Steve Cotton is heading into his 30th season as the Voice of the Thundering Herd. One of the top broadcasters in the business, Steve is a 14-time West Virginia Sportscaster of the Year. He is a member of the West Virginia Broadcasting Hall of Fame, and a great guy. He was kind enough to give us some great insight into the season opener between these two proud programs.
Talk about the unknown with so many new players this year.
It’s crazy to realize that Southern Miss opens its season against Mississippi State and will start and play more guys who won last year’s Sun Belt Championship Game for Marshall than who actually return to and play for Marshall in 2025. The Thundering Herd has more than 70 newcomers in uniform this season and not many of those who are back played a majority of the snaps. Add in a new coaching staff and new systems on both sides of the ball, and I can’t imagine that many schools have more unknowns prior to opening day than the Herd. But on the other side of that coin, a team can more quickly fill its holes and make itself competitive through good transfer portal additions than ever before. As I watched Marshall prepare through fall camp it looked very much like last year’s fall looked – there are a lot of big, strong, fast guys flying around the field making plays. Coach Gibson and his staff have invested a lot of time and effort into team-building and bonding activities, but that’s not unique to Marshall – 70-plus newcomers might be on the high end but it feels like just about everybody has at least a 50-percent roster turnover, so how different is it? Fortunately Marshall retained several guys who’ve jumped right in as the team leaders, plus you will see in the weeks to come that some newcomers will be or already are taking on leadership roles.
How strange was the way last season ended?
Well, the championship celebration didn’t last too long. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that it was just tempered more quickly than it would have been. Marshall beat Louisiana in the Sun Belt title game on Saturday night and Southern Miss announced Charles Huff as its new head coach on Sunday afternoon. Over the next few days it became an issue as to whether Marshall would have enough players to safely compete in a bowl game and it turned out that the answer was ‘no.’ So ‘strange’ is a good word for it, but you don’t win conference championships every year so it’s still something for people to look back upon with pride. It was a fun football season.
What are Marshall’s goals this season?
You can look at change as being something scary or you can embrace it as exciting. One year ago, Marshall was picked at No. 5 among the seven teams in the East Division in the Sun Belt preseason poll. The coaches are the ones who voted – the very people who know more about Sun Belt Conference football than anyone else. Six weeks into the season, Marshall was 3-3. Seven consecutive wins later they held up the prize. This feels very similar – right now you want to prove that people are wrong about you, that they’ve underestimated you.
Can you talk about Jim Donnan and Todd Donnan and their wonderful legacies at Marshall?
My first year at Marshall was 1993. The Thundering Herd had just won the I-AA National Championship and was trying to replace the Walter Payton Award winner in quarterback Michael Payton, who was eventually inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. I remember thinking before that season about the pressure that Todd must have been feeling – the coach’s kid, whose Dad had been a star quarterback himself, trying to replace a legendary quarterback like Payton. Todd was more than up to the challenge – Marshall went 23-6 in those next two years including two deep playoff runs and he was named the Southern Conference Offensive Player of the Year and the all sports Male Athlete of the Year. They were both no-doubters as selections for the Marshall Athletics Hall of Fame and when Coach D. was inducted into the College Football I was thrilled that Marshall sent me to the ceremony.
What is your take on Georgia?
You have to figure these days that if you’re picked, what – in the top four or top six of the SEC before the year that in the big picture a team has national championship potential, right? It’s one of the schools I keep an eye on because there are some Marshall ties – Scott Sinclair was the Herd’s strength and conditioning coach before going to Georgia. Todd Hartley was on staff here. Travis Epling in the Bulldog Club was a cross country and track runner for Marshall. I’ll never forget when he got into athletic fundraising here that we played at Southern Miss in their homecoming football game. Travis got up Saturday morning and went to campus to run in their homecoming race. Not only did Marshall win the football game that night, the Eagles had to give the first place race trophy to a guy in a Marshall shirt.
What does Marshall need to do to win?
I don’t try to predict anything – but I can go back and look at what has made those things happen in the past. Since Marshall made the move to the FBS ranks in 1997, the Thundering Herd has won 17 games over teams that are now in the Power Four conferences and the military academies. Wins at places like Clemson, Kansas State, Notre Dame. Bowl wins over Brigham Young, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Maryland – games that most people gave the Herd little chance to win. In those 17 games, Marshall is plus-23 in turnovers, scored six defensive touchdowns and also a safety. Marshall was even in turnovers in two of those games and minus-1 in three of them. So, plus-26 in turnovers in the other 12. Big surprise, right?
What are some changes you’d like to see in college football?
I have a hard time being upset about those things that are so easy to take aim at in today’s college athletics landscape. I never had a chance to turn down $100 dollars to change schools, let alone a million dollars. Do I like the portal? No. But I don’t begrudge those who take advantage of their opportunities. I do worry that student-athletes who play for three or four (or more?) schools will never have that deep connection to any of them. I guess if you gave me the magic wand I’d come up with a way to slow down that wave of transfers each year, but I don’t know how to do it. Maybe one immediate transfer and then you have to sit a year if you do it again? Even that feels like you’d be penalizing kids who legitimately need a change.
So, since I can’t figure out a way to fix the portal and NIL, I’ll just set a 90-second time limit on video reviews. How about that?
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