Monthly Archives: May 2018

05.30.18
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Impressive Early Camp Haul

buckethats

Recruits naturally gravitate to the charismatic Temple staff.

The official name of the Temple football camp currently underway at the beautiful $17 million Edberg-Olson Complex is “The Geoff Collins Football Camp.”

Like anything else, at least for branding purposes, that should be tightened up.

Call it Camp Haul.

Like the hotcakes served for camp breakfast, the scholarships available to recruits to a school in the top five in the nation for developing NFL players are going fast.

After the first couple of days, Collins quadrupled the number of verbal commits he was able to get by Memorial Day a year ago with four solid verbals as noted here in this article on Shawn Pastor’s excellent site, OwlsDaily.com. On Tuesday, he added another commit to bring the total to five and counting.

Some are smelling what The Rock (Armstead) is cooking and committing to the only school that plays FBS college football in a World Heritage City.

They are called verbals for a reason because the ink doesn’t even touch the dotted line until late December, but there is reason for optimism here. Last year, the Owls made the early signing date pretty much mandatory for their commits and that allowed them to lose none to Power 5 poachers. In each of the previous 10 recruiting seasons, either Al Golden, Steve Addazio or Matt Rhule lost at least two prior verbals to P5 schools. Probably the most notable of those was Akrum Wadley to Iowa.

Not only have the Owls attracted the interest of some pretty good players, they have been able to expose a culture of winning and having fun doing it to a whole other group of players. They’ve been able to point out to recruits that, in all of college football, Temple has been in the top 10 both academically and in producing NFL prospects and that’s a claim that can be backed up by the numbers.

This is what happens when you hire a guy as a head coach who was a recruiting coordinator for Georgia Tech and Alabama. He not only has connections, he knows how the job is done and is able to pass it along to his own recruiting coordinator.

By our math, these verbals leave 21 spots open in the current recruiting class.

Like hotcakes, they are going fast.

Friday: Colors and Karma

05.28.18
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Temple Football: Great, Not Just Good

 

Paging through the comments of some of the stories on Temple building a football stadium, I came across these two gems:

“Their football team isn’t even good.”

“Temple should drop down a division like Villanova.”

Hitting the reply button in both cases was too temping to pass up.

standards

The point is, to both of those people, the first by a woman and the second from a man, ignorance is bliss and perception of a decades ago reality is something they chose to hold onto.

The current reality should be the only thing that matters and that is in black and white for all to see.

Unless you are Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma or Clemson, very few teams have carved out a higher profile than Temple recently.

Of the last three years, Clemson and Alabama—with two 14-win seasons—certainly is at the top of college football’s food chain.

Ohio State and Oklahoma are part of that next rung averaging roughly a dozen wins over the last three years.

templeparents

Then there’s Temple, which belongs to a very successful “Group of Seven” schools within the 63-team Group of Five.

Of the Group of Five (G5) schools, the Owls are “not even good” because they are close to being great. They are one of only four teams—Houston, Toledo and Boise State are the others—who have either won or been to their league championship games twice over the last three years.

Arguably, the Owls are in the Final Four of that group if you use the current (three-year) sample. Of the teams who have won at least 27 games, only four have been to two league championship games and Temple is one of them.

Their 27 wins of the last three years puts them right there with teams like San Diego State (32), Boise State (30), Toledo (30) Houston (29), USF (29), Memphis (27), Navy (27) and ahead of teams like Ohio (25), Brigham Young (22) and UCF (19).

Even if you limit your sample to just G5 teams—and in many ways that is the fairest comparison, Temple is in the top 10 percent of the most successful college football teams in the nation.

It doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to figure that if this edition of the Owls is “ridiculously good” (as head coach Geoff Collins has said), they can move right up to the top of that class.

The people who think the football team representing the school “is not even good” are probably right. By any standards, a three-year run that puts you in a cumulative top four of a 63-team group qualifies for greatness.

The Cherry (and White) on top of all this would be a NY6 win and that has to be the next step for this program.

Wednesday: Camp Haul

Friday: Color Bearers

Monday: Matchmaking

 

 

05.25.18
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Hood’s Loss Could Be Part of Trend

Getting ready for work on Thursday morning and had one of the little-known treasures of television—the Buzzr (correct spelling, not Buzzer)—on in the background.

This is the network known for broadcasting some classic early TV game shows, like What’s My Line and To Tell The Truth, complete with the early commercials of the day.

As I was about to hit the off button on the way out the door, a commercial came on about the “brand new 1953 Sylvania” television.

