'Nova coach a marrow champion

Regardless of tonight's outcome in the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision title game at Finley Stadium, Villanova coach Andy Talley will be remembered as a winner.

Talley has guided the Wildcats to a 178-102-1 record since 1985, when he revived a program that had been shut down five years earlier. Since 1992, he also has been heavily involved with the National Marrow Donor Program.

"I heard a medical show about how there were not enough donors out there and that people wouldn't be dying if we could get more people on the donor list," Talley said. "I was like, 'I can do that. I've got 90 players on my team, and if I send them out to the campus community and they can get 10 guys each, we can test 900 people every year.'

"So we started out and did it anonymously, but in the last couple of years I figured I could help myself exponentially by getting other colleges and universities involved with this."

Earlier this year, Talley's efforts resulted in 8,500 people being tested. Now he has 60 college football programs involved, a partnership with the NMDP in Minneapolis and a goal of testing 15,000 this spring.

The replacement of bone marrow, the soft tissue inside bones, is needed when it is not functioning properly or has been damaged by chemotherapy or radiation. It is recommended for cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma, but only about 250 matches are found each year among the 20 million people worldwide who are registered donors.

"It's a simple test," Talley said. "It's a cheek swab. That puts you on the list from age 18 to age 61, and if you're called, it means you are almost the perfect match for the person who needs this transplant. Unfortunately, we just don't have enough people on the donor list."

According to Talley, a bone marrow match among Caucasians is one in 60,000. For blacks, Asians or Hispanics, it's one in a million.

"We need more minority donors, and that's where football teams come in," he said. "We're getting more African-Americans on the donor list."

Former Villanova kicker Joe Marcoux, who led the Wildcats in scoring last season, joined the donor registry in April 2006 and underwent a procedure that December to donate blood-forming cells to a needy patient. Leading up to his procedure, he received two daily injections to increase the amount of blood-forming cells in his blood.

In the Villanova media guide, Marcoux explained how he experienced nausea, insomnia and bone pain as a result of the injections.

"I had some of those, but I think about the fact that this was one week out of my life where I might feel sick," he said. "I have the chance to save someone who has no chance of surviving if they don't receive this donation. Going through with this procedure gives the patient at least a 50 percent chance of surviving, and I can only hope that I would be lucky enough to have someone do that for me if I was in that situation."

Said Talley: "He saved a 53-year-old mother."

Villanova junior receiver Matt Szczur arrived on campus in 2007 and quickly tested to become a donor. Szczur said players don't really have much of a choice because it's a "good thing to do," and he found out a couple of months ago that he was a match for a 13-month-old girl with leukemia.

So on Jan. 4, the Colonial Athletic Association's offensive and special teams player of the year will undergo a procedure at Philadelphia's Hahnemann Hospital.

"My blood comes out my left arm, they filter out my stem cell, and then the blood goes back in my right arm," Szczur said. "It's like a four- to six-hour procedure. My blood is AB negative, so I'm compatible with everybody. As soon as I gave blood, I knew I was going to be the best match for this baby girl for a bone marrow."

Szczur could not do the procedure during the season, because the medicine involved enlarges the spleen. He is not allowed to exercise for a week after the procedure, and he is not allowed to find out the name, location or any other information about the recipient until a year after the transplant.

Talley said a player from Wagner College in New York and a player from Rowan University in New Jersey have been matches for transplants and have undergone the procedure.

"I've got the goods here," Talley said. "I've got the people. When I call another football coach, he can't say no to me. How can he say no to me? He has 80 or 90 healthy bodies, too, and he knows he can help me.

"We're starting to bear fruit from our testing. We're doing good stuff."