04.10.17
by

It’s (Not Always) Sunny in Philadelphia

kraft

While the helmets look great, Geoff Collins and Pat Kraft never addressed the question of football coaching stability at Temple.

Today starts about the best week of weather in Philadelphia this season, splashing sunshine for most of the rest of the week.

chumpie

With this kind of weather, Collins should be out-recruiting Florida, Georgia Tech, SMU, UCF and UNC.

There will be sunshine all over the city, except for that little cloud that seems to always hover around Geoff Collins’ head.

It’s there simply because of what he did not say in his signing day presser. Sometimes, I think the guy could have used a good speechwriter because, while a lot of his bullet points hit home that day, it was what he did not say that will always cause some Temple fans like me to look at him with askance.

A simple speech like this AFTER THE WAKE FOREST DEBACLE would have done the trick, as short at the Gettysburg Address:

Tapping on the microphone, Collins opens up:

“Test. Test. Is this thing working? You will all have to excuse me because there  were a few words I did not say on the day I was hired that I feel I should say today. I have a few prepared notes for this occasion so I thought I’d jot a few down. Four scores and less than a month ago, this great program beat Navy and looked poised to enter the final AP Top 20 for the first time since 1979. That Navy team was playing better than just about any team in the nation going into that game, so a convincing win for us should have assured a final Top 25 spot.

“That did not happen for a couple of reasons. One, Matt Rhule, who is a good friend of mine, took what he thought was an opportunity of a lifetime and was faced with the difficult decision of leaving the very kids who helped give him that opportunity. Having been at that Wake Forest game and witnessed the half-hazard lead-up to it, I can say that, while Ed Foley did a great job, he did not have the requisite staffing support leading up to the game to adequately prepare the team.

“While researching this job, I came across a couple of sentiments I want to express today.  The day Al Golden was hired here, he said he wanted to build a house of brick, not straw, and I echo that statement today. The day Steve Addazio was hired from the same school which produced me, he said he wanted to reach out to the Wayne Hardin guys and so do I. Those are the true Temple legends, not the guys who graduated after 2010.

“When Matt was hired, he said he wanted to sign a 15-year contract. To me, a contract is a two-way street. My signature means I will hold up my end of the bargain. All I can say about that is to tell you right now that this is my opportunity of a lifetime, Temple. Not Baylor. Not Florida. Not Mississippi. While I cannot tell you what the future holds for me, I can promise right here and now to you and them that no future Temple team will be without the full coaching staff, including me, while going for a bowl win and a Top 25 ranking. That means too much to this great school and I will never dishonor this school. I wanted to clear this up because I felt I left some things hanging on the day I was hired. Thank you, and I want to open this up for questions.”

Thunderous applause all around would have greeted similar sentiments, but none of the sort came. Instead, Collins followed up on signing day by recruiting a class that suggested the house would be more straw than brick, and propped up by the foundation his predecessors laid. That leads to the inescapable conclusion that this staff is outta here with the first overachieving season, maybe even this one. Some people say that we as Temple fans should accept our fate as a steppingstone, but I’m not ready to do that. The notion that this staff might use Temple, heck probably will, is not good.

Looking up into the sky, that’s not a sunny prospect for the long-term viability of Temple football. There is still time for Collins to change that perception, but those days are dwindling down to a precious few. Cherry and White Day would be a good day to clear this up and remove that cloud for good.

Wednesday: No Punter, Big Problem

Friday: 5 Questions Pat Kraft Needs to Answer

13 thoughts on “It’s (Not Always) Sunny in Philadelphia”

  1. Bit of a shame Cortrelle Simpson couldn’t find playing time, I guess it goes to show how good of a receiving corps we have.

    I believe he transitioned to DB last season, so I guess we have enough depth there as well. Too bad he couldn’t magically turn into an O-Lineman, we never seem to have enough of them.