Color television wasn’t even on the table in 1953 and did not make a widespread appearance until the NBC Television Network introduced it with a Peacock logo 10 years later.

Driving to work, that got me to thinking.

People in 1953, even with the newest televisions, had no idea of what the future held in the industry—certainly color wasn’t in the cards.

People living 100 years ago at the end of WWI probably never realized that television would exist, let alone something called the internet.

People living now probably think football as we know it is going to exist in 2118, but I have serious doubts after what happened with two of Temple’s promising players—linebacker Jeremy Atoki and running back David Hood—over the last few months.

Atoki became the first scholarship disc jockey in Temple history, playing the tunes at the practices, while Hood—the team’s leading rusher a year ago—is giving up football at the advice of his doctors because of too many concussions. Hood is also going to pursue a career in music. A few years ago, quarterback Kevin Newsome—a one-time top Penn State recruit—had the same idea. I completely understand and support the decisions of all three guys and it might be an indication of a changing culture.

We’re not talking about football to music as much as parents steering their kids away from contact sports like football. An Indy car driver appeared on the 1210 AM (WPHT) morning show and said when asked about crashes: “I’m giving each of my kids a set of golf clubs.”

We don’t know what will happen in 100 years and we won’t be around to find out, but I would not be surprised that football on the NFL level or college does not exist anymore.

Maybe someone will dig into the archives of this blog and discover this prediction. Hopefully, they will laugh at it but I have my doubts.

Now if I could only find the guy who predicted color TV in 1953.

Monday: How Temple Stacks Up

 

05.23.18
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Bonding Across The Pond

 

hockey

Geoff Collins took the win and Scott Wallace the loss.

Several years ago, Al Golden was the guy who thought getting the seniors away in the offseason on a trip would be a nice bonding experience and beneficial to team leadership and unity during the season.

The place was camping in the Poconos and roasting the marshmallows and setting up base camp served its purpose. No members of the Owls were eaten by Bears and, the nightly camp fire discussions seemed to center on how to be better leaders and winners.

Like many innovative ideas Golden had, the theory seemed to work. Steve Addazio and Matt Rhule did the same thing, sending the team off to the mountains for bonding sessions.

japantrip

Collins gets his name in lights (in Japanese).

This year, Geoff Collins has taken the idea to a whole other level.

Several leaders of these Owls were chosen along with some coaches and a few staff members to spend a week in Japan, ostensibly teaching the game to another culture.

Bonding was just an ancillary benefit and we really won’t know if it will work until the end of the season when the kids give interviews after the AAC championship win, if it happens.

Expect quarterback Frank Nutile to say something like this: “The leaders came together on the trip to Japan. It’s one thing to have a road trip that lasts for a couple of days, but to spend an entire week with these guys in another country, that really brought us together.”

At least the hope that bringing the leaders together will light a fire under the followers.

Upon returning home, another symbol of the bonding was installed in the $17 million Edberg-Olson Complex—an air hockey game. One of the first victors was Collins himself, who vanquished Scott Wallace, 2-1.

After hearing about the Owls playing air hockey in Boca Raton before a damaging loss to Toledo, I’m not sure about that one. Less air hockey and more film study probably is a more valuable pursuit.

Still, since the jet lag should be long gone by the opener, the Japan trip—like the Pocono excursions—probably should be beneficial when all is said and done.

Friday: Injuries and football

Monday: Perception Versus Reality

05.21.18
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Gambling Could Make Owls Very Popular

betting

At one of the places I used to work a long time ago and not so far away, we had a guy named Herman The German. He worked in the back shop of the newspaper.

Herman was “a guy who knew a guy” and every Friday during the football season Herman would pass around these neat little white slips with all the NFL games and about 25 of the college ones.

The favorites would be on the left, the spread in the middle and the home team in CAPS. I did pretty well and a couple of times hit nine of 10 games against the spread. It was a nice side income that did not have to be reported.

One day, Herman upped and moved to Belize and the white slips stopped being circulated in the office.

Herman was the last bookie I knew and I never felt moved to seek out another one, knowing that the practice was illegal. I knew Herman. I didn’t know the other guys. Sure, I’d get a March Madness bracket here and there but that was the extent of my betting.

