EMU and Marshall schedule home-and-home series

EMU will travel to Huntington first in 2026, then will host the Thundering Herd in 2028.

Eastern Michigan recently announced the addition of Marshall to its future football schedules.

Marshall, currently a Sun Belt school in Huntington, West Virginia, is a former MAC school that continually rivaled Toledo for conference championships, and had the pleasure of hosting guys like Randy Moss, Chad Pennington, and Byron Leftwich when it was a MAC member.

Since Marshall split from the MAC to join the then-promising C-USA in the early 2000’s, these two teams had not played against each other. These two teams had only played against each other four times: twice in the 80’s and twice as conference mates in the 90’s. EMU has a 1-3 record all-time in the series. EMU won the first-ever meeting at home in 1983, but Marshall won at home the following year, then both times in 1997 and 1998 (en route two MAC championships for the Herd).

• 1983: EMU 7, Marshall 3 (Ypsilanti, MI)

• 1984: Marshall 24, EMU 17 (Huntington, WV)

• 1997: Marshall 48, EMU 25 (Huntington, WV)

• 1998: Marshall 26, EMU 23 (Ypsilanti, MI)

While Marshall and EMU don’t have a rich history of rivaling in sports against one another, the opportunity to create a competitive series between he two not-too-distant mid-majors was a good decision to finish the 2026 non-conference schedule and get to really framing the way 2028 can play out.

EMU in 2026 will now open the season at home against San Jose State to begin their home-and-home series. Then EMU travels to Michigan State, comes home to FCS-level Lindenwood, and goes to Huntington to transition its way into the conference schedule.

Marshall is one of three Sun Belt schools EMU has future non-conference dates with. EMU will finish its series with Louisiana at home in 2025, has games with Georgia Southern in 2027 and 2029, and now Marshall games set for 2026 and 2028. Still traveling South for Group of 5 games, EMU will finish its series with Texas State with an away game in 2025, and has games with Middle Tennessee in 2031 and 2032.

EMU is 7-14-1 all-time against Sun Belt schools after last season’s bowl loss to South Alabama.

Listed below is EMU’s complete future schedule for non-conference opponents.