No. Former Marshall football player Nate Ruffin never made it to the NFL.
A brief IMDb bio for Ruffin reads:
After graduating from Marshall, Ruffin served as manager of personnel for ACF Industries, the largest builder of railroad cars for lease in the United States. He later became the Human Resources Director at The Herald-Dispatch in Huntington, WV. He also worked for twelve years as director of personnel policy at Gannett Co. He won four president's and four chairman's rings for his accomplishments at Gannett, an award representing top performance by a department head.
Ruffin joined The Freedom Forum in 1997 and served there as vice president/human resources, with responsibility for personnel policy and employee benefits. He later became vice president/community relations.
He served as an adviser for the NAACP and Urban League of Baltimore, a board member of Arlington County (Va.) United Way and a deacon at First Baptist Church in Vienna, Va.
Ruffin was best remembered as one of the Marshall players whose lives were spared from the worst disaster in U.S. sports history where 36 football players and 39 coaches, administrators, community leaders, fans and crew died when the team's chartered jet crashed at 7:37 p.m. on Nov. 14, 1970, into a hill just short of Tri- State Airport in rain and fog.
Ruffin was summoned to a makeshift morgue to identify bodies using pieces of clothing, jewelry, shoes and scars. "Those objects became a person. Those bodies became people," he said.
That day ate away at Ruffin for more than a year and he temporarily turned to drugs. He had been the one who consoled the families, but there was no one consoling him. Read more at Sfgate.com.
A heart attack claimed Ruffin's life in 2001.