Dear Joe,
As you may or may not know, former Temple football coach Wayne Hardin is up for inclusion into the current class of the college football Hall of Fame.
Coach Hardin’s accomplishments in the realm of Philadelphia and national college and even pro football and have made him indeed worthy of induction. He’s the last head coach to win a pro football title within the city limits of Philadelphia, doing so for the Philadelphia Bulldogs of the then Continental League in 1966. (When the USFL Stars won it, they did it on the road and as the Baltimore/Philadelphia Stars.)
Coach Hardin is 80 years old now and wants to do a lot of things but none more important to him than filling Lincoln Financial Field for Temple’s Aug. 30 regular-season opener with Navy.
Coach Hardin went on WPHT-AM, 1210, a 50,000-watt station heard both here and Annapolis, and “guaranteed” a crowd of 66,000 for the home opener _ a feat that would put Philadelphia on the college football map quicker than any single football victory could.

Coach said there was one caveat, though.
The game needed to be on Thursday, Aug. 30. Anyone who has grown up in Philadelphia, and spent his entire life here, knows the town virtually empties the Friday of the Labor Day weekend with people mostly headed “down the shore” for one last long weekend before a long, cold winter. There is virtually no shot Temple gets what current Al Golden calls an “unprecedented crowd” on any other night but Thursday.
Fortunately, Temple AD Bill Bradshaw worked out the details and announced that Thursday would be the date for the opener.

The date is set on Owlsports.com, the school’s official athletic website.
It’s even on the Lincoln Financial Field website, which I got to by clicking on a philadelphiaeagles.com link.
Now there are some earthquake-sized rumblings that you want to take back the date for a relatively meaningless preseason Eagles’ game. When we were kids, we’d call that Indian-giving. That’s probably not politically correct now, so I’ll call it Caveman-giving.
The Eagles are basically the only sports organization in this town that can survive by playing on Friday night that weekend. You’ll get your crowd whether you play Thursday or Friday.
The Eagles can take the hit.
Temple can’t.
Please, as a favor to coach Hardin _ the only coach in the history of college football to take Navy AND Temple to top 20 final regular season rankings _ abide by the agreement which allowed Temple to announce the Thursday night date.
The Eagles would be helping both the fans of Temple and Navy (for example, allowing Navy reserve personnel ample time to get to weekend drills) and gain an enormous amount of public relations good will by keeping the Thursday date for Temple clear, making coach Hardin and coach Golden realize their dreams of an unprecedented Temple crowd.
Thanks for taking time out from your busy schedule to read this letter.
Sincerely,
Mike Gibson
Editor and Publisher
Temple Football Forever
(Longtime season ticket-holder of both Eagles and Owls)

Adam DiMichele played baseball, basketball and football at all-state levels
By Mike Gibson
Adam DiMichele has been in Philadelphia less than one year, but he’s said and done all of the right things.
“Our time will come,” DiMichele said of the Temple football Owls early last season, not in a hopeful way, but in a manner-of-fact way, like he was talking about daylight following nightfall.

At the end of the season, DiMichele was just as convinced as ever that the Owls would be a big story in college sports, sooner than later, and happy about the good fortune that landed him in the first chapters of it.
This is an unwritten best-selling book that has 100 protagonists, the uniformed Owls plus their coaching staff.
DiMichele could end up being the lead character before it goes to print.
“I have no regrets,” DiMichele said. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
His latest statement came without even opening his mouth.
At least publicly.

DiMichele is no longer listed on the baseball team.
That’s a huge statement about Adam’s commitment to Temple football and speaks volumes about his future contribution to his new school.
Temple needs him as a football quarterback more than it needs him as a baseball pitcher.
Yet DiMichele’s future very well could be as a
baseball player. He hasn’t given up on baseball, just put it off for another year.
Committing to football and spring practice is the ultimate example of giving one up for the team.
Temple is ready to win this year and DiMichele is ready to lead this team into battle. Nothing would accelerate that process faster than a good quarterback committed to becoming a great one.
There are few Temple quarterbacks I’ve liked more than DiMichele.
Tim Riordan and Matty Baker for their toughness.
That’s about it.
DiMichele has those same gritty qualities.
People will say, “Well, what about Steve Joachim? Wasn’t he the college football player of the year at Temple?”
Yes he was.
And like DiMichele was all-state in football and basketball (at Haverford High). Yet Joachim was more Mike Schmidt than Pete Rose, skating by on his talent.
There’s no denying DiMichele’s vast talent, but there are intangibles with DiMichele, Baker and Riordan I didn’t see in Joachim.
He’s good enough to be named Pittsburgh Area Player of the Year in basketball, good enough to have been drafted by the major leagues out of high school in baseball and, like Joachim, good enough to have been signed as a football player by Penn State.
He’s all kinds of special.
Plus he’s Pete Rose in terms of competitiveness.
Give me Pete Rose over Mike Schmidt any day, especially at the quarterback position.
Like Riordan, he bounces up after a big hit and shakes it off.
Like Baker, he can make the big throw at the biggest time.
With DiMichele, the best is yet to come.
He’s shaken off two years of football rust and still looked pretty good in my mind. It’s scary to see how good he can become with his first spring practice under his belt.
“I call him Roy Hobbs because he’s a natural,” Temple head coach Al Golden said. “I’ve always said that the hardest thing to do in college football is to recruit a Division I quarterback. We have at least one.”
It was obvious he was talking about Adam DiMichele.
Now, in this off-season, without even saying a word, Adam DiMichele is doing his own talking.
I, for one, like what I’m hearing.