Bill Zwaan, the life of the local college football coaching fraternity, faces a big decision

On Wednesday, West Chester University football coach Bill Zwaan stood behind a lectern with the words “Villanova University” in front. Makes sense since Zwaan was speaking at a college football luncheon inside Villanova’s campus center.

“I hate Villanova,” Zwaan said, fully explaining why.

The majority of the people at the luncheon work at Villanova, including ‘Nova football coach Mark Ferrante, but Zwaan had them all smiling. One of the top coaches at any level for these recent decades, going 211-85 in 26 seasons in charge at Division III Widener and Division II West Chester, reaching the NCAA national semifinals at both levels, Zwaan always has offered some details of the game the previous weekend, and he’ll mention all sorts of players.

He’ll just also maybe mention the policeman who somehow showed up on his visiting sideline one game this season, wagging his finger at Zwaan, trying to use his badge to summon Zwaan over to him while the coach was in an in-game debate with officials.

» READ MORE: Temple fully earned its court storming after upsetting Villanova ... this was big

Officials have been a frequent Zwaan foil, like the one week when the officials seemed a little hazy on the rules, so Zwaan used his own knowledge of the rule book to steal five yards for his team. (Most of his stories had the flags going the other way.)

Wednesday was the season’s last luncheon, and a question hung over Zwaan’s appearance. Was it his last appearance? He got to that, eventually. First, he said, “I’ve got a couple of stories for you.”

There was a summary of West Chester’s final game of the season, a tougher-than-expected win at Clarion. Zwaan told about one of the two buses that would take them on the five-hour drive, “basically gliding into our parking lot; it has shut down,” which meant, to his eyes, they needed a new bus.

“How long will it take to get here?” Zwaan said he asked the driver of the injured bus.

“Forty-five minutes.”

“Well, you know, the bus station is actually two hours away,” Zwaan mentioned. “I know that, and you know that. Why are you telling me it’s 45 minutes away? Did you already make the call?”

“No, no,” said the bus driver.

“Everybody knows when you’re at the levels that we’re at, you’re always trying to save money — you only have a certain amount of money to spend,” Zwaan said to the luncheon crowd. “We’ve got the trip all planned out. We’re going to go here for dinner, save money there … we’re going to leave at a certain time, not going to eat lunch, we’re going to save money and eat dinner [in Clarion].”

If the bus had left at 2 o’clock, Zwaan added, “we would have missed the tree that fell down on the street leading into our parking lot, which fell down at 2:15.”

You get the idea. Dinner turned out to be at West Chester’s cafeteria. Telling a story, Zwaan never leaves out such parts, including why he hates Villanova. He himself had starred at quarterback at Delaware, which happens to play Villanova on Saturday.

“I had good reason to hate Villanova,” Zwaan said, going back to his days at Archbishop Carroll High, practically in the shadow of Villanova’s campus.

“Senior year in high school, we win the championship, I’m MVP of the [Catholic] League, I’m all-this, all-that,” Zwaan said. “Everybody is recruiting all of us except Villanova, which is only recruiting the rest of the ... [Carroll] guys and not me.”

Drew Gordon, Villanova’s QB at the time, spoke at Carroll’s football banquet.

“He says, ‘Are we recruiting you?’”

Nope.

“Why not?”

“They think I’m too small.”

“Well, you’re ... bigger than I am.”

“Yeah, I know I am.”

“I’ve hated Villanova since that day,” Zwaan said, adding that, “My grandsons know I hate Villanova. They’re really young, got into it when Villanova’s winning national championships in basketball. They’ve got their DiVincenzo jerseys. They actually make phone calls to me and [chant], ‘Vill-a-nova.’”

Would he have gone to Villanova?

“No, kids from Carroll going to Villanova, it’s like going to high school, basically you go one train stop less, right?”

The whole time Zwaan was talking, there was an elephant in the room. Was this it?

“We have 20 starters coming back,” Zwaan, now 68 years old, said of his 7-4 team. “I started having meetings with these guys. Every meeting was good. That never happens. There’s usually one or two bad ones. Truthfully, I kind of like this team. I’m kind of looking forward to the offseason and coming back and everything.”

So there it was …

“I will tell you that I’ve had the issue with my leg,” Zwaan said. “You guys see me limping around like crazy [using a cane], which has been four years of misery, it’s just been crazy.”

Arthritis led to an infection from a needle.

» READ MORE: Brand new coaches but familiar look to Villanova-La Salle opener

“Five operations later, I have a new knee,” Zwaan said. “It doesn’t work. I get another new knee, it’s worse. It’s just ridiculous this all happened because of arthritis. So I’m really struggling right now. So I had planned to retire, because I can’t stand up. Doesn’t that suck?”

Hard in recruiting, Zwaan added.

“That’s part of the reason I decided it was probably time,” Zwaan said.

So not so fast ...

“I had a long discussion with my president yesterday,” Zwaan said. “I went to my doctor on Monday. The worst part, they have no answer. … So my president has basically said, ‘Listen, take time to try to get healthy. And if you’re not healthy when recruiting comes around, then we’ll make a decision then,’ so …”

So, Zwaan said, this could have been his last luncheon.

“I appreciate Villanova and Penn for hosting it,” Zwaan said. “If you’re here and you see us talking about it and you see our passion, it makes for a better story.”

“I basically come here to listen to Bill Zwaan,” Rowan coach Jay Accorsi said when he followed Zwaan to the lectern.

If this was his last one, Zwaan had added …

“I still hate Villanova.”