Marshall University Athletics
BOGACZYK: No Place Like Home-and-Home for Herd
10/8/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
By JACK BOGACZYK
HERDZONE.COM COLUMNIST
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – Mike Hamrick has a Marshall football helmet on a shelf in his office. Maybe the Marshall athletic director needs a construction helmet, too.
Hamrick, a Thundering Herd defensive end in the late ‘70s, has been a builder since he returned to his alma mater as athletic director in July 2009.
Just some of the evidence of that looms above the east horizon of Joan C. Edwards Stadium in the new Chris Cline Athletic Complex and its massive indoor facility and its adjacent components still to open.
More of it is in the Herd’s future football schedules. Hamrick continued with his scheduling blueprints on Tuesday, when the Herd and Pittsburgh announced they had signed a home-and-home contract for games in 2016 at Heinz Field and 2020 at "The Joan."
The "Side Yard Brawl," perhaps?
Marshall football Coach Doc Holliday was a longtime participant in the "Backyard Brawl" series against Pitt as a West Virginia linebacker and assistant coach. That series was halted after the 2011 season and hasn’t been renewed. Pitt and WVU played 104 times.
"The Backyard Brawl is now in Huntington," Holliday said with a smile during his weekly news conference Tuesday. "That's a good thing, I guess. You have to give Mike Hamrick a lot of credit. We're not going up to Pitt six times and them come here once. It's home-and-home and it's great for our fan base.
"Mike has done a great job of not only scheduling good football teams with great traditions, but he's scheduled so it's fan-friendly for our fan base."
In his five-plus years in the Marshall AD chair, Hamrick has done football non-conference home-and-homes with Purdue, Louisville, North Carolina State and Pitt. The Purdue and Louisville contracts came in Hamrick’s first five months guiding Herd athletic fortunes.
He also worked a home-and-home with Navy, a series that will make the Midshipmen the first service academy to play in Huntington in 2022. And when the Middies wanted to ask out because they joined the Big East (now AAC) for football starting in 2015, Hamrick coaxed the academy to push back the dates because it’s an attractive matchup.
Once East Carolina – a former Hamrick AD stop – left Conference USA for the AAC this summer, the Herd and Pirates agreed to a home-and-home for 2020 and ’21, continuing a series that has deep connections to the 1970 Marshall plane tragedy and one of the greatest bowl games in history.
There also have been a re-upping of the long "Battle of the Bell" series with Ohio (2019 and 2020), and fan-drivable non-league road series with Akron (home-and-home), Kent State (home-and-home) and four games with Miami (Ohio) – like Ohio all former Mid-American Conference foes for Marshall.
That’s 10 non-conference opponents and 22 games … and none in so-called "buy" or no-return games.
"I’ve said many times we’re going to do home-and-homes," Hamrick said. "I want quality opponents here in Huntington because that’s what our fans want, and we’re providing that. Pitt is another of those games. It’s an ACC team, a power conference team.
"It’s Pitt. You hear that name, people know what it means. Pitt has won national championships. It has a Heisman Trophy winner, Tony Dorsett … Dan Marino, Mike Ditka, Larry Fitzgerald, Hugh Green, Mark May, Bill Fralic, ‘Ironhead’ Heyward. And what’s just as important for us is where it’s located.
"It’s a 4 1/2-hour drive from Huntington. Ours fans can get there; theirs can get here. We’ll be playing in Heinz Field, an NFL stadium, in a major market. When we play there, the game can be part of the ACC TV package, which blankets the East Coast."
In 2016, the Herd has eight Conference USA games, with non-league games at Pitt and at home against Louisville, Akron and an FCS opponents still to be named. That gives Marshall seven regular-season home dates for the first time since 1996 – the program’s last season in then-Division I-AA (now FCS).
Marshall could have scheduled a 2016 no-return road date with one of a few interested Southeastern Conference schools for $1 million or more. Hamrick said that was in the cards because MU had seven at home, but he chose the other option "to get Pitt, a quality opponent from the ACC, at home."
The Marshall AD said there’s good reason for that.
"We want to be the premier program in the so-called Group of Five, or whatever you want to call it," Hamrick said. "That’s our goal and it’s a realistic one. Winning the Military Bowl over Maryland in Annapolis last December -- when Maryland was moving from the ACC to the Big Ten -- was a plus, as is our great 5-0 start this football season.
"As people can see, we’re building facilities. The indoor facility that’s part of the Chris Cline Athletic Complex is one of the best in the nation. But where we’re still behind is in selling tickets, in particular season tickets. When you build your season ticket base, you build your revenue stream for operations and you can count on it perennially.
