100 Days, 100 Reasons G6 Football Matters

The most famous highlight brand in football started in Huntington, West Virginia.

At Marshall. The Thundering Herd were playing Division I-AA football in the Southern Conference when Randy Moss arrived in 1996. They’re in the Sun Belt now.

Bob Pruett went and got him.

He had signed with Notre Dame out of DuPont High School in Rand, West Virginia — a two-time state champion, the best athlete in the state. In March 1995, a hallway fight at school cost him that scholarship. He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor battery charges. Notre Dame was gone.

Bobby Bowden took him at Florida State. Moss redshirted the 1995 season. Before reporting to serve 30 days in a work-release program from the original sentence, he smoked marijuana. Failed the drug test. Bowden dismissed him. Moss served an additional 60 days for violating probation.

Marshall was an hour from home. Because it was a Division I-AA program, NCAA transfer rules allowed him to play immediately without sitting out a year.

Bob Pruett put him on the field and watched what happened.

In 1996, Moss caught 78 passes for 1,709 yards and 28 touchdowns. The 28 touchdowns tied Jerry Rice’s Division I-AA record set at Mississippi Valley State in 1984. Marshall went 15-0 and won the I-AA national championship. In the title game against Montana, Moss had nine catches for 220 yards and four touchdowns.

“He’s the best athlete I’ve ever been around,” Pruett said.

Marshall moved to Division I-A and the Mid-American Conference in 1997. Moss’s sophomore season. He caught 96 passes for 1,820 yards and 26 touchdowns — an FBS record at the time. Chad Pennington was his quarterback. Marshall won the MAC Championship, beating Toledo 34-14. Moss had 170 yards and three touchdowns.

He won the Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s best receiver. He finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting behind Charles Woodson, Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf.

“I seriously think that if I played at another school with more publicity, there’s no doubt in my mind I would have won the Heisman Trophy,” Moss said at the ceremony.

Two seasons at Marshall: 174 catches, 3,529 yards, 54 touchdowns.

The Minnesota Vikings drafted him 21st overall in 1998. He scored 17 touchdowns as a rookie. In 2007, he set the NFL single-season record with 23 touchdown receptions during New England’s 16-0 regular season. He finished his career with 982 catches, 15,292 yards and 156 touchdowns. Pro Football Hall of Fame, class of 2018. College Football Hall of Fame, class of 2024.

The name became a verb. “Mossed.” To leap over a defender and take the ball out of the air as if the defender is not there. ESPN formalized it in 2016 with “You Got Mossed” — a segment on Sunday NFL Countdown where Moss highlights the best spectacular catches of the week. Fans submit clips from the NFL, college, high school. The segment still runs.

Every Sunday during the NFL season, ESPN runs a segment built on what Moss became. The NFL made “Mossed” a verb. Marshall was the preview.

They told you it didn’t matter. Here are 100 reasons it does.