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SPORTS
Herd seeks swagger
Coach Mark Snyder introduces his family to the crowd during the last Heiner's Summer Concert Series show for the year on Thursday, Aug. 28, 2008, at Pullman Square.
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HUNTINGTON -- Marshall University football faces a chicken or the egg scenario.
A telling intangible throughout the program's 1990s dominance was a swagger permeating from coaches to players and support staff. Teams carried themselves with a confidence that each season carried a simple purpose, winning championships.
Of course, building a swagger isn't tough when double-digit win seasons become the norm. This Thundering Herd squad enters the 2008 campaign seeking to halt a three-season losing streak, including a 3-9 mark last year.
So, which comes first, winning or the swagger?
The latter appears the answer, a confidence born from a productive, focused offseason. That work will be gauged Saturday when Marshall takes on Illinois State at Joan C. Edwards Stadium. Kickoff is 4:30 p.m. and WOWK (Huntington-Charleston), WVNS (Beckley-Bluefield) and WBOY (Clarksburg) will televise the game.
"Since I've been here this is the best I've felt about a season," Thundering Herd free safety C.J. Spillman said. "It's not the fact that it's just my senior year or anything of that nature. It's just the work ethic of the players as well as the coaches, it's changed tremendously.
"I think we have something awesome that we can try to do this year. You could tell throughout the spring that it was going to be something different."
A possible shift in team-wide morale and confidence actually can be traced to last season's second half. Marshall won three of its final five games and early missed opportunities helped lead to a 35-28 setback to bowl-bound Houston.
"I think a lot of people are going to see that Marshall is back where it used to be," tailback Darius Marshall said. "We just look forward to competing this year.
"I want to turn the program around this year because the seniors we've got, they deserve a championship. They haven't been champions but they've been fighting all their lives to get to that status and they want to be there and they realize what it takes.
"All of them have stood up and been great leaders throughout the summer so I want to send them out on that note. I'm going to give them 110 percent every play."
Wide receiver Darius Passmore now can do the same, having fully recovered from a pair of 2007 injuries. Passmore and All-Conference USA defensive end Albert McClellan are among players removed from the 2007 injured list, leading to optimism entering Saturday.
"Having swagger is important because when you have a swagger about yourself, can't nobody take that from you," Passmore said. "Swagger isn't really anything but confidence, how you feel about yourself.
"I believe as a team we feel real confident about ourselves. We feel unstoppable. We feel we can play with anybody, so that's our swagger we're going to have this year that we can play with anybody. We can play with the best."
A chip on the collective shoulder certainly doesn't hurt. A pair of national magazines predicted one win for the 2008 Thundering Herd, essentially opining that fans better enjoy a win over NCAA Division I-AA Illinois State, because that's it.
"There are a lot of people saying Marshall's going to be this or Marshall's going to be that," Marshall said. "When they see Marshall on the field this Saturday, they're going to see what kind of approach we have this year."