Now that the Supreme Court has effectively legalized gambling—a ruling more about state’s rights than sports betting—I think I will make more than a few trips to the local casino should I feel moved about certain games.  I always thought it unfair that if you lived in Nevada you could bet on the New Mexico State vs. New Mexico game or BYU vs. Air Force but, if you lived in Pennsylvania, you were out of luck.

bestchase

Never betting for or against Temple, mind you, because I’m too emotionally invested in the games. If the Owls are underdogs by four and lose by three, I won’t get any particular joy in collecting 50 bucks because I’d still be pissed at the loss. That said, Temple has been the best team against the spread for the past 14 years so gambling in 18 new states could make this team very popular on a national level like never before. Thirty years of mostly losing before Al Golden took over took its toll from a perception point of view and a decade or so probably won’t change that.

Still, one of the things I’ve noticed about Vegas is that they don’t do nearly as much homework on the G5 slate as they do the P5 one. If you follow the G5 more than casually, you can probably clean up. It might lead to extra national interest in the G5 and that can only be a good thing.

We will get to test that theory in Pennsylvania and New Jersey most likely by the fall.

Wednesday: Bonding in Tokyo

05.18.18
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Scoreboard Watching Could Get Interesting

guest

The scoreboard you can get building a $130 million stadium

In a perfect world, one of these days the little guy rises up to bite the big guy in the butt.

That seldom happens because the deck is always stacked against the little guy because the big guy usually makes the rules.

Nothing reflects that reality these days more than the monopoly called big-time college football.

Yet there is a miniscule chance the impossible happens so it’s nice on a late May day to dream.

bernie

The view Maryland defenders had of Bernard Pierce in a 5TD game in College Park

For Temple football, that boils down to two sports this season: Watching the Owls’ scoreboard and watching those of particularly two other guys: Boston College and Maryland.

You can only control what you can control and, if the Owls control things and win another AAC title, then the secondary sport of scoreboard watching comes into play.

Boston College is supposed to be good this season. If head coach Steve Addazio gets out of his own way and allows Scot (one t) Loeffler to call the plays, it could be very good.

Maryland is supposed to be better and any team that defensive coordinator Chuck Heater goes to usually gets a lot better during his first year on the job.

How much better will be determined if BC can beat Purdue and Wake Forest before getting to Temple and Maryland can beat a Texas team bent on revenge.


There’s nothing more
idiotic than a fan
saying, “Let’s beat UCF,
USF and Memphis first
before we start thinking
about Maryland and BC.”

Either way, the Owls should be underdogs in their two Power 5 games but I don’t see that number rising to double-digits so winning those games is a realistic goal.

Then it’s hoping that either BC wins the ACC or Maryland wins the Big 10. Not likely, but necessary if that miniscule chance of Temple ever making a big national splash is to occur.

As always while discussing these scenarios, we have to address the “let’s take one game at a time” of a lot of our fans. There’s nothing more idiotic than a fan saying, “Let’s beat UCF, USF and Memphis first before we start thinking about Maryland and BC.” Fans don’t have to take a game at a time. Fans can look ahead to any game they want to because fans looking ahead doesn’t cause the team to lose.

Taking one game at a time is the job of the paid professionals, the head coaches and their staffs, to pound that point home to the scholarship athletes under their guidance. It’s always good to remember that Buffalo, for instance, is taking the same approach to the Temple game that the Owls are taking to BC and Maryland.

As fans, it’s our job to get excited about all of the aspects of the season and, for this one at least, scoreboard watching is one of those pursuits.

Monday: Gambling on the G5

Wednesday: How The Tokyo Trip Helps

Friday: FBS Pecking Order and The Owls

05.16.18
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Another Sign of the G5 Apocalypse

aranda

Dave Aranda, a SEC coordinator, is now making considerably more than Geoff Collins.

Every offseason or so over the past five years, something has happened to illustrate the urgency of getting Temple out of the G5 and into the P5.

You can argue all you want about the window already being closed for that eventuality, but if there’s even a one percent chance of it happening, Temple should pry to prop up that window and force it upward.

Maybe building a 35,000-seat stadium is a step in that direction. Maybe it’s not. (I’m thinking a 40-45K stadium probably would work more than a 35K one in attracting interest.) Probably winning a NY6 bowl game would be the best way to do it and bringing along a top basketball program would not hurt as well.

Whatever, staying in the G5 for the next 20 or so years is not a sustainable business model. Worse, it could mean “an event involving destruction or damage on an awesome scale.” That’s the very definition of the word apocalypse. If the G5 is marginalized into pretty much what is now FCS football–without the distinguishing feature of a true championship–it will be damaged beyond repair.

Real football will be playing with the big boys in the P5. Anything else will be considered the minor leagues.

