GREENVILLE, N.C. (AP) Marshall and East Carolina will open the 2020 football season a week earlier than scheduled to accommodate a national television broadcast marking the 50th anniversary of the worst disaster in U.S. sports history.

The schools announced Thursday that the game originally set for Sept. 5 in Greenville now will be played Aug. 29. The network was not announced.

The schools were bonded forever when Marshall's chartered plane crashed while returning from a game at East Carolina on Nov. 14, 1970. The jet crashed into a hillside short of an airport in rain and fog near Huntington, West Virginia. Among the 75 people killed were 36 football players.