Temple fans deserve a stadium every bit as nice as this 45K stadium in Chestnut Hill.

You hear it all the time, usually at tailgates far away from the students who do not know any better.

“It’s not like the old days.”

Pretty much everything about Temple football these days is better than those days, though, except for one detail:

Road Trips.

Gone are the days where you can hop in the car and be in Central Jersey by noon for a game against Rutgers (although those days come back in a couple) and hit the road for a trip at Delaware or make a 5-hour drive up the Northeast Extension for a game at Syracuse.

Now the road trips, should you go, are in far-flug places like Tulsa, Dallas and Orlando.

Not as easy to get to as the old days.

Steve Addazio (and probably Matt Rhule and Al Golden) has to be thinking: “I left a lifetime job at Temple for THIS?”

Still, though, there are a couple of intriguing road trips on the schedule this year and to maximize enjoyment of them, the early bird—in this case, Owl—gets the worm.

Owl fans have been to the Washington, D.C., area at least four times over the last nine years—the Eagle Bank Bowl (2009), a 38-7 win at Maryland (2011), the Military Bowl (2015) and the 34-10 league championship win at Navy (2016).

So, while D.C. is a great town with many sites and sights to see, most Owl fans will approach that trip with a been/there/done/that attitude and drive down for the game.

Boston, though, is a completely different story.

It’s a great town with just as many venues as D.C. and it’s been a long time since Temple fans have been there. That’s a place screaming for more than a day trip and the lesson to be learned is preparation is key.

As can be seen in the illustration on this