 Despite both teams being from the state of West Virginia, hard feelings, politics and Marshall being in a lower division than WVU for a large portion of their history kept the teams from playing on a regular basis before the Friends of Coal Bowl was started.West Virginia University and Marshall University had only played five times in the ninety-five years before 2006.The 1997 match-up is often thought of as the start of "hard feelings" between the two schools.