HUNTINGTON — Marshall wide receiver Aaron Dobson has been selected to the Biletnikoff Award Watch List, the Tallahassee Quarterback Club Foundation announced Tuesday morning.

Dobson is one of just two Conference USA wideouts to make the list, joining SMU’s Darius Johnson.

Last week, Dobson was named to the CFPA (College Football Performance Awards) Watch List as well.

In late June, Blue Ribbon also announced that he was a first-team preseason All-Conference USA pick, as did preseason magazines from Athlon, Lindy’s and Phil Steele.

Dobson, a senior from Dunbar, W.Va. who won state championships in football and basketball at South Charleston High School, tied for second in the C-USA with 12 touchdown catches last season.

He had 49 receptions for 668 yards in 2011 and was named the Most Valuable Player in the Herd's 20-10 victory over FIU in the Beef ‘O’Brady’s Bowl.

HUNTINGTON – When Marshall opens football practice Aug. 6 in preparation for Coach Doc Holliday’s third season, there is one position that might get more fans’ scrutiny than the others.

That would be at safety, where the candidates include Boston College graduate transfers Dominick LeGrande and Okechukwu Okoroha – he said you can call him “O.”

All of his teammates do.

The questions might begin right out of the movie, “Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid” … Who are those guys?

OK, fair enough.

But off the top, let’s settle this: Okoroha and LeGrande were a package deal for the Herd. They didn’t want it any other way, they said.
“The big reason we picked Marshall is we were able to stay together,” LeGrande said after a recent skills session on the turf at Edwards Stadium.

“Other schools were having a hard time taking both of us, and Marshall got on the radar.

HUNTINGTON – Before John Thomas Rembert could become part of the Marshall community, he had to feel the community become part of him.

That really had happened before Rembert’s sudden death while vacationing Monday in Myrtle Beach, where the former Marshall star linebacker and Huntington resident died following what an Horry County (S.C.) coroner called a pulmonary embolism.

J.T. Rembert was 29, left a pregnant wife, Shannon, and a son, Keegan, 2. He was a 2005 MU graduate, and by all accounts the late linebacker was the “kind of child, the kind of athlete, the kind of adult you’d want your kid to become,” a former teammate said Wednesday morning.

“I met J.T. when we first got here together in 2001,” said Scott Wilks, sitting on a weightlifting bench in the Bobby Pruett Training Complex that is named for their former Thundering Herd coach.

“J.T. was a little homesick, more than a little.

HUNTINGTON - Former Marshall University linebacker J.T. Rembert passed away on Monday night, July 9.
John Thomas Rembert, known to everyone as “J.T.,” was on vacation at Myrtle Beach, S.C. with his wife, child, family and friends when he reportedly had a seizure.

Tony Hendrick, deputy coroner with Horry County Coroner’s Office, confirmed the death of John Rembert of West Virginia, the linebacker’s given name, according to Grant Traylor on-line at The Herald-Dispatch in Huntington. 

According to Hendrick, preliminary autopsy reports showed Rembert passed away of a pulmonary embolism (blood clot). Rembert recently had surgery on his foot to repair Achilles damage, Hendrick said.

Rembert graduated from Marshall in 2005, with a B.S. from the College of Education in Social Studies, Grades 5-12.

In recent years, Rembert worked and lived in Huntington with his wife, Shannon (married May 6 of 2008), and son, Keegan, age two.

The family is expecting another child this year.

He was an Account Manager with Western and Southern Life Insurance agency in Charleston, W.Va., working with Rich Sports Management clients on life-injury-health-unemployment insurance policies, for athletes mainly in the National Football League.

Clients have included former Marshall teammates like Chris Royal and Doug Legursky to Keilen Dykes and Ernest Hunter from WVU and many other players with NFL experience.