{"id":3443,"date":"2025-02-09T15:38:56","date_gmt":"2025-02-09T20:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/?p=3443"},"modified":"2026-03-25T10:24:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T14:24:14","slug":"marshall-welcomes-first-recruitment-class-in-tony-gibson-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/2025\/02\/09\/marshall-welcomes-first-recruitment-class-in-tony-gibson-era\/","title":{"rendered":"Marshall Welcomes First Recruitment Class in Tony Gibson Era"},"content":{"rendered":"

Football Signings
\nBy Ben Anderson<\/a>, FM88 Sports
\nFeb. 7, 2025
\nHUNTINGTON, W. Va. (WMUL-FM) \u2014\u00a0Marshall football Wednesday welcomed its first signing class under head coach Tony Gibson at national signing day.<\/p>\n

The Thundering Herd is coming off a season where it finished 10-3 and won the Sun Belt Conference Championship. After the season ended, the Herd was forced to withdraw from its bowl game after over 30 players entered the transfer portal after former coach Charles Huff left to take the job at Southern Miss.<\/p>\n

The Herd under coach Gibson introduced 62 new players to the team including 48 transfers and 14 high school signees.<\/p>\n

Coach Gibson says that recruiting in the state was a big emphasis during the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the eleven full-time coaching staff members have a tie from the state of West Virginia or Marshall University,\u201d Marshall head football coach Tony Gibson said. \u201cOur first time we were allowed on the road because of the dead period was a few weeks ago in January and we hit fifty-five schools in the state that has football.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got caught in the snowstorm,\u201d Gibson said. \u201cThere were phone call meetings at restaurants, whatever it may be, but we\u2019re going to own this thing and we\u2019re not going to let the good players leave this state or go to that school up north if I have anything to do with it. I promise you that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gibson says that this recruitment class goes well beyond what he expected.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has by far exceeded the expectation when I was here and (if) \u00a0you were to ask me can we put this kind of class together? No,\u201d Gibson said. \u201cWe just kept working and bringing guys in and in the Shewey Building we pulled together and made it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about these guys,\u201d Gibson said. \u201cThey wanted to be a part of this, and they helped us recruit other guys. We had some guys that were here before and left for different reasons, (they) wanted to come back. We got quality \u00a0in many different ways; the character of our young men, the way they work, they want to win, want to be here. That means more than anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the coaching additions was offensive coordinator Rod Smith, who previously served the same position at Jacksonville State under now West Virginia head coach Rich Rodriguez. Smith says it was always a dream to coach alongside his best friend.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just felt like the opportunity to come and be a part of something that coach (Tony) Gibson is building is special,\u201d Marshall offensive coordinator Rod Smith said. \u201cWe\u2019ve always talked about this as formers players as we grew up through the profession, what it would be to link up one day and do it together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marshall lost its top three quarterbacks in its depth chart via the transfer portal during the offseason and signed five quarterbacks. Smith says that when looking for a quarterback, he looks for a team leader.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst and foremost, you want someone who is a winner,\u201d Smith said. \u201cYou want somebody who is mentally and physically tough. We look for somebody who\u2019s a great decision maker, facilitator (of) the ball, great teammate, (and) going to be the hardest working guy on the team. We want somebody who can beat you with his mind first and have the ability to make plays with his legs when things breakdown.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coach Gibson and the defending Sun Belt Conference champions now set their focus to spring ball and the Green and White Spring Game and aim to repeat as conference champions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Football Signings By Ben Anderson, FM88 Sports Feb. 7, 2025 HUNTINGTON, W. Va. (WMUL-FM) \u2014\u00a0Marshall football Wednesday welcomed its first signing class under head coach Tony Gibson at national signing day. The Thundering Herd is coming off a season where it finished 10-3 and won the Sun Belt Conference Championship. After the season ended, the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[140,430,429,115,100,19,392,69,187,155,28,138,546,156,236,426,23,212,186,419,51,96],"class_list":["post-3443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wmul-sports","tag-ben-anderson","tag-ben-anderson-marshall","tag-ben-anderson-wmul","tag-college-radio","tag-fm88-sports","tag-football","tag-herd-football","tag-huntington-wv","tag-joan-c-edwards-stadium","tag-marshall-football","tag-marshall-university","tag-marshall-university-athletics","tag-rod-smith","tag-sbc-football","tag-sun-belt-conference","tag-sun-belt-conference-football","tag-thundering-herd","tag-thundering-herd-athletics","tag-thundering-herd-football","tag-tony-gibson","tag-wmul","tag-wv"],"acf":[],"fimg_url":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3443"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4656,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3443\/revisions\/4656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/wmul\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}