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  2. Gotta get over this. You want Collins to be lured away, because that means he won a lot of games here. There’s no two ways around it. You have to be able to keep the ball rolling. That’s the landscape of I-A football right now. If he’s here in 2027, either there was another round of realignment and Temple finally got the call, or he wasn’t good enough to get lured away and the school couldn’t afford a buyout.

    Schools with much higher football profiles than Temple have to look over their shoulders in regards to their HC. It sucks, and it’s bad for almost everyone; but that’s where we are.

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    • This is an issue that has to be addressed by somebody, Temple, the NCAA, the G5 schools as a consortium. It’s an unsustainable problem going forward. The P5 can afford to hire proven head coaches while the G5 must “settle” for unproven assistants. To me, Temple can solve this problem internally by setting the buyout so high that a P5 school will never want to touch its head coach. That might limit the pool of available candidates, but it’s a risk Houston took with Applewhite and it’s a direction that Temple should go. It would be much more effective if the G5 schools got together and agreed on astronomical buyout limits. People say the buyouts are nothing to P5 schools. Well, we’re going to have to make it something. Let it be so great that the P5 goes the Collins’ route and hires its own assistant coaches while the Temples and the Memphises can get the P.J. Flecks, proven guys at the lower G5 level.

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      • Regassert6 hits on a topic we’ve been through a few times on this website, and Mike I think you again hit the heart of the issue. The underlying denominator is the overall second class status of any G5 school to P5. BOT support, a stadium, a “paterno” for Temple all come after that. The current model is quite unsustainable.

      • Could be considered restraint of trade if the schools all agreed to do this.

  3. Contingency plans can weather the inevitable coaching cumulonimbus. You don’t need a weather vane or doppler radar to see that the coach may get poached.

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    • I would be a proponent of contingency plans if Temple never hired the likes of Jerry Berndt, Ron Dickerson or Bobby Wallace. There is a huge chance that one day Temple is going to whiff on one of these future hires and that will end up in an eight-year vacation for some undeserving head coach since Temple never fires anyone. Worse, it’s going to saddle these great fans with five-to-eight years of miserable football and I don’t think Temple’s fan base can sustain another one of those dismal runs.

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  4. By the way, at Saturday’s scrimmage, the administration said the stadium plan is still a go and that the silence should be ignored. Til I see a shovel in the ground, I don’t believe them.

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  5. I think you are severely underestimating the effect that a massive buyout would have on the attractiveness of the position. In this climate, you’re only going to be able to hire a total imbecile if you attach a massive buyout. What good is that?

    Pro city, lukewarm fan support, no help from the pro team, terrible support from the U; the deck is pretty stacked against Temple Football before you start thinking about attaching massive buyouts. I lived by KYP (know your personnel) in my playing days and Temple needs to know who they are in these matters. The coaches have the leverage and that’s just the way it is.

    No offense, but a coach who dreams of coaching Temple Football scares me a bit. As long as the AAC is what it is, this is what it is…….

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    • Good point, regasser6 … ed foley’s “dream job” is Temple and he bleeped us at the Military Bowl. Not his fault. He did the best he could. It was just not good enough. Glenn Foley, his brother, came on the radio after Rhule quit to assure us that everything would be OK if his brother got the job. Everything was not OK and I’m glad the administration looked in another direction. Some people, like Foley and Phil Snow (heck, even Daz) are probably better assistants than head coaches. Collins, to me, his a HC-type. We shall see. Maybe not by ND, certainly by Nova. If he hammers Nova by 54-0, he’s our guy.

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      • I’m sure Houston fans were all for the massive buyout talk right up to the point where they scared away every good coach and ended up with a guy who was their 6th choice.

  6. I may be dreaming but I think we could have a real chance against ND. Hope so anyway.
    And I was thinking the same thing regassert6 brought up – huge buyout will attract what kind of candidate the way college football is today? Probably NOT someone who will win and attract attention from the big programs which is what Temple wants to sustain winning. Revolving coaching doors are here to stay at Temple.

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