"It’s vitally important that as we grow in stature within Conference USA – which is ‘coming back’ to us geographically -- and the Group of 5, we schedule teams that our fans want to see here in Huntington."
Hamrick’s decision to schedule regional foes home-and-home has been underscored early this season with the Herd off to a 5-0 start. Several thousand Marshall fans traveled to games last month at Miami (Ohio) and Akron. Marshall could get only 1,000 tickets from Old Dominion for last Saturday’s game in Norfolk, Va., and sold its allotment quickly.
"We probably could have done twice that if we’d been able to get the tickets," Hamrick said.
The Marshall-Pitt deal will provide the Herd with 3,000 tickets for the game at Heinz Field on Oct. 1, 2016. The Herd will receive 1,500 seats for the 2017 game at N.C. State. The Wolfpack comes to Edwards Stadium in 2018.
Purdue visits Marshall for the 2015 opener, returning a Herd visit to West Lafayette, Ind., in 2012.
In September 2011, Marshall won at Louisville, which since has moved from the Big East to the ACC. Two years later, when the Cardinals announced that move and learned football independent Notre Dame was committed to playing several ACC teams annually and they were one of those for 2014, Louisville asked the Herd for a break.
The Cards asked to push the return game to Huntington back to 2016 and in the renegotiation, offered Marshall a basketball date at the KFC Yum! Center (Nov. 21 this season), plus sweetened the hoops guarantee to $130,000.
There have been naysayers who continue to contend Louisville will never play football at Edwards Stadium, and that it will pay $500,000 to cancel the contract.
"If that were the case," Hamrick said, "Louisville would already have done that. Louisville has been tremendous to work with. They had a scheduling issue when they changed conferences, and we were glad to help them work it out. (Louisville AD) Tom Jurich runs a very class operation, one of the best in the country."
The upcoming games with Purdue, Louisville, N.C. State and Pitt give the Herd six games with power conference teams in a six-year span (2015-20) – and four of those in Huntington. There’s another part of the Herd scheduling blueprint that’s a bonus, too.
When Charlotte moves into C-USA football next season, the Herd’s East Division foes will be the 49ers, ODU, Middle Tennessee, Western Kentucky, FIU and Florida Atlantic. Of those six, three will be home dates annually, with three on the road.
It’s easy to see Herd fans will have a couple more easily drivable games in there to go with the non-league dates. There will be one trip to the Sunshine State each season, too, aiding Holliday’s strong recruiting in Florida.
There’s an often overlooked aspect to these non-conference home-and-homes Hamrick has forged, too.
It’s the potential exposure in larger markets.
When Marshall made its first trip to Norfolk last weekend, the Herd’s 56-14 romp was covered by news crews from three Hampton Roads TV stations and newspapers from Norfolk and Newport News – in the nation’s No. 42 telecast market.
When the Herd won at Akron last month, it did so before newspaper scribes and TV news cameras from Cleveland and Akron – the No. 19 Nielsen TV market. Pittsburgh is No. 22, Raleigh-Durham, N.C., is No. 25. And when the Herd plays at Navy, Annapolis is part of the No. 26 market (Baltimore).
That’s on top of C-USA having nine member schools (of 14) in eight of the top 43 Nielsen TV markets.
Charleston-Huntington is ranked No. 66.
"We’re trying to build the Marshall brand," Hamrick said. "The more people who know who we are – and know more about us than just about the one tragic day and depths from which the Herd has climbed – the better it is for our university, our student-athletes, our coaches and our athletic program.
"We talked a lot about ‘vision’ as we worked hard on the Vision Campaign to fund new facilities that we needed. Well, there’s a vision here in scheduling, too. It’s not easy to schedule. First, you have to have two sides who want to play.
"We’ll continue to look for home-and-homes, for regional opportunities, for marquee opponents. Our fans want that. I do, too."
The non-conference football schedules for future seasons at Marshall University:
2015
Sept. 5 – Purdue
Sept. 12 – at Ohio
Sept. 19 – Norfolk State
Sept. 26 – at Kent State
2016
Sept. 10 – TBA (FCS opponent)
Sept. 17 – Akron
Sept. 24 – Louisville
Oct. 1 – at Pitt
2017
Sept. 2 – Miami (Ohio)
Sept. 9 – at N.C. State
Sept. 16 – Kent State
One game TBA
2018
Sept. 1 – at Miami (Ohio)
Sept. 22 – N.C. State
Two games TBA
2019
Sept. 14 – Ohio
Three games TBA
2020
Sept. 5 – at East Carolina
Sept. 19 – at Ohio
Sept. 26 – Pitt
One game TBA
2021
Sept. 4 – at Navy
Sept. 11 – East Carolina
Two games TBA
2022
Sept. 3 – Navy
Three games TBA
