VILLANOVA, Pa. — It is 448 Interstate miles from Columbus, Ohio, to this gorgeously bucolic suburb on Philadelphia's west suburban Main Line. Footballwise, it is a Starship Enterprise flight.
The wind is howling out of the northeast at 30 mph as Villanova's 14th-rated, 8-3 football team hits the field in a driving rainstorm, the fourth foul day in six V.U. home games this fall.
The opposition is Rhode Island (3-8), an Atlantic 10 opponent struggling to find its bearings under third year coach Tim Stowers. A former Auburn standout who had met with Division I-AA success as Paul Johnson's predecessor at Georgia State, where his team won the 1990 NCAA title, Stowers had led Rhode Island to an 8-3 season in 2001, but eight key injuries had spiked the Rams' 2002 chances early.
A far more hyped I-AA game -- Penn vs. Harvard for the Ivy League championship -- was unfolding at historic Franklin Field, just 13 miles east of here. But even with a crippling 38-13 loss at underrated Northeastern last week, the Wildcats were brazen enough to envision yet another chance to make the post-season, I-AA's answer -- sort of -- to I-A's bowl play.
It is the beginnings of college football's backwaters, although at schools like Villanova, Delaware, Youngstown State, Montana, Georgia Southern, The Citadel, Northern Iowa, William & Mary, Western Illinois or McNeese State, the view of the mainstream is still clear.
"We play I-As a lot of years," Villanova Athletic Director Vince Nicastro said, "I-AA is only a designation. You look at Division I schools, there's no delineation with other sports. Football is the only sport that splits it up this way. We play Division I tennis, but not at the level some schools (like Stanford) play it. We play against teams of similar abilities."
On the field, an announced crowd of 5,019 (a tickets-distributed figure...real amount was closer to 3,000) rattled uncomfortably around Villanova Stadium as the Wildcats took advantage of the undermanned Rams to win 45-3.
"There's a strange stigma that I-AA attaches to some schools (of lesser reputation than Villanova, which has a solid national image as a university, drawing students from all 50 states)," Nicastro said. "It hurts us even, though, just having a separate classification has a overall effect on schools in I-AA."
Plagued with some of the lousiest weather in recent memories, the school has struggled at the gate this winter. Villanova usually averages between 9-10,000, but this year, the number was more like 7,000.
"It's a problem in all of I-AA, with the possible exception of a few schools," Nicastro said.
Andy Talley, who rebounded from a heart attack a year ago and guided Villanova to an 8-3 finish last fall, picked up his 150th career win, 122 at 'Nova. He has seen days when Villanova Stadium rocked to the cheers of over 16,000 and ... days like Saturday.
"The revenue situation is the biggest concern," he said with typical honesty. "Without (national and widespread regional) TV, a school has to struggle. You've got 63 kids on scholarships. You've got to find funding.
"At Villanova, we've got no problem doing that. We run a clean program, get good kids. We're a school that dropped football (in 1981, bringing it back under Talley's guidance in 1985). You know what it's like to have 500 at homecoming (for a soccer game).
"All those administrators out there are aware of how much football means to the alumni, a gathering point, and we keep playing. In the fall, Villanova football catches the attention of our alumni nationally as well as around the Delaware Valley and east.
"(Philadelphia channels) 3, 6, 10, 29, 17 and Comcast cover us and Brian Westbrook (Eagles) and Brian Finneran (Falcons) are in the pros."
In an Atlantic 10 pressbox, the TV monitors are tuned to I-A games, except on the few days when the Comcast system or a local regular-access T.V. station picks up a game. Where print and electronic media come from across a state and sometimes the country to chronicle I-A games in a tri-leveled press box, schools like Villanova, fortunate to be near a major metropolis, usually house about 6-8 newspaper folks, a few more from area radio and T.V. outlets and a handful of others.
Down on the field, senior quarterback Brett Gordon -- the third generation Gordon to play at Villanova -- led the Wildcats' relentless offense to an efficient 309-yard effort, passing for 192, completing 15-of-22 with only one interception, including short touchdowns to Shaz Brown, Matt Chila and Brian White. In so doing, Gordon became the second V.U. quarterback to reach 3,000 passing yards for a season, joining Chris Boden, who has helped ex-'Nova assistant Dave Clawson turn Fordham into a Patriot League contender.
The defense did the rest, sacking Rams QB Jayson Davis five times and forcing four U.R.I. fumbles.
