A Season in Purgatory

At a school where basketball is king, the Villanova football team fights its opponents both on and off the field. Strapped for cash and low on recruiting power, the Wildcats find themselves in a constant battle to justify their existence to a prestigious academic institution and, at the same time, satisfy the boosters that mourn the team's "minor league" football status.A Season in Purgatorytells the story of Villanova's 2005 season and of how coach Andy Talley and his team negotiate this thorny territory. Taking the wider view, Moss uses the Villanova University Wildcats as a microcosm to explore the inner-workings of college football and the contentious "class system"particularly the long divide between division I-A, where the most visible and successful programs reside, and division I-AA, where crowds are smaller but the competition is just as intense. Nowhere does the debate rate louder than in Div. 1-AA, where fielding a football team can means significant financial losses and can invite Title IX inequities and a fair amount of resentment from faculty, administrators, students and alumni. One of the most visible teams in its tier, Villanova finds itself trying to justify its own existence to the university community even while developing football players out of a group of "smart guys"a talented few of whom have been good enough to play professionally. Driven by compelling stories from Villanova's 2005 season,A Season in Purgatorytakes a broader view of the class system that exists in college football today, conditions that paradoxically threaten a sport that has only grown in popularity over the past 25 years. It allows the reader to decide whether the struggle is worth the cost to schools outside of the spotlight, and whether the game has any inherent virtue or merit apart from the financial bottom line.

Tony Moss is NFL editor and columnist for The Sports Network, a wire service in suburban Philadelphia. His writing appears regularly on Web sites of newspapers such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Boston Globe, the Charlotte Observer, and the Miami Herald. He has been a weekly guest on ESPN Radio’s V Show with Bob Valvano.