02.02.26
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The day K.C. Keeler beat Curt Cignetti

Buried in a covid season that forced the FCS to schedule spring ball was one of the few losses national championship Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti had in the last five years.

Buried in a covid season that forced the FCS to schedule spring ball was one of the few losses national championship Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti had in the last five years.
K.C. Keeler beat Curt Cignetti in the FCS semifinals and went on to win the natty in 2021 at SHS.

K.C. Keeler got the 2021 win, coaching his Sam Houston State team to a 38-35 triumph in a FCS playoff semifinal against Cignetti’s James Madison team despite being down, 24-3, at halftime.

That’s a lot of halftime adjustments.

What does it mean for Temple moving forward?

Keeler showed that given his ability to improvise and adjust, once he gets “his guys” here, the future is bright for the Owls.

Put it this way: Temple outscored a lot of good teams in the second half (North Texas, Georgia Tech and UTSA) but got wins in only one of them: UTSA.

That was Keeler working with Stan Drayton’s guys.

The only “Keeler guy” brought in with him was Jay Ducker, who nearly became Temple’s first 1,000-yard back since Ray Davis in 2019.

Cignetti talks with Oregon coach Dan Lanning, who was a former Keeler assistant at Sam Houston State.

Now Keeler is identifying more talent to fit what schemes he, OC Tyler Walker and DC Brian Smith want to run and some improvement from Year One to Year Two can be expected. For example, he’s brought in for the first time all of his quarterbacks and they all have a proven level of mobility at least better than last year’s starter Evan Simon. Walker always wanted to use the quarterbacks’ legs as a weapon, and he will have that option this year. He had to scale back on that part of the playbook in 2025.

If any of them display Simon’s accuracy and leadership abilities to go with that mobility, that is the guy who will win the job.

That’s really when halftime adjustments kick into play, getting your Jimmies closer in ability to their Joes and having a coach like Keeler who has matched wits with the best in the business, including Cignetti.

Ironically, Cignetti–a former Temple QB coach–could never dream during that postgame handshake five years ago that Keeler would one day work at the same school.

Maybe the next time they meet, if they ever do, they can trade 10th and Diamond and 12th and Norris War stories.

For now, though, Keeler has won the last battle and that should be impressive enough for Temple fans.

Friday: Closer to Spring Ball

01.29.26
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New Temple football Owls: Trust but Verify

An old Russian proverb was “trust but verify” and the first American to popularize it in the Western Hemisphere was Ronald Reagan when he talked about a nuclear deal with that nation.

That has applied to Temple football at least, well, forever.

It has been one of the core values of this site since its inception 21 years ago.

The difference between this year and last is that there is more trust than verification needed at least in two of the most important positions on the field.

Quarterback and running back.

No such concerns last year because then new head coach K.C. Keeler (with the help of General Manager Clayton Barnes) brought in the starting quarterback from Oregon State to ostensibly beat out Temple returning starter Evan Simon. Fortunately for all Temple fans, the talented Simon took that as a challenge and kept his job by throwing six touchdown passes in the 42-10 opening day win at UMass.

That solidified his job.

Yet the key point always was that if Simon ever went down, the Owls could have still won the same number of games with his $100,000 insurance policy: Gevani McCoy.

Plus, Keeler was able to bring in Sam Houston’s best player: running back Jay Ducker.

Those guys had receipts.

No such verifiables this year.

I feel a lot better about the Owls’ running game with Hunter Smith than I do about it with Rutgers backup Sam Brown. This is Smith scoring a TD in a 27-21 win over a UTSA team that beat league champion Tulane, 48-26.

While Simon’s remarkable 2025 season (25 touchdown passes, 1 interception) put him in the record books, he moved past P.J. Walker and Adam DiMichele into my No. 1 favorite spot not because of the stats but because of his commitment to Temple. There is no doubt in my mind that if the Owls decided to play in the Birmingham Bowl, Simon would have rallied the troops to play and win.

