By JACK BOGACZYK
HERD INSIDER SENIOR EDITOR

HUNTINGTON – Doc Holliday is a West Virginia native, from nearby Hurricane to be exact. Still calls the Putnam County town home.

He played college football for an in-state program, West Virginia. He’s coached at both Mountain State major programs, too.

So, it makes sense that while the Marshall fourth-year head coach is known for his recruiting acumen – and great success – in Florida, Holliday’s program certainly is not going to ignore prospects in his backyard.

“I think we’re doing a much better job with the in-state kids,” said Todd Hartley, the Herd’s tight ends coach and in his first year as Holliday’s recruiting coordinator. “We’ve tried to do a better job with the high school coaches in-state and in the metro area.

HUNTINGTON — Marshall fans can start marking their calendars for the 2013 football season as Conference USA released five of 12 start times for this season with Tuesday’s release of Conference USA’s composite television schedule.

CBS Sports Network (CBSSN) and Fox Sports Net (FSN) will have three Herd games each, while Comcast Sports South (CSS) will broadcast Marshall’s Nov. 9 game vs. UAB.

CBSSN will have three of the Herd’s home games this season, including the program’s 7 p.m. (all times eastern) season opener vs. long time Marshall rival, the Mid-American Conference’s Miami-Ohio, on Aug. 31.

Also released were the Herd’s Nov. 2 date vs. Southern Miss, a 12:30 p.m. kickoff on CBSSN and the regular season finale, for the third year in a row on Thanksgiving Friday at 2 p.m. against East Carolina.

Marshall trails in the all-time series against Miami-Ohio’s RedHawks, 30-10-1, but has won six of the last seven meetings, back to 2004 when MU was also in the MAC.

HUNTINGTON – When Mike Hamrick returned to his alma mater as athletic director in July 2009, one of his first moves was to make the bottom line a top-of-the-line priority.

So, one of Hamrick’s early decisions at Marshall was to seek donors to a Football Enhancement Fund.

Nearly four years later, the fund “is really serving its purpose,” Hamrick said. “It’s doing what we’d hoped it would do.”

Just one indication of that is a recent hike in football staff salaries, with Coach Doc Holliday having to hire seven on-field assistants (one stayed for 10 days) and a strength and conditioning coach this offseason.

“We’re doing better,” Hamrick said. “Assistant coaches’ salaries here have been very detrimental to us in the past.

“With what we’ve added, we’re just trying to keep up, to catch up.

“We’re still just trying to catch up, because we were so far behind, even though we aren’t trying to be USC or Alabama.”

HUNTINGTON — Chuck Heater has seen enough … for now, anyway.

The new Marshall defensive coordinator emerged from spring practice with optimism sprinkled with realism about the unit Thundering Herd football needs upgraded in a big, big way in 2013.

Last season, there were 124 Football Bowl Subdivision programs.

With a 5-7 record, the Herd ranked thusly: 123 (scoring defense), 105 (rush defense), 103 (total defense) and 94 (pass defense). Marshall was 99th in opponent third-down conversions.

That’s why Coach Doc Holliday brought in his former Florida staff sidekick, Heater, to run the defense and coach the secondary.

By all accounts, Holliday got the right guy, and throughout the spring Heater’s players played as well as talked a good game as they adapted to the aggressive new scheme and packages.