The latest evidence of that occurred when it was leaked that several schools at the top of the Power 5 food chain are now paying their top coordinators MORE than the $2 million Geoff Collins is being paid to be the Temple football CEO.

If so, the trickle down effect—the inability of G5 schools like Temple to attract top head coaches and therefore top assistants—probably assures that the ceiling will be made of cement, not glass.

LSU defensive coordinator Dave Aranda is now making $2.5 million per season—a hefty $500,000 more than Collins currently makes—for doing the same job at the same level Collins left Florida to do. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to figure that Aranda does half as much with about a quarter of the headaches of Collins these days. That’s not to say Collins doesn’t love his job; it’s just that it is his responsibility to keep 105 scholarship athletes on the straight and narrow in addition to the winning that is demanded of him.

If LSU puts together a good defense and loses, the head coach, not Aranda, gets the blame.

Aranda now makes more than 75 of FBS head coaches and there are only 127 of those jobs in the world.

It appears the Aranda contract and other seven-figure contracts signed by Power 5 coordinators this offseason further marginalizes the 63 schools who play non-Power 5 football.

Pretty close to an apocalypse.

Friday: Scoreboard Watching

05.14.18
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Bombs Over Where?

broadster

Insensitivity on a Global scale topped the news this week regarding certain comments made about a certain Senator, so it was with a deep sigh of relief that we learned that Temple wasn’t taking one of its many swag slogans this year over to Tokyo to test out.

“Bombs Over Broad.”

geoffcollins

Bombs Over Tokyo doesn’t quite translate the same way.

The Owls are expected to have what Steve Addazio only teased about on the day he was hired to be Temple’s head coach nearly eight years ago: “An explosive downfield passing game.”

That was just a promise then. It’s closer to reality now in that returning starter Frank Nutile had the No. 1 passer rating “while under a rush” of any quarterback in the country last year, including six of the top 10 NFL draft choices. He will have a bevy of talented receivers to throw to, including Ventell Bryant and Isaiah Wright.

So “explosive downfield passing game” sounds about right, although “Bombs Over Broad” is what the promotions people are going with these days.

japancampus

This week, a few key representatives of Temple—including head coach Geoff Collins and eight players—are in Tokyo to bring a little flavor of the game of football to Japan.

If, in the process, they pick up a few extra fans, it cannot be a bad thing.

Temple has a real level of popularity in Japan forged by having a satellite campus there since the 1970s, a decade in which the Owls played twice in Mirage Bowls there against Boston College in 1977 and Eddie Robinson’s Grambling team in 1978.

Now the Owls are back again, teaching the intricacies of the game to the local population and stirring up that country’s significant sports-crazed population.

Just be careful about explaining a few slogans and the week should go just fine.

 

05.11.18
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Dante’s Inferno: Temple TUFF and Temple SOFT

burkemayhem

 

Every time someone mentions that the Temple University football program should add a questionable character to the fold, I think of people like my new favorite incoming Temple player, Dante Burke, and one of my old favorites, Tyler Matakevich.

Burke befriended a few older people in an “old folks’ home” adjacent to his Virginia high school. He didn’t do it for fame or fortune, just did it to expand his horizons and become a better person.

Unbeknownst to Burke, one of the old folks he made a special bond with was a distant relative of a Virginia sportswriter who penned this remarkable story last week.

That brings us back to suggestions of the Owls grabbing a guy who allegedly (although there was damning video evidence) robbed a WAWA and dropped from the recruiting rolls at Penn State or a guy who had problems getting along with teammates at two Big 10 schools, the latest Rutgers, and is now looking elsewhere.

No thanks.

sweet

Geoff Collins not only has won more than he lost in his short time at Temple, but he has forged a special locker room. Good guys who are good players. Driven guys who want to succeed and are not going to let silly distractions get in the way.

Mixing in a bad apple here and there probably is not worth the effort.

Matakevich not only went from being unrecruited by everyone else to being the consensus national defensive player of the year in 2015. For all of the great tackles and five interceptions Tyler had that year, his most impressive move might have been the one he made to another old folks’ home when he gave then 97-year-old Temple grad James Woodhouse a few Temple items and exchanged war stories with the last player who was alive in a Temple win over Penn State.

“Tyler, that visit with Mr. Woodhouse was the greatest thing ever,” I told him at a post-game tailgate.

Mr. Woodhouse isn’t around anymore but the memories of that visit will last forever on You Tube.

“Thanks,” Tyler said. “It was an honor to have met him.”

“Tyler, he’s only saying that because we’re a lot closer to that guy’s age than we are to yours,” John Belli said.

