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(05-28-2021 01:46 PM)Cyniclone Wrote:  Does Grassie's deal change the calculus for other schools? I have a buddy who's a mid-D1 assistant and he thinks if that a few other schools step up to Grassie's mark with their own coaches or coaching hires, then a rising tide my lift his boat (definitely not one of the 25 that pay above the average).

I don't have a clue. I know before Coach Grassie. Really before Mike Hamrick (Marshall AD) arrived in Huntington, Marshall could have cared less about soccer, it was an after thought, a program that had to be there.

In 2003 men's soccer at Marshall was about 24 hours from being cut, The program was like the red phone going at a condemned man's execution. The AD at the time Bob Marcum had to cut a men's program to be Title IX compliant. And men's soccer was on the chopping block. Some how anonymously (Asst. AD at the time, former Marshall soccer player) tipped off the Huntington Herald-Dispatch, Charleston Daily Mail and Charleston Gazette. And the day he was to cut the program all 3 papers had blown the whistle on what was getting ready to happen. The next 2 weeks all three papers were inundated with phone calls from the Huntington community, Huntington schools and the Huntington soccer community. Truth is the soccer program should have been in the discussion, from 1979-2002 they had exactly 9 winning seasons. After about a month the AD had enough pressure that he couldn't cut soccer. Eventually men's track and field was cut.

Before 2013 Marshall played soccer on a field pushed up against Joan C Edwards stadium that may have had 100 temp seats. In the spring of 2011 Mike Hamrick unveiled a plan to build an 8.3 million dollar soccer complex that was part of the capital campaign for new facilities that included the Indoor Practice Facility, Sports Medicine, Academic Center and Hall of Fame. A lot of people was really skeptical and didn't understand why this money wasn't just going into football or basketball. Mike Hamrick took a gamble 10 years ago, the stadium opened in 2013 and in 8 years had produced a National Championship.