Andy Talley doesn’t have a bucket list. Doesn’t want to travel, doesn’t need to see the Grand Canyon or float off in a hot air balloon.
All the Villanova football coach wants to do after he retires from a 50-year run on the sidelines is save lives. Actually, he’s helped do just that for the past 25 years, dedicating most of his free time working with the National Bone Marrow Foundation.
It all started in 1991 listening to the radio when an oncologist spoke about the lack of donors and people dying needlessly every day. Talley thought to himself, “I have 90 healthy players, 90 potential donors.’’
He began contacting coaches at other schools, including Penn, Temple, West Chester and Widener, and it grew from there.
“I’m really boring,’’ he said. "I am a man with no hobbies, whatsoever. I tell people I’m very shallow. I don’t have much beyond football.’’
He has been the driving force behind his own organization, “Get in the Game and Save a Life,’’ since 2008. He has now enlisted 80 college football programs in his bone marrow registration campaign. Last year, 11,000 potential matches were on his donor list. Next spring, he hopes to increase that to 15,000.
That alone can be a full-time job, which makes his success at Villanova all the more amazing. He begins his final season Saturday at Pitt.
Talley’s singular focus on coaching has resulted in a 31-year record at Villanova of 221-133-1. He arrived at Lancaster Avenue in 1984 after five years as head coach at St. Lawrence University. He got into the profession right out of Southern Connecticut State in 1967, a life he knew he wanted since sixth grade.
It’s been all football ever since.
“I’m really boring,’’ he said from his office last week, pictures and awards competing for attention on the walls, cabinets and his desk. He wore a gray T-shirt with the blue lettering of Villanova Football. “I am a man with no hobbies, whatsoever. I tell people I’m very shallow. I don’t have much beyond football.’’
Success, however, has come with a price.
“I probably paid a little bit of that,’’ he noted. “I’ve tried to make it up to my kids as much as I can, but it’s hard.’’
Stress may have also played a part in heart issues. He has six stents and still needs two more. He’s cut a little weight, works out, but, in his words, “I don’t eat right.’’
He and his wife Arlene live in Berwyn, just a few miles from where he grew up in Bryn Mawr. Their son Josh, a graduate of Brown and Villanova Law School, is a lawyer in Philadelphia. Their daughter Gina, with an undergrad degree from Villanova and a master’s from NYU, is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Massachusetts, as well as a faculty advisor in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Villanova.
Grandson Nolan is six.
Talley’s wife, as is often the case – especially with coaches – deserves most of the credit.
“You need to have a strong woman that can run the show. That is critically important because I have no responsibility whatsoever at home. I’m useless,’’ Talley said with a slight smile. “I can’t do anything. I’m not handy; I could cut the grass once in a while. I don’t pay the bills. She takes care of the house completely. She’s really the chief cook and bottle washer.
“I was able to dedicate my life to coaching football, and as a father, you have a lot of guilt, because I was away a lot. I wasn’t around as much as I would have liked to be, but I always felt that the advantage a football coach has is an opportunity. My kids know what I did. A lot of kids don’t know what their fathers do. My kids could come on the job, come to games, watch practice. I always felt that was a benefit at times. They could participate at my football camps, selling candy or T-shirts, things like that. And they’d travel with the team from time to time.
“But that still doesn’t cover the fact that I missed a lot of important family events, which I think every coach will tell you.’’
As a result, the head coach doesn’t want his staff to make the same mistakes he did when it comes to spending time with their children. When the day’s work is done, you go home.
That wasn’t the case in the old days, especially for the coaches Talley admired: Vince Lombardi, Joe Paterno and Bo Schembechler. Talley was a blue collar kid, his father a truck driver and an older brother a fireman.
“When I started in the business that’s what you did,’’ Talley said about the long hours. “Some of the coaches you hear about, like with Urban Meyer, work 18 hours a day. It just burns you out.
“It’s really not that complicated,’’ he said about the game. “You talk to some of those guys and they make it sound like it’s heart surgery or something. But the intensity of the job is now more than ever. It’s 12 months a year; it’s become too much.’’
“If I didn’t have the foundation, retirement would be harder for me. But the foundation is calling me,’’ he said. “The foundation is really calling me. We’re using the power of football to save lives. We need to save more lives.’’
That’s not why Talley is retiring, although he does have one more year on his contract for a position yet announced by the Director of Athletics.
“The university approached me and said, ‘What’s your end date?’ I get it,’’ he said. “So we worked it out. If there was no end date, obviously I would still be here. But you don’t want to be that guy when they say, ‘When’s he gonna hang ‘em up.’ But I still have a lot of vitality, vigor and enthusiasm.’’
Long-time assistant Mark Ferrante will replace Talley, and his staff also returns, “As good an exit as you could have,’’ Talley said.
When he took this job the football program had been dropped since 1981. He started from the bottom, with no players, no assistants and no facilities. At the end of September, a $20 million football operations building will open, a three-story facility that will include a huge weight room, amphitheater that seats 110, training room, offices, a meeting room, locker room, video room and entertainment center.
Asked what he’d like to think his legacy will be, Talley paused six seconds.
“I would say, ‘He did it the right way. He did it with good students, he did it with good people, he did it with good football players.’ That’s always what I’ve tried to do.’’
That, and win football games.
In 1997 the Wildcats had an unbeaten regular season and finished fifth in the nation for 1-AA teams. In 2009 they won the national championship with a 14-1 record. He’s had only six losing seasons. Nine times he’s lost three or fewer games in a season, and eight of his teams finished ranked in the Top 20.
Talley, 73, now awaits a brand new game.
“If I didn’t have the foundation, retirement would be harder for me. But the foundation is calling me,’’ he said. “The foundation is really calling me. We’re using the power of football to save lives. We need to save more lives.’’