Yes, that's essentially correct.  The year of the application for re-admission was, as I recall, about in the 1972-73 academic year.  And, yes they were asked to reapply so that seemed a positive sign. As the day of reckoning approached everything seemed in order.  Sports reporters were reporting that Marshall was expecting to be readmitted and implied that the upcoming meeting where a vote would be taken was a mere formality,   When the day arrived and the MAC presidents convened to discuss Marshall's application there was great anticipation in Huntington that Marshall would be readmitted.  However, when the presidents finished their meeting the announcement was made that Marshall's application had been denied.  When this was reported there was palatable anger in Huntington.  The words that best describe the general feeling would be betrayal, disbelief and depression.  To understand this you have to remember that this was in the context of the plane crash having occurred only about two years before and it had not yet gotten back off the mat.  This was seen as kicking an opponent when they were still down -- a very low and dastardly blow. 

It was the talk of the town for weeks and on campus.  It turned into a free-for all MAC hatefest.  I will admit, though I still maintained my allegiance to OHIO, that I was part of that "hate the MAC group."  The whole thing was like a nightmare.  I was still wrestling with the guilt I felt over the death Jeff Nathan, the sports editor of The Parthenon, because as co-adviser in 1970 I had suggested he take the plane with the team to the game rather than drive. I felt like I had personally been kicked in the teeth and here I was seen by students and other faculty as a MAC apologist.  I rebelled in anger.  It was not a pretty sight.

I remember designing a survey to gauge student attitudes about this whole situation.  It was a scientific survey (random sample and all) and the results were probably more lopsided than any survey I ever conducted.  Somewhere I still have the raw data from that survey which a number of years ago I transferred from punch cards to floppies and then to hard drive storage.  Needless to say, most answers were at the extreme ends of the Likert scales employed.

The foregoing is all verifiable material though a nuance or two might have been forgotten or misremembered over the years -- but it's essentially accurate.  What follows in less verified but I believe to be true: I heard through the grapevine that at the start of the meeting it seemed the vote was going to go in Marshall's favor until Vernon Alden started raising objections.  What I heard was that he painted a picture of Marshall as having a "cheating culture" and that enough steps hadn't been taken to insure that there wouldn't be a relapse into the behavior that had gotten them in trouble in the first place.  What I also heard at the time was that this was a pretext.  That Alden really didn't want a "Southern" school in the MAC (West Virginia isn't really "Southern,"  Huntington's hardly Oxford, Mississippi, but that's another debate for another time).  Basically, though, what I heard was the Alden was prejudice against schools he perceived as "Southern."  I also heard that Alden had been courting another school for the MAC at that time.  Speculation was that it was Rutgers, which at that time had a very mediocre football program and was basically on the Ivy League level.  Alden, BTW, was a Brown graduate and had played baseball for them.  He had an East Coast orientation.

Well, I hope that that answers your query.  Let me know if you have any additional questions.

Can't believe what you hear on the grapevine, I guess.

Yep, Ernie Salvatore and (apparently) OCF - paragons of truth. And if there was a sudden change in voting, I doubt very much the OU president at the time, Claude Sowle, would have been behind it.  He couldn't stand intercollegiate athletics and would have seen such a move as beneath him.

Here's a more fact-based conspiracy theory that might make Huntingtonites like OU a little better: Two days following the crash in November 1970, Akron AD Gordon Larson called Ohio's AD to offer to play in the Herd's place in Athens the following Saturday. Larson and Akron's president, Norman Auburn, were desperate to get into the MAC and Larson told reporters (my father was one of them) that if the Zips beat the Bobcats it would prove their worthiness for MAC membership. Ohio's coach, Bill Hess, told Larson, quite appropriately, that their offer/challenge was in poor taste and planned a Saturday memorial in honor of the Herd instead.  Akron's "offer" left a bad taste in the mouths of MAC presidents for several years.

And as for suspicions of a "culture of cheating" at Marshall...who could dispute that?  69-some NCAA violations over a three year period?  Additional violations in the 1990s?  Sounds like a cultural issue to me.

It never ceases to amaze me what people think they "know" about events, etc. The "truth" is seldom completely possible to be known. Not picking on OCF here, but being able to know ( and comprehend all the nuances of what happened) exactly what happened 30 minutes ago is hard enough, 40 years ago, much harder. People filter everything that comes their way, they often "see" what they want to see.

Good to see SBH ripping on a guy who gave his honest version of how he remembered or heard the story.  Watch you don't break a leg when you get off that high horse.

Note the part of my rendition that I said was unverifiable.  I had, frankly, forgotten the exact year that Alden left Ohio, but 1969 date does seem correct in that I remember seeing the headlines in the Columbus CJ when I lived in Cowtown, and that would place it during the 1968-69 academic year.  However, I do remember people at Marshall at the time fingering Alden and saying that there had been a change from pre-meeting to post-meeting in the attitudes of the presidents.  Perhaps, the implication was that Alden had been invited to this meeting or had had some influence on it through Sowle.  At any rate, that part of the story may, indeed, as I said in my original post be incorrect; however, I believe that Ohio was the major reason for the rejection after Marshall was invited to apply for re-admission.  It was a dirty blow. 

Ernie Salvatore was a good journalist.  He was also a very cynical one.  My wife and I used to call him "Old Acid Pen" when I taught at Marshall.  However, he was honest and he didn't make up "facts" for his stories.  I'm sure that anything he said on this matter was well-researched and from "usually reliable sources." 

As a student at the time this transpired this is what I recall. Yes, Vernon Alden was gone from Ohio and Claude Sowle was the President. The vote turned down Marshall's re-entry into the MAC and the word we heard was that Marshall needed a unanimous vote to be re-admitted and Claude Sowle was the only vote against them. Thus Ohio was the bad guy to Marshall.

As fate would happen, we just happened to have a home basketball game with the Herd either on the day the vote was announced, or the day after. It was on a weeknight. Marshall had one of their great basketball teams at that time so they came in with a high-scoring team and brought a ton of Herd fans with them - all looking for blood. There was a large crowd in the Convo that night, half of which were Marshall fans, and the Marshall people were really into the game. The game was close for awhile, then the Herd went on a scoring binge and the Marshall fans just abought brought down the Convo roof. It was a scary and hostile atmoshpere.

A big casualty of the game was the very neat passing drill the Cats would do immediately upon coming onto the floor for their pre-game warm-ups. This was a fan favorite as the Cats went through this drill as the band played Stand Up and Cheer. Unfortunately, the hostile atmosphere of the Marshall game, coming soon after the tosu mugging at Minnesota, it was thought by the politically-correct crowd that the OU passing drill was somehow antagonistic to our opponents and it was stopped, and hasn't been brought back. Now that 40 years has passed, it would be great to bring back that passing drill. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it, and it was a very neat part of the game experience for the fans.

Why so angry, dude?

Is it true that Rufus Putnam was behind Athletics not running a fan shuttle to the game from the hotel?

I guess I don't get it.  I actually like the give and take with Marshall fans.  The ones who post on here are generally well informed, respectful people.  To quote Rodney King, "Why can't we just get along?"

What good does it do to shut off conversation with Marshall fans?  As far as I'm concerned, they are welcome here anytime.

Agreed, forty years is a long time ago. I am really looking forward to the 2013 game, it should be a good one.