Great photo of Temple’s terrific fans by Darryl Rule.

“For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’ “
_ American poet and author John Greenleaf Whittier …

By Mike Gibson
Like a lot of people, I eat when I’m depressed.
When Temple wins in football, and that’s not nearly enough, I practically skip out of the stadium on a natural high and can’t wait to talk about the win in the parking lot afterward.
I don’t think about eating. I don’t think about sleeping. I just think about winning.
That’s the most fulfilling feeling of all.

After Temple loses, and that’s always too much, I saunter over to the concession stand and buy the biggest jumbo soft pretzel they have.
You know about those victory cigars Red Auerbach used to have?
Well, I have my defeat pretzels.
I’ve been walking out of Lincoln Financial Field eating too many soft pretzels lately, thinking so much about a lot of things that I never really noticed how the pretzel tasted.
Some soft-pretzel thoughts:
CHESTER STEWART _ I’m sure he’s a good kid and a nice guy, but he’s just not ready to lead a Division I football team to a win. After he overthrew a ton of guys in the Penn State game, I chalked it up to first-game jitters. After he mastered the art of overthrowing open guys by 10 feet in the Homecoming Game against Western Michigan, I said enough is enough. “I thought I did all right,” Stewart said after the game. Sorry, Chester. Three points is not all right. Twenty-one points is all right. Fourteen points would have been acceptable but three points is abysmal. Ridiculously not all right.
AL GOLDEN _ If he didn’t have the confidence to run a balanced offense with Chester Stewart, then he should have went with Colin Clancy or taken the redshirt off Vaughn Charlton. “I thought he did all right,” Golden said of Stewart. With all due respect, Al, what have you been smoking? THREE POINTS IS NOT ALL RIGHT. It just isn’t. It’s the quarterback’s job to put points on the board and that means touchdowns and not field goals out the wazzoo. If Chester Stewart isn’t moving the team, it’s Al Golden’s job to get someone in there who can move the team. It’s not Al Golden’s job to keep running the same guy out, failed series after failed series.
VAUGHN CHARLTON _ Obviously, the redshirt was promised to this talented young man. But, as with everything in the Al Golden Era, the team comes first. It’s the team, not the individual. Vaughn has to go into the office and volunteer to do what’s best for the team. He just has to. Don’t wait for the coach to ask.
THE FANS _ They’ve done a great job in the first two games, 17K and loud and strong in the two games. A lot of them, me included, left without being able to talk for the next two days due to cheering so loudly. The fans, like the players, left a lot on the field. There is a law of diminishing returns. Unless this team is able to string together three straight wins, don’t expect a lot of them to return for the remaining three home games.
MARK D’ONOFRIO _ What can you say about the job Temple’s defensive coordinator has done? Twelve points against UConn, seven against Western Michigan. He’s a genius. Temple is very lucky to have him, but you have to wonder if the law of diminishing returns begins to erode the performance of this defense. They leave a lot on the field, too, and get little back.
THE REFS _ In three of the four Temple losses, a ridiculous call cost the Owls the chance of winning. This time it was sideline interference on a fourth-down call. Refs are human. They’ve been in the MAC for years. They take away Temple’s only touchdown, a beautiful run by James Nixon. They don’t want a team kicked out of another conference coming in and dominating their league. They make up ridiculous stuff like that, coming at a crucial time when Temple stopped Western Michigan on a fourth-quarter third down.
Thinking about all of those people and things got me to the bottom of the Lincoln Financial Field steps. By then, the soft pretzel was gone.
The depression, brought on by lingering thoughts of what might have been, was not.