SALT LAKE CITY — On the list of college football's all-time greatest coaches, you won't ever find Jack Lengyel's name mentioned among legends like Bear Bryant, Knute Rockne, Bud Wilkinson and Joe Paterno, or among modern-day coaching greats Nick Saban and Urban Meyer.
After all, Lengyel's career coaching record was just 33-54.
But Jack Lengyel accomplished something much, much greater than piling up a ton of victories. And it was something that none of those legendary coaches ever had to do: He not only helped rebuild a football program but, more importantly, he helped rescue an entire university and community that was devastated by a terrible tragedy.
In November 1970, 75 members of the Marshall University football family — including 36 players, head coach Rick Tolley and four other coaches, five school administrators, 24 boosters and five flight-crew members — were killed in a plane crash as their flight returned home from a game and approached the airport runway at Huntington, West Virginia.
The university, the city of Huntington and the surrounding community, which had long held such a tight-knit relationship with the school, were stunned, rocked and shaken to the core by the shocking accident and unspeakable loss of life.
The football program's future hung in the balance, as did the psyche of an entire school and community.
Enter Lengyel, an energetic 29-year-old coach whose claim to fame up to that point was serving a five-year stint as head football coach at the college of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio.
But he was up to the challenge of trying to rebuild the football program, an overwhelming task that seemingly nobody else wanted.
It's a story that's told so well in the 2006 film "We Are Marshall" starring Matthew McConaughey in the lead role as Lengyel. And hey, if somebody's going to play your part in a movie, why not have it be the former People Magazine "Sexiest Man Alive," right?
This past week, during a presentation sponsored by the Bank of Utah, Lengyel, now 81, recalled to an audience at the Grand America Hotel how he and many others helped Marshall University and the Huntington community rise back up from the ashes of death and despair.
"We all face adversity in our personal and professional lives, and how we face that adversity determines our character," said Lengyel, who emphasized that, when life's adversities knock you down, it is critical for each of us to get back up off the ground and get back in the game of life, just as we would in a game of football.
In March of 1971, Lengyel busily went about organizing a coaching staff and trying to rebuild the team's roster — and its spirit — by combining the remaining players who hadn't perished on the fateful trip along with incoming freshmen, walk-ons, athletes from other sports and a bearded, long-haired "hippie" he enlisted as their place-kicker into a 74-man team.
To make matters even more trying, other football programs poached some of Marshall's top returning players and recruits.
In the end, though it was unbelievably difficult, it was amazingly rewarding to see how hard they could work and how well they could respond to the monumental challenges ahead of them, Lengyel said.
It turned out to be a tremendous life lesson for all of them, and Lengyel attributes his ability to navigate through such rough waters to setting goals, having a plan, being prepared and having core values that guided him.
"Make strategic goals in your personal life and in your professional life, and make a personal plan for success," he said. "… With strong core values and a strategic plan, you can overcome adversity and have personal success.
"Core values are the things that you want to be known for. What are your core values? Do you really know? They are things like respect, self-respect, loyalty, integrity, dependability, being trustworthy, having hope, faith, perseverance, commitment, passion.
"Your core values determine who you are and what you will do," Lengyel said. "They are a matter of personal choice. Write them down and live by them daily. Our core values determine our behavior, our behavior determines our reputation, and our reputation determines our opportunity."
Lengyel said that if a similar, terrible accident would occur today, heaven forbid, he doubted that any school struck by such tragedy would try to rebuild its football program the way Marshall did.
Despite a thrilling upset victory over Xavier in that first season, which Lengyel recounted in stirring detail, he compiled just a 9-33 record in his four years as Marshall's head coach.
And there were many more difficult seasons to follow before the Thundering Herd once again rose to greatness, producing a pair of national Division I-AA championships, numerous conference titles and bowl-game victories and NFL talent like Randy Moss and Chad Pennington.
Lengyel offered several catch-phrases and favorite quotes that serve as words we can all live by, such as:
"Ordinary people can do extraordinary things."
"Life is not waiting for the storm to pass, it's learning how to dance in the rain."
"Destiny is not a matter of chance, it's a matter of choice — your choice."
"Teamwork is the key, and teamwork is not spelled with an 'i.'"
"Giving that little extra effort is the difference between good and great."
"Life is not fair, life is full of adversity."
And take it from Lengyel: Learning to deal with adversity, how to roll with the punches and get back up off the canvas can definitely determine a person's happiness in life — or their lack of the same.
EMAIL: rhollis@desnews.com