Friends of Coal Bowl
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| West Virginia | Marshall |
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The Friends of Coal Bowl is an American college football rivalry game played by the Marshall Thundering Herd football team of Marshall University and the West Virginia Mountaineers football team of the West Virginia University. The game is sponsored by the Friends of Coal, a coal industry trade group. Planned to be a seven-year series, the Friends of Coal Bowl was organized by the West Virginia Coal Association at the urging of West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin. West Virginia has never lost to Marshall.
The first game of the current series was played in Morgantown, West Virginia at Mountaineer Field on September 2, 2006, a 42-10 victory for the Mountaineers. The Governor's Trophy is awarded to the winner of the game. It is presented by the West Virginia Governor and housed at the university which wins the annual matchup. Made entirely from within West Virginia and with in-state materials, the trophy consists of a carbon base, a glass pedestal, and football-shaped piece of coal enclosed within the glass pedestal. It was designed by Rick Mogielski.
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[edit] Series history
Despite both teams being from the state of West Virginia, hard feelings and politics kept the teams from playing on a regular basis before the Friends of Coal Bowl was started. Teams from West Virginia University and Marshall University had only played five times in the ninety-five years before 2006.
The 1997 match-up is often thought of as the start of "hard feelings" between the two schools. When Marshall moved to Division 1A in 1997, their first game was against WVU. WVU jumped out to a 28-3 lead in the first half. Marshall led that game 31-28 going to the fourth quarter with Randy Moss leading the show. However, two touchdowns in the final quarter gave WVU the victory. At that point, bad blood arose between the two administrations. WVU claims Marshall backed out of 3 future games. Marshall claims they were never scheduled. The schools couldn't come to an agreement to play again. Former Marshall head coach Bob Pruett tried to get the WVU administration to agree to a series, but WVU stood by their stance of wanting 3 out of 4 games to be played in Morgantown, while Marshall demanded 1 out of every 3 be played in Huntington. Governor Manchin brought the schools together and hashed out the current format, which includes four games in Morgantown, two in Huntington, and the remaining game will be decided by who wins two out of the first three games. The settlement finally got the only two Division 1A schools in the state to play each other.
West Virginia won the first match-up of the new series 42-10 in 2006, and the next one in Huntington 48-23 in 2007. West Virginia defeated Marshall in 2008, 27-3, after losing two consecutive games to begin the season 1-2, making their record 2-2. In 2009, WVU and Marshall faced off for the fourth time in the Friends of Coal Bowl, with WVU coming out on top 24-7. In 2010, WVU and Marshall faced off in Huntington. Facing a 21-6 fourth-quarter deficit, WVU outscored Marshall 15-0 on drives of 96 and 98 yards in the final 8:28 of the game. In overtime WVU took the lead with a field goal and won 24-21 when Marshall's kicker Tyler Warner missed a 39-yard field goal attempt.
West Virginia will host the next Friends of Coal Bowl in 2012.
[edit] Future
West Virginia and Marshall have discussed extending the series, but negotiations have resulted in an impasse. Marshall, despite having never won in the series, would like to have an alternating site format for revenue purposes, while West Virginia would prefer a "two-for-one" arrangement if one were to be made at all.[1]
On September 10, 2010, Governor Manchin announced that the series would continue, however no further details came from the announcement.[2] In June, 2011 WVU athletic director Oliver Luck stated on the West Virginia television program "Decision Makers" that there were no plans to extend the series in the near future.[3] Luck later went on to say "The expansion of the Big East will make it a little more challenging [to schedule Marshall]," says Luck. "Not impossible, but a little more challenging. It very well may be that we can only do a Marshall game every now and then as opposed to every year or four out of five years."[4] WVU's out of conference schedule is now full until the year 2015, making 2016 the first possible date a new series could start. When asked if talks had taken place to renew the series WVU's Deputy Director of Athletics Mike Parsons state "No, not really. [We've met about other sports but] there's been no conversations with football."[5] It has been suggested that West Virginia is not open to renewing the series, having been forced into the current series arrangement due to political pressure from the state government in Charleston.[6] It is also debatable as to whether the Friends of Coal Bowl constitutes a true rivalry between the schools, as Marshall has never beaten West Virginia in the eleven-game series and there is a lack of mutual animosity between the Mountaineers and Thundering Herd.[6][7]
[edit] Game results
West Virginia victories are shaded ██ blue. If Marshall were to win, their victories would be shaded ██ green.
| Date | Site | Winning team | Losing team | Series | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All-time | FOC Bowl | |||||||
| Pre-Friends of Coal Bowl games | ||||||||
| October 28, 1911 | Morgantown | West Virginia | 17 | Marshall | 15 | WVU 1-0 | ||
| October 3, 1914 | Morgantown | West Virginia | 20 | Marshall | 0 | WVU 2-0 | ||
| November 6, 1915 | Huntington | West Virginia | 92 | Marshall | 6 | WVU 3-0 | ||
| October 20, 1923 | Morgantown | West Virginia | 81 | Marshall | 0 | WVU 4-0 | ||
| August 30, 1997 | Morgantown | West Virginia | 42 | Marshall | 31 | WVU 5-0 | ||
| Friends of Coal Bowl games | ||||||||
| September 2, 2006 | Morgantown | West Virginia | 42 | Marshall | 10 | WVU 6-0 | WVU 1-0 | |
| September 8, 2007 | Huntington | West Virginia | 48 | Marshall | 23 | WVU 7-0 | WVU 2-0 | |
| September 27, 2008 | Morgantown | West Virginia | 27 | Marshall | 3 | WVU 8-0 | WVU 3-0 | |
| October 17, 2009 | Morgantown | West Virginia | 24 | Marshall | 7 | WVU 9-0 | WVU 4-0 | |
| September 10, 2010 | Huntington | West Virginia | 24 | Marshall | 21 | WVU 10-0 | WVU 5-0 | |
| September 4, 2011† | Morgantown | West Virginia | 34 | Marshall | 13 | WVU 11-0 | WVU 6-0 | |
| September 1, 2012 | Morgantown | Marshall at West Virginia | ||||||
† Game was called during the fourth quarter following two lightning delays, totalling over four hours.
[edit] References
- ^ http://espn.go.com/blog/bigeast/post/_/id/12075/coal-bowl-has-been-all-diamonds-for-wvu
- ^ http://www.herald-dispatch.com/sports/marshall/x1940241587/Manchin-push-should-keep-WVU-series-going
- ^ http://wvillustrated.com/wvufootball/story/id/1113
- ^ http://wvillustrated.com/wvufootball/story/id/544
- ^ http://ee.dominionpost.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=RFBvc3QvMjAxMS8wOC8yNyNBcjAxNzA3&Mode=Gif&Locale=english-skin-custom
- ^ a b Hertzel, Bob (September 7, 2010). "WVU-Marshall rivalry lacking bite". The Times West Virginian (Fairmont, WV). http://timeswv.com/wvu_sports/x373699075/WVU-Marshall-rivalry-lacking-bite. Retrieved December 25, 2011.
- ^ Butta, Jim (August 31, 2011). "Marshall-WVU has no future". Parkersburg News and Sentinel (Parkersburg, WV). http://www.newsandsentinel.com/page/content.detail/id/551533/Marshall-WVU-has-no-future.html?nav=5064. Retrieved December 25, 2011.
[edit] External links
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