread the field and turn games into more of a finesse contest.
Luckily, Bowden knew everything about the Houston veer from visiting with former Houston coach Bill Yeoman, the offense's architect, in 1968. So when Marshall's coaches needed to cram to learn the new offense, they spent three days working well into the middle of the night with Bowden's staff to get everything down.
In the movie, Lengyel, who gave input to actor Matthew McConaughey and the film's producers, was happy to see a brief scene that showed his staff's visit with Bowden and the part it played in Marshall's football recovery.
Bowden, who saw a tape of the movie Sunday, was proud to be included. He admits his emotions got the better of him.
"There's no doubt about the satisfaction you feel in helping out because [Marshall] had a whole team wiped out," Bowden said. "That thing hit close to home. I sat and cried through the whole [movie].
"I thought they couldn't make it look real, but they did a great job. It brought back such memories because I knew a lot of the players and coaches."
To honor Marshall's victims, Bowden had a cross and the MU initials put on the back of the helmets of West Virginia's players in 1971. That gesture, and coming to the rescue of a program overwhelmed by grief and on-field obstacles, remains with Jack Lengyel to this day.
Bobby Bowden won him over long before he ever became a famous football coach."
Florida Times-Union, Dec. 19, 2006.
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