DALLAS -- Of the rolling 146 acres that Paul Quinn College calls home, the spot that belongs to the aging football field is impossible to miss. Set in a subtle valley on the northeast corner of campus, the field is everything you might expect at a tiny NAIA school. Bright white goalposts. A fading, antiquated scoreboard. A yellow and purple shack where fans can purchase tickets. And, tucked behind one end zone, a pair of navy blue blocking sleds for training.

On this fall afternoon, there will be no football practice. No whistles, no tackling drills, no sprints. That's because there is no team that calls this place home. At least not a football team. Instead, the 20-yard line is occupied by bulging sweet potatoes. Radishes sprout on the opposite end of the field, somewhere around the 15. A few feet from the old ticket booth, hens gather to lay eggs. On the home sideline, where shiny metal bleachers once stood, fresh tilapia swim back and forth in a state-of-the-art aquaponics system.

It was seven years ago when college President Michael Sorrell, a former college basketball player, decided to kill Paul Quinn's cash-strapped football program. Two years later, he transformed the old field into an organic farm. Yes, people said he was insane; his plan was sure to fail. And yet this Thanksgiving, when the Dallas Cowboys host the Philadelphia Eagles at AT&T Stadium, the big-money high rollers in the stadium's suites will eat pasta drizzled with pesto rooted in Paul Quinn basil. They'll dip chips into roasted red pepper salsa made from Paul Quinn peppers. And they'll nibble from veggie trays covered in radishes and beets that grew right there on Paul Quinn's 15-yard line.

"You know the Apple commercial 'Here's to the crazy ones?'" Sorrell says. "Well, that's us. We're proud to be the crazy ones. We weren't supposed to make it. No one thought this would work. But here we are. And I'm telling you, we think -- no, we know -- this is only the beginning. We are going to change the world with this farm."

Michael Sorrell, who scrapped Paul Quinn's football program seven years ago, stands in a field of greens. Ben Sklar

TO UNDERSTAND WHY this all began, you have to visit the 95 percent minority, poverty-stricken neighborhood that surrounds Paul Quinn. Eight miles south of downtown Dallas, the area is a federally recognized food desert, meaning there are no grocery stories or restaurants where fresh, nutritious food can be easily obtained for those without cars. Sorrell realized this firsthand when he took the president's job at Paul Quinn in fall 2007. By spring, he had gained 15 pounds, thanks to lunch and dinner options that were limited to chicken shacks, convenience stores and fast food. The healthiest choice was Subway, three miles down the road.

Sorrell was determined to make a change. He began talking with community leaders in the hope of getting a grocery store on or near campus. No one was interested. He offered free land. Still, no one was interested. The words of his final prospective owner stung.

"He said to a friend of mine that the people in this neighborhood don't look like his clients," Sorrell says. "And I just got furious at the injustice of it all. In the back of my mind, I may have thought that. But to hear someone say it, to have someone tell you that, basically, poor, black and brown people don't deserve what you provide I was livid."

That's when Sorrell had the idea to turn the field into a farm. He had scrapped the football program two years earlier, saving the university roughly $600,000 a year. Alumni of the program howled, but when Sorrell challenged them to raise $2 million to save football, he says, no one raised a dime.

"That showed me folks could be loud but that didn't mean the support was deep," Sorrell says. "And I don't believe you build old man's dreams on young man's backs."

At a luncheon with a local entrepreneur who had been interested in community gardens, Sorrell suggested investing in the idea of farming on the field. The man said yes. Sorrell went to his board, insisting he had found the idea that was going to save the cash-strapped school, which had lost its accreditation a year earlier amid financial and academic concerns.