All three of us had a good belly laugh that day.

Or a “Belli” laugh.

Now, at least one other player with a Tyler Matakevich mindset is joining the program. Temple TUFF mixed in with Temple SOFT is never a bad thing.

Pardon me if my favorite of the incoming class is selected already. I hope he has a million tackles on the field but he’s already a success off of it and, in the end, that’s more important.

Monday: Bombs Over Where?

Wednesday: The Latest Sign of the G5 Apocalypse 

Friday: Scoreboard Watching

 

05.09.18
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Settling The Greatest Team Debate

I honestly had never watched the great Dave Smuckler play until reviewing this today.

Sitting in the press box at the Meadowlands on a Saturday in December of 1979 and watching Temple dismantle a pretty good California team for the Garden State Bowl, I was pretty much convinced I was watching the greatest Temple football team to that point.

The other thing I remembered from that day was thinking I was freezing to death.

It would not be until 2009—almost 30 years later to the day—that I was convinced I was freezing to death standing outside tailgating before a late December game in Washington, D.C.

bright

Fullback Mark Bright was MVP of the GSB

That caused me to flip through the pages of the 1980 Philadelphia Bulletin Almanac. It said the temperature at kickoff at the Garden State Bowl was 40 degrees. The kickoff temperature at the Eagle Bank Bowl against another California team, UCLA, was 11 degrees with a wind chill of -11.

The point of this story is perspective. Even though I am partial to the 1979 team and still tailgate with many of them, feelings should never be confused with evidence.

My FEELINGS were that I was cold that day in 1979 but the evidence was of a much colder bowl game in 2009.

It’s all about perspective and solid evidence. The same can be said for being the best Temple team of all time. It’s not that the players of today are bigger, faster and stronger than those of the past (arguably, because it’s hard to imagine anyone stronger than, say, Joe Klecko). It’s what you do against the college football landscape as it existed and exists that determines a legacy.

The goal posts haven’t moved since 1934. If the 2018 team wants to be the best Temple team of all time, it will have to do something the other two teams haven’t done: Finish in the top 14 in the nation.

sugar

That said, after another look at the Bulletin Almanac (before Google, the greatest research tool ever), we’re going with the 1934 team as the best team in Temple history. Not only was it the first team to play in the Sugar Bowl (a better bowl than Eagle Bank, New Mexico and Gasparilla), the Owls of that day were unbeaten in the regular season. The Tulane team the Owls lost to in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day 1935 was better than the Cal team that the Owls beat in 1979 because the Green Wave finished 11th in the nation. In the only “poll” of that day, Temple finished 15th. In 1979, the Owls finished 17th in both major polls. The 1979 team was special in that it was 10-2, with losses to only Penn State (after leading at halftime) and Pitt (a 10-9 final). Had the Owls been able to win both, and also a more high-profile bowl game, they probably would have had a strong enough schedule to be declared national champions.

Pretty heady stuff.

In the 1934 season, Tulane was co-SEC champions and shared that title with Alabama, the co-National champions that year.

I would rank the 1979 team as No. 2 and the 2016 team, the AAC champs (a team in the top 25 for much of the second half of the season), as No. 3. No. 4 would be the 2011 Owls of Steve Addazio, who not only beat an 8-4 Wyoming team in the New Mexico Bowl but destroyed a Power 5 team, Maryland, on the road, 38-7. That was the same Maryland team that a week before had beaten Al Golden’s Miami team, 32-24.

No. 5 would be the 9-1 Owls of 1973 and they probably would have been higher if they had been able to beat Boston College that year.

They lost that game, 45-0, but redeemed themselves the next season with a 34-7 win over the Eagles before nearly 20,000 fans (capacity house) at Temple Stadium. The team the Owls thumped, 34-7, in 1974 finished 8-3 but did not beat a team with a winning record.

By then, though, it was too late. The Owls finished 8-2 in 1974 but immersed themselves into the Temple record books with a 14-game winning streak over two seasons (the longest in the nation at the time). Greatness might not quit, but it has standards much higher than a 6-6 regular season or 45-0 losses.

The benchmarks are set for these Owls of 2018. Finish ranked a consensus No. 14 or higher and they are the greatest Temple team of all time. It won’t be easy, but greatness never is.

No members of the 1934 team are still alive but I do know that nothing would please members of the 1979 team more than these Owls being able to forge that kind of legacy.

True greatness, not slogans, will be the reward.

Friday: Temple TUFF and SOFT