The bounceback from the disaster at Northeastern was striking and gave Talley a reason to think optimistically about the 'Cats' playoff chances after being nosed out by a complicated points system last fall. "We felt we were in more of a business-like mode going into the Delaware game," he said.
"Massachusetts' loss (to Hofstra) helps -- that's four losses -- and to see William & Mary lose a game (to James Madison), we beat 'em, they (have) four losses. They should take our 9-3 against their 9-3. I'm lobbying right now. We beat the Ivy champion (Penn), the Patriot champion (Colgate) and a I-A (Bowl Coalition Series member, Rutgers)."
Word travels far more slowly at this level. There are no monitors for coaches to eyeball rival teams, no instant cut-and-dry six-wins-means-bowl-eligibility rules.
At I-AA, the selection process is far more complex than even the B.C.S. computer rankings.
And at times, far more maddening, if that's possible.
But with half-empty houses and constant financial struggles to keep programs competitive, these are the attainable objectives at this level.
Stowers, the Rhody coach who has performed weekly before 80,000 crazed Southeastern Conference lunatics, knows the I-AA limitations, but doesn't feel like his Columbia blue sideline parka is a straitjacket.
"I-AA coaches do more with less than I-A coaches," he said. "We try to do it like I-As have done it. But the haves (high-level I-As) want to keep all the change.
"Our attendance increased 24% last year. I knew this year would be a rebuilding year. We went to Syracuse and got $200,000, the largest payout in U.R.I. history, and we've been playing football 103 years!"
They labor largely in obscurity, consigned in many Sunday papers to little more than an agate line under "EAST", "MIDWEST," "SOUTH," etc. Nicastro understands this, and knows changes are likely coming within 3-4 years.
"In other sports, there are no minimum scholarships, just maximums," he said. "I-A is a powerful group with the bowls, money, TV and the glory.
"They could wind up lining up as Division I where you had different levels of scholarships. The 30-scholarships schools would play one another, the 50-60s, then the highest level.
"Right now at the I-AA level, there are hundreds of reasons (for financial struggles). One of these is affiliation. The Atlantic 10 is a real tough league, one of the best. But Delaware is the only natural rivalry (for Villanova), and that's geographical.
"It's a matter of resources -- costs are very high, scholarshippings 60-something, particularly at a private school, straight profit and loss. Delaware revenues even probably don't cover all the costs, even if you sell out all the time."
Villanova's Board of Trustees narrowly turned down a chance to join Connecticut in joining the Big East in 1997, and Nicastro understands the deep-seated emotions on both sides of the issue.
"It's a dollar-for-dollar thing -- there are scholarship issues, Title IX issues, infrastructure issues, adding staff, stadium size, meeting room space, weight rooms, and other things," he pointed out. "And that's just to get where the low-end I-A programs are!"
But in the end, for Villanova, Delaware, Montana, other schools who draw the upper end attendances and get what coverage there is of I-AA football, that may wind up being the choice in 2005 or 2006.
It has to happen in a realistic way, though, Nicastro thinks. "I can say with reasonable certainty we couldn't meet with the I-A requirements without putting the University at risk," he said.
Meanwhile, Villanova tries to sell I-AA to a student body which applied largely to and identifies fully with Division I schools, places like Boston College, Notre Dame, Georgetown, Penn State, Rutgers, Michigan, UCLA and Northwestern, but also Bucknell, Lehigh, Carnegie-Mellon, Holy Cross, Penn and Cornell.
"A lot of our schedule attractiveness is about (application) overlaps. Not many identify with the (A-10) schools. Not many have friends who go to New Hampshire, Maine, etc.," Nicastro said.
"A lot of us struggle financially to make it all make sense. There are no tangible rewards. For example, Bob Marcum (Massachusetts' very capable A.D.) says there is a precipitous drop in the first week of the (I-AA) playoffs. The Georgia Southerns, Delawares, even the Youngstown States. Steep declines in attendance. It's counterintuitive and a peculiar phenomenon.
"The reasons -- the season is too darn long, it's Thanksgiving weekend and there are no natural rivalries."
So the I-AA schools from the Gateway Conference, Atlantic 10, Southern Conference, Big Sky and others indulge for the love of the game, a certain pure amateurism still alive and breathing. But the strong forces of realism are unmistakably moving in...
The next few years will test the strength of calculators, and deep-thinkers everywhere. The big scramble will traumatize the college game like never before. How will it shakedown. Only the Big Commissioner upstairs knows for sure, and He ain't sayin'. |
