"I have a lot of good friends there," Clawson said yesterday from his Fordham office. "I'm still in touch with a lot of them. I loved my three years at Villanova."
However, all those warm feelings will vanish for three hours or so tomorrow when Clawson and his Rams visit Villanova Stadium for an NCAA Division I-AA football tournament quarterfinal game against the Wildcats.
"It's going to be different on the other sideline and in the visitors' locker room," he said. "The only experience I've had there was on the home side, in the nice locker room.
"But once the game gets going, all sentiment is removed. I'm prepared to help our team beat the Villanova football team. Once it gets going, it becomes another game I want to win. Every time I coached at Villanova Stadium, I wanted to win, and this is no different."
As 'Nova's offensive coordinator from 1996 through 1998, Clawson coached record-setting quarterback Chris Boden; Brian Finneran, winner of the 1997 Walter Payton Award, given to the outstanding offensive player in Division I-AA; and Brian Westbrook, who would go on to win the 2001 Payton Award.
He was on the sideline in 1997, the last time the Wildcats made it to the quarterfinals. Villanova, playing at home, lost that game to Youngstown State, 37-34.
Now he has the Rams in the playoffs for the first time since the program joined I-AA in 1989. They certainly have Villanova's attention, having knocked off Atlantic Ten Football Conference cochampion Northeastern, 29-24, on the road in the first round.
"Certainly, we feel very good for Dave's success," Talley said. "We feel like it's a feather in our cap. We've been really prideful in the fact that a Villanova guy has turned that program around, and done it with excellent coaching and quality players. Make no mistake, they do have quality players. You don't beat Northeastern without quality players."
