Huntington Quarterly Autumn 2022

Running back Khalan Laborn was a one-man wrecking crew as he carried the ball 31 times for 163 yards and a score.

cathartic and emotional, and it was Marshall’s first na tional championship in football. The 1999 team’s win at Clemson set in motion a perfect season for what many consider the best football team ever at Marshall. And when Bob Pruett’s 2003 team upset No. 6-ranked Kansas State in Manhattan, that marked the highest-ranked team the Thundering Herd has ever beaten in football. But taking down Notre Dame, a member of college football’s aristocracy, in the house that Rockne built, against the No. 8-ranked team in the nation, in front of 2.5 million viewers on NBC might be incomparable in Herd football lore. Marshall also had broken Notre Dame’s 42-game win streak over unranked opponents. Immediately after the game, Marshall coach Charles Huff didn’t have time to digest where the win would rank in the annals of Marshall’s record books. But he knew what it meant to Herd fans everywhere. “You saw the excitement from the guys,” Huff said in his postgame news conference. “You saw the play ers’ interaction with the fans. Our guys understand how much Marshall football means to the people of Huntington.”

Laborn only got stronger as the game went on and was later named the Doak Walker National Running Back of the Week.

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