Marshall’s head football coach has firmly taken hold of his team after guiding the Herd to a 3-7 record as “acting” head coach last season. Taking over in an acting capacity under less than ideal circumstances just four days prior to fall practice last year, Tolley faced a monumental task. He needed coaches, players, and an overhaul of team morale after a summer that had rocked the football program to its foundations. He brought his coaching staff up to full strength but he never could get enough players to cope with the schedule. Had the team won one game it would have been regarded as a modern miracle because few teams win football games these day sixth just 32 able-bodied players. But after an electrifying 21-16 win over a solid Bowling Green team, which snapped a 27 game, 3 year winless sea, the “wafer-thin” Herd came back to win another and then another. Marshall proved the homecoming win over the Falcons was no fluke by rapping Kent State at Kent the following week by 31-20. Then, with confidence restored in their ability to win, they frolicked to a 38-7 pasting of East Carolina. In the season’s finale, Tolley’s charges came within seconds of whipping vaunted Ohio U., going down by 38-35. The Bobcats scored the final touchdown with five seconds left.
The 30 year old Tolley is a graduate of Mullens High School where he played for Coach Ray Caldwell. At Mullens, he participated in basketball and baseball as well as football and in fact, baseball as been as much a part of his life as football.
He was graduated from VPI in 1961 where he played center and linebacker. He was an assistant football coach at John Battle High School in Bristol, Virginia for two years, and assisted in baseball at the University of Virginia for one year, before joining Huntington native Hank Norton at Ferrum Junior College for three highly successful years, which included a national Junior College championship. He spent 1968 as Defensive Line Coach at Wake Forest University, before joining the Marshall staff as an assistant in February 1969.
Rick’s approach to the 1970 season? “We were as good as any team at our kids level of competition during the last four games of 1969” he says, “and if our kids could pick themselves off the floor to make the comeback they did last year, we could have a pretty fair football team in 1970 with everything back to normal. We’ll have a good attitude and we’re going in with confidence.”
When Tolley says flatly, “we’re going to be better,” you believe him!
(From 1970 Marshall University Football Press Guide)