A time to celebrate

Villanova football coach Andy Talley must be excused this week if he chooses to laugh, cry or walk away for a private moment.

After all, it’s been a long time since he dug the Wildcats out of the grave. Villanova shut down its NCAA Division I football program after the 1980 season, and Talley was hired four years later to revive it at the Division I-AA (now the Championship Subdivision) level.

Talley has produced great players such as Philadelphia Eagles running back Brian Westbrook and Atlanta Falcons receiver Brian Finneran in the 25 seasons since, but Friday night’s FCS title game against Montana at Finley Stadium will be his first.

“In my 25 years, it’s the ultimate prize,” Talley said. “It’s what you go after.”

Talley’s Wildcats have been good in the past, losing to Youngstown State in the 1997 quarterfinals and to McNeese State in the 2002 semifinals, but this year’s team has sizzled from the start. Villanova opened with a 27-24 win at Temple, which is 9-3 entering its EagleBank Bowl date against UCLA.

New Hampshire handed Villanova its lone loss — 28-24 on Oct. 10 — but that was avenged two weeks ago in the quarterfinals when the Wildcats rolled 46-7.

“For him to finally reach it means a lot to him,” Wildcats senior safety Ross Ventrone said. “I don’t know how many years left he plans on coaching, but obviously it’s toward the end of his career, and playing in this game really means a lot to him and the program with him being the face of it.”

Said junior receiver Matt Szczur: “This is his dream. It’s been 25 years. He doesn’t even know what to do with himself. He’s running around like a mad man.”

Talley was running around like a mad man when he began reconstructing the program. The Wildcats had gone 6-5 in ’80 behind senior defensive lineman Howie Long, which included a win over Boston College.

“The university, I think, at that time just felt that they hadn’t really stayed up with the modern facilities that were starting to be built,” Talley said. “They were playing games away for large guarantees, and then they would come home to a stadium that would seat 12,500. I think they just felt they couldn’t make it financially, and so they dropped it in 1981.

“There was a four-year hiatus. During that time the alumni and the university were at odds, and it was a very, very bad era of ill will.”

In hiring Talley, Villanova officials got a coach who had helped turn around programs as an assistant at Middlebury College in Vermont and Brown University in Rhode Island. His first head-coaching job was with St. Lawrence University in New York, where he made a 3-6 debut in 1979 but had the Saints in the Division III semifinals three years later.

Talley’s background had been at academic institutions, which was to Villanova’s liking, and he had been born and grew up just two miles from its campus.

Then his work began.

“There were no players here,” he said. “There were no coaches. The facilities were struggling at that point. We still had the stadium left over, but there were no football offices and no recruiting concept at all. That’s how we started.”

Villanova’s first season back in ’85 consisted of five games, with the Wildcats winning against Iona, Pace, Catholic, Fordham and Navy’s junior varsity. That was several months after the school’s basketball team shocked Georgetown 66-64 to win the national championship.

The exposure Villanova received from its basketball title helped Talley in recruiting, and in 1989 the Wildcats won the Yankee Conference and lost in the first round of the playoffs to eventual champion Georgia Southern. His overall record is 178-102-1.

“People knew Villanova, so it wasn’t like we were selling a new deal,” he said. “When we brought it back, the biggest thing was convincing these football players that we weren’t going to drop it again.”