Yet McCoy should always hold a treasured spot in every Temple fans heart because he embraced the backup role, something unheard of in this “me first” era.

Both those guys were verified.

Now we get to the trust part.

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That’s all we have going into the 2026 season with three key pieces, transfer portal quarterbacks Ajani Sheppard and Jaxon Smolik and running back Sam Brown, who all have Big 10 roots.

Brown was the backup to two guys with the Scarlet Knights, while Sheppard and Smolik were third string at RU and PSU. Good, highly paid, coaching staffs saw those guys and said let’s keep them off the field in real games.

For me, a couple of huge red flags.

My trust at those positions to go Hunter Smith, who in my mind was every bit as good as Ducker, and true freshman quarterback Lamar Best who is the, err, “best” true freshman QB Temple has recruited since Walker.

Hope the trust guys (Smolik, Sheppard and Brown) surprise me but my money is on the verified guys (Smith and Best) carrying the day.

If Best and Smith are behind center on opening day, the Owls should be OK from a trust perspective. The others have yet to post their verifiables.

Monday: A Coaching Matchup to remember

01.26.26
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Temple football makes G5 history in a good way

The headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer addressed the biggest piece of news: Roster retention.

Those of a certain age in Philadelphia sports remember the biggest literal balancing act in history, Karl Wallenda, who walked across the top of Veterans Stadium on a high wire without a net.

Temple head coach K.C. Keeler is of that certain age and now he is in charge of a figurative high-wire act that is almost as impressive, navigating a transfer portal without the net of SEC or Big 10 type money.

Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that Temple football hasn’t done very much of anything since the transfer portal’s arrival in 2017.

That was one year after the Owls hoisted a championship trophy and the Owls struggled not only with opponents on the field but a revolving door at the $17 million Edberg Olson Practice facility.

No more.

Keeler said a lot of interesting things six days ago in his transfer portal wrap, but none more interesting than this quote: “We were one of the few G5 teams to keep our all starters.”

Hmm.

That got me thinking.

“Few?”

Nobody in the G5 keeps their starters anymore so we had to dig deep to find out if the key word was “few” or “any” and the latter turned out to be true.

A G5 team without P4 money in the era of the transfer portal is the kind of balancing act we see here.

Temple was the ONLY G5 team that kept all of its starters out of the transfer portal–with a qualifier. The starters applied to only the last game of the season and not guys who started single games before that.

Then we went over the rosters of G5 teams since 2017 and couldn’t find a single team that was able to keep all of its starters from the final game of the previous season from hitting the transfer portal.

Of course, Temple lost quite a few starters the more traditional way (graduation and expired eligibility) but, in this era of the G5 being used as a farm system for the P4, what Keeler and company have done is very impressive.

It speaks to the culture Keeler has been able to develop in a single year.

It also says something about the culture before that as Rod Carey was a “my way or the highway” guy and Stan Drayton was pretty much a fatalist when it came to losing players.

Temple could have the top TE in the country in 2026 with Peter Clarke.

Keeler tells the players to keep the main thing the main thing during the season–concentrating on winning–and that he and General Manager Clayton Barnes will figure out the side thing once the season is over. Also, Keeler gave last year’s players the kind of rope they didn’t get this year because, he said, “of the coaching change.”

Then, after the spring game, he shut the faucet off, saying that “now that the players have gotten to know me, once they enter the portal they are not coming back.”

There are exceptions to every rule and, this year, third-string quarterback Tyler Douglas was one. One he was told he didn’t fit into the QB plans, he hit the portal. At the same time, Keeler told him if he was willing to switch to WR, he would be welcome back.

Douglas came back and will battle for a WR slot. Keeler gave tight end Peter Clarke–ranked among the top 10 in the country at his position–a lot of credit in both keeping the locker room together and recruiting a few key transfer portal recruits.

Of course, roster retention on a 5-7 team is a double-edged sword, You want to keep starters and allow the backups to have other places to play all while at the same time upgrading the roster through both high school recruiting and the transfer portal.

Temple appears to have struck that balance and, in its own way, a kind of high-wire act more impressive than Wallenda’s.

Friday: Trust but Verify

Monday: A Coaching Matchup to Remember

01.23.26
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The Keeler Presser’s Most Surprising Answer

I suspect some of these folks are the heroes Temple needs right now.

Now that their offseason personnel work is done, Temple football fans finally got a chance to hear some questions and answers.

Some were predictable.

Some came out of left field.

First, the predictable.

As we speculated in this space way back in December, we figured that Temple–specifically athletic director Arthur Johnson–was caught with pants down the day he received a call from Birmingham Bowl officials asking if Temple was interested in playing Georgia Southern.

For the record, this site anticipated that call because Temple players were not only in the classroom but killing it while there. (Unlike the Miami QB who admitted to not attending a class in two years.) After the season was over, we wrote that Temple might not receive a bowl call but, as a 5-7 team with a good academic record, it should be prepared just in case.

Head coach K.C. Keeler’s answer to that question was illuminating because he indicated by the time Keeler got the call Appalachian State already accepted.

That’s all I needed to know because, a week ago, we wrote that’s exactly the way we expected Keeler to answer the question and, if he did, that indicated that the fault was that the Temple administration wasn’t prepared for such a call.

Inexcusable.

This should have been buttoned down long before Bowl Selection Sunday. Johnson should have told President John Fry that the call was possible and that the university should say yes.

Why?

Because I–and almost all of the computer models–felt that Temple would have kicked the living crap out of Georgia Southern (unlike the non-competitive App State squad) and that would have jump-started momentum and possibly season-ticket sales–into the 2026 season.

We will never know because someone higher up than Keeler fumbled the ball.

Now to the good part.

Keeler indicated that he and General Manager Clayton Barnes “met with a group of donors” last week.

My reaction?

“We have donors?”

It’s nearly February, which means the Keelers will return to this boardwalk in Bethany Beach, Delaware for the annual Solar Plunge like this photo from 11 months ago. Hopefully, they will find a Temple grad there with bucoo bucks and a Yacht docked nearby.

As someone who worked his way through Temple on two part-time jobs and slept (maybe) an average of four hours a night and STILL scrounged my couch to find tokens to get to school, hard to believe we have donors.

But, according to Keeler, we do.

(Hell, if I parlayed those tokens and that degree into a multimillion business like the hero who gave $55 million to the College of Heath in October, my $55 million would have gone into the football program and not a penny for the COH or even Temple basketball but I chose the newspaper business about 20 years too late and I’ve returned to my scrounging for tokens days.)

Because, in college football these days, donors might be more important than even players or coaches and their very existence at this so-called “commuter” school is an indication of more wins in the future.

Until sanity is restored, it’s not the Jimmy’s and the Joe’s and the X’s and O’s that win anymore in college football.

It’s the money. If you want to get to the other side, you have to play the game the way it is and not the way you want it to be.

I’ll accept that only for now and hope we get back to room, board and tuition and what amateur sports is supposed to be all about sooner than later.

Monday: The Personnel Piece

01.18.26
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Good News for Temple fans: Some answers

For the first time since a tersely worded statement about a bowl game miscommunication, Temple fans will be hearing from their beloved football program.

Really, it was longer than that, because that statement came with no answers and only generated more questions.

Both Temple head coach K.C. Keeler and General Manager Clayton Barnes will be meeting with the media on Tuesday to answer questions really for the first time since the December signing day.

That’s a long time ago. It’s been radio silence ever since.

Ostensibly, the questions will be about the roster additions and, while that is important, the No. 1 question should be about the bowl game.

Grayson Mains (57) has been the bulwark for the Owls OL the past two seasons. RU’s John Stone wants that job. That should be a key position battle.

Here’s my five:

One, “K.C., did you hear about the bowl game offer BEFORE or AFTER App State accepted that bid?”

(That’s important to determine who fumbled the ball, Arthur Johnson or somebody else? If K.C. was asked before and he said something like “I need time to think about it” then that’s understandable. If, on the other hand, Johnson told the Birmingham Bowl people that he needed to ask permission from President John Fry, that indicates Temple wasn’t ready for the call.)

Two, “K.C., would you have said yes if asked?”

(Knowing K.C.’s competitive nature, I would guess yes, but it would be nice to get that answer on the record.)

Now we can get to the business of the day:

Who will apply the kind of pressure on the QB in 2026 that Badmus, Stewart, Poteat and Kromah did in 2025?

Three, “Would you have liked for one of the two quarterbacks you signed to have been a high-achieving FCS or DII guy and what were the obstacles that prevented that?”

(That question is open-ended, which means it cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. Meaning, we might get an insight about whether the Owls were willing to spend $300,000 on a QB again. Everything Temple has done at the most important position on the field indicates it hopes someone will get the job done vs. someone who already did get the job done on a college football field.)

Four, “It looks like John Stone of Rutgers is your top offensive line acquisition. If Grayson Mains beats him out, can Stone play another position on the OL? Can Mains?”

(Obviously, if either can play another position, the OL improves.)

Five, “Who do you see fulfilling the pass-rushing roles previously held by guys like Poteat, Stewart, Badmus and Kromah and are those potential upgrades?”

(I don’t see any pass rushers, but this is a question probably better directed to Barnes who might.)

Bonus question: “Six, you indicated before that if any players entered the portal they would not be welcomed back. What made Tyler Douglas the exception to that rule?”

(Expect that answer to be something about Douglas being willing to switch positions to WR.)

Thanks, K.C.

Don’t wait until spring ball to have another one of these.

Friday: Analyzing The Answers

01.16.26
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Best available QB is a cautionary portal tale

College football players still in the portal piss me off.

Yesterday (Jan. 15, 2025), a date that will live in infamy, was the last day that players could both 1) enter their name in the portal and 2) declare a new school.

Peter Clarke is the first guy from London since Ben Franklin to realize he’s better off in Philadelphia.

There is, Thank Freaking God, no spring transfer portal window anymore.

It is now a minute past the deadline and one of the best quarterbacks remaining in the portal, Incarnate Word’s E.J. Colson, is still there.

He might find a new school. He might not but his chances of not finding a landing spot skyrocketed several minutes ago.

There are a couple of reasons for that.

One, pretty much all 134 FBS schools have now allocated their available scholarships for quarterbacks.

One of those schools is Temple.

The Owls chose not to wait on Colson–hell, we will now never know that they even tried to get him–and “settled” on both Penn State backup Jaxon Smolik and Washington State backup Ajani Sheppard.

Looks like Longstreet signed with LSU yesterday.

We say settled because neither did squat in the few opportunities they had on the field at the schools they played at (Sheppard was also a backup at Rutgers).

Colson, on the other hand, did plenty in his most recent opportunities.

The guy started a couple of games at UCF (when UCF was good), transferred to Purdue, had a moment of clarity when he saw he couldn’t get on the field there and transferred to an FCS school (Incarnate Word) that had a track record for producing quarterbacks like Cam Ward.

He finished the 2025 season there with 2,134 yards, 16 touchdown passes and only four interceptions and declared himself the “best available” quarterback in the portal.

That must have been some agent whispering in his ear because, while he thought his landing spot might have been a place like USC or LSU, he’s still up there and nobody knows if his parachute has a backup.

His landing spot could be a splat.

It wouldn’t be the first time this happened.

In 2022, Liberty had a 1,000-yard back in the portal who we urged Temple to get on this site.

Temple didn’t get him nor did any other school.

As a result, he lost both his scholarship to Liberty and a chance to prove to the NFL that he had the talent to play there. As far as we know, he is completely out of football.

Fortunately for Temple, not all feel that way.

Peter Clarke was told this week that if he declared for the NFL draft, he would be one of the top five tight ends chosen.

Clarke looked at this thing realistically and figured that another year at Temple might push him from No. 5 to No. 1.

Jaxon Smolik, who transferred from Penn State to Temple. looked at the Clarke film with Temple OC Tyler Walker and figured that was his ticket to the NFL, too, and committed here.

Maybe both will sign with the Eagles someday.

Their chances are much better than Colson’s and that is one of the thousands of reasons why the transfer portal taketh more than it giveth and agents should put more care into finding their clients a spot where they can play vs. a spot that might never happen.

Monday: The Good News for Temple

01.12.26
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Lamar Best’s chances to start just skyrocketed

Lamar Best’s high school film is clearly superior to the high school film of Smolik and Sheppard.

Back when Tiger Woods was winning just about every major golf tournament that there was, sports books had a standard bet before majors: Woods against the field.

Jaxon Smolik played third string QB at Penn State but an interesting tidbit is that he played QB at Dowling Catholic in Iowa which is the high school that produced Caitlin Clark.

Woods won just enough to make the bet–appealing on its face–a moneymaker for the house.

K.C. Keeler went into Temple’s offseason promising to get an experienced QB or two and some Owl fans, me included, weren’t expecting a Woods but certainly hoping for someone who reached the leaderboard of some quarterback competition on the field somewhere.

Instead, they got a couple of guys–third stringers at Penn State and Washington State–who now have a 50/50 chance to win the starting job at some point before the Sept. 5 opener.

Or at least a significant shot against a field that includes three true freshmen.

Say, those three–Brody Norman, Brady Palmer and Lamar Best–are roughly the field and the two transfer portal acquisitions, Ajani Sheppard and Jaxon Smolik–are “Tiger Woods.”

I’ll take the field, specifically Temple’s “secret weapon” in Best, whose film is off the charts. Best is every bit the passer P.J. Walker was and a far better runner. All Walker did was break every career passing mark at Temple.

Ajani Sheppard was third string at Rutgers behind Gavin Wimsatt and Evan Simon.

He might not be the starter but Temple’s failure to get a high achieving starter in its two transfer portal acquisitions raises significant concerns.

Among them, this: Smolik got on the field in a real game and did virtually nothing for Penn State. Same with Sheppard in stints and Rutgers and Washington State.

When you have a chance to get on the field in an actual game, you’ve got to do something. Neither of them did. Sheppard, like former Temple quarterback Evan Simon, is a one-time Rutgers’ backup but Simon threw for over 300 yards in a Big 10 game at Iowa so you knew he came with receipts.

Neither of these guys are coming with receipts.

Both, like Best, Norman, and Palmer, have good high school film but at least in the two transfer portal cases, that film has not translated into actual results in real college football games.

Maybe they will at Temple and maybe they won’t, but they haven’t so far, and the best predictor of future success is past success. I was hoping Temple would land the Saginaw Valley or Western Carolina quarterbacks, but apparently the staff whiffed on those two high-achievers.

This seems like settling to me and far from the dynamic duo of Simon and Gevani McCoy, but we will see.

Back to the drawing board.

BYU’s Bear Bachmeier showed a “true freshman” can go 11-1 on a college football field so that’s why I’m taking the freshman field against the two transfer portal pickups. He had to come from a long way in summer camp to beat more experienced quarterbacks who had a full spring and maybe that’s what will happen here.

May the Best man win.

Or at least the most talented one.

Friday: Best Available

01.09.26
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The New Reality: Is it sustainable?

From my seat at the Army game this year, I decided that Temple is going to have to find a way to beat the academies on a regular basis to have any success in this league. I was only able to attend due to the generosity of TFF readership. If you want me to attend a road game in 2026, please consider a small contribution today.

After watching one of the classic Fiesta Bowl games of all time, there is a reminder out there that not all that long ago Temple beat one of the two teams in that game by a couple touchdowns.

UConn was that team and Temple beat them, 30-16, a few weeks before that.

Both teams finished the regular season the same 8-4 record but the Huskies ended up in the Fiesta Bowl and the Owls bowless because one team was in the Big East (replacing Temple) and the other in the MAC.

That was exactly 15 years ago and college football has changed a lot since then.

Not for the better.

Short answer for players: You’re as fucked as the fans are and probably more because they have a regular job and you don’t. My advice: If you have a scholarship, room, board and cost of attendance, please keep it and stay at the school who showed you loyalty in the first place.

Temple was able to beat a Fiesta Bowl team back then because the playing field was relatively even as the Owls were able to identify top high school talent and keep those guys through all four years.

Now, no matter how good a job K.C. Keeler does on that end, he risks (and no doubt will) lose the best of that talent either the next year or the year after that.

The players don’t seem to notice how they are being played for suckers and that’s that sad thing. According to Rivals247.com, 3,156 players entered the portal last year at this time and only 1,511 found new spots. What happened to the others guys? In chasing riches, they ended up out on the street and losing a very valuable scholarship, room, board and cost of attendance … which, in the G5, usually averages about $3,500 a player.

The players (among them, a lot of really good ones) who lose it all in chasing the money and end up out on the street would be a terrific story for Dateline, 60 Minutes or any of those other news magazine shows but nobody seems interested in that cautionary story.

That leaves the fans holding the bag for players who make incredibly bad decisions due to predatory agents.

When you lose the fans, you lose the sport.

I don’t think it’s sustainable because North Texas lost its entire team after going 11-1 and will have to rebuild all over again.

Temple, on the other hand, is on the rise but what happens if the Owls overachieve and go 11-1?

They likely lose the entire team and start over again.

It’s not just a Temple problem or a North Texas problem. It’s a Tulane problem. It’s a Memphis problem. It’s a USF problem.

Ironically, it’s not an Army or Navy problem because those two schools have the Kryptonite that kills the NIL and transfer portal.

Yet for any team to win consistently in this league they have to figure out a way to beat Army and Navy by loading the box and selling out for the run. That usually goes against most coaching instincts.

And, after doing that, have a contingency plan on how to rebuild quicker than the competition.

Unless Congress acts and protects the smaller schools, that means a lot of winning seasons followed by a lot of losing ones and a wash, rinse and repeat cycle. Hard to build a loyal home fanbase that way.

Do you see a Congress that protects the big guy in other endeavors ever sticking up for the little guy in college football?

I don’t.

To Congress, I say: Surprise me.

Monday: Temple’s Secret Weapon

01.05.26
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Our predictions the last 2 years: One off, both ways

They should be breaking out the balls for winter workouts very soon.

One year we sold the Owls short. The next we oversold them.

By one game each year.

So close but so far away.

That’s the prediction business in a nutshell.

Having watched the final preseason of Stan Drayton’s Temple career, we wrote in this space that the Owls would finish 2-10 in May of 2024. We based that on Forrest Brock winning the job. When Evan Simon took over, the Owls got better but still not good enough.

They finished 3-9.

On May 23, 2025 we mapped out how each game would go and this was shockingly close to how the first few games turned out.

This year we saw what new head coach K.C. Keeler was doing (upgraded key areas like the DL, RB and backup QB), and upped that win total to six. The justification not only was the roster upgrade, but the fact that an established head coach and coordinators would eliminate the pre-snap penalties that killed Drayton, OC Danny Langsdorf and DC Everett Withers.

That largely happened and two single-point losses to the academies ruined the Owls’ chances of finishing 7-5.

On Memorial Day Weekend, we wrote the Owls would finish 6-6.

They finished 5-7.

We predicted a 24-10 win at UMass (it was 42-10) and a 48-7 win over Howard (it was 55-7). We also predicted a 34-14 loss to Oklahoma (42-3) and a 38-7 loss to Georgia Tech (it was 42-24).

Geoff Collins had the Owls practicing in the snow (2017). Fortunately, Keeler has a state-of-the-art indoor facility at 15th and Montgomery to weather any storms.

We predicted Temple would beat UTSA, 24-21 (remarkably close because the Owls won, 27-21), a 31-21 loss to Navy (Owls lost a game that will live in ignominy, 32-31).

We predicted Temple would beat Tulsa, 34-21 (Owls won, 31-30) and Charlotte, 28-14 (it was 48-14).

The one game we got really wrong was the East Carolina game. We thought the Owls would win that one, 28-20, but they lost, 45-14.

We predicted Army would beat Temple by three (it was by one), Tulane would beat Temple by 11 (it was 23) and North Texas would beat Temple by 14 (it was 27).

Not bad, except for a couple of outliers, Keeler and his staff outperformed the scores we expected. The bottom line is the number of wins.

We will be watching the offseason acquisitions, then attending Cherry and White and coming up with game-by-game predictions around Memorial Day. They need to find a proven starting quarterback in the transfer portal and then slowly work the future (Lamar Best) into the lineup as the season goes along.

By then, we should have a good handle on how things should play out.

Friday: Is it sustainable?

Monday: Temple’s Secret Weapon

Friday (1/15): Best Available

01.02.26
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What the Trinidad Chambliss story tells Temple fans

On the surface, Trinidad Chambliss’ story doesn’t say much about Temple football.

Underneath the surface, though, it tells everything about the future.

Why?

Because Temple did a very much un-Temple-like thing last February in offering Ferris State national Division II championship quarterback Trinidad Chambliss $300,000 to come here and compete for a starting job.

He accepted, and the Friday press conference was all set before Ole Miss swooped in with a $600,000 backup offer.

Bad news for Temple but good news for Ole Miss because he eventually earned the starting job and put his Rebels into the national semifinals.

What does it say about Temple?

It tells you that both head coach K.C. Keeler and General Manager Clayton Barnes have keen eyes for talent. There is a Trinidad Chambliss out there–whether he’s in JUCO, Division II or FCS–and the same eyes that saw the Ferris State quarterback will identify the next Temple one.

Maybe not Chambliss good. Maybe better. Maybe worse but there are no maybes about the eyes scouting that future Temple signal-caller.

“Their quarterback is just incredible,” Georgia’s Kirby Smart said.

Yeah, that’s what both Keeler and Barnes identified on the film a year ago today.

They were excited to get Chambliss and Chambliss was excited to come here before Ole Miss swooped in and got him.

Shit happens.

One team’s shit (Temple’s) is another team’s title (Ole Miss) but that doesn’t diminish the talent evaluation skills of Keeler or Barnes and that’s where Temple is at an advantage in this transfer portal season. Another thought is that Temple is so committed to winning in football that it put its money ($300,000) where its mouth was. Keeler knew that Evan Simon needed some competition and, while he whiffed on the first choice (Chambliss), he hit a solid double into the gap on his second (Gevani McCoy). If that’s not enough, here’s another Keeler/Barnes collaboration: They almost got Drew Mestemaker to commit to Sam Houston before Mestemaker decided to follow a high school teammate to North Texas.

Eye for talent indeed.

Four eyes to be exact.

They made a significant investment (roughly $100,000) in McCoy. They didn’t ask me for a contribution to cover the NIL but, if had the extra cash, I would have forked it over. That’s how much confidence I have in them.

Think about this: If Simon went down, Temple goes from 5-7 without him to 1-11 without a McCoy. If Simon goes down, and McCoy is the backup, Temple wins the same number of games.

That’s how this thing is supposed to work with a great head coach. One injury to a key player shouldn’t take out your season.

Nobody knows more than the CEO and the GM that Temple needs a Chambliss, Simon and McCoy.

Nearly getting Chambliss last year but getting thisclose means they will get someone good enough to compete for an American Conference title thisyear.

Those are the guys working the film room and that’s enough for me.

It should be for every Temple fan.

Monday: Reviewing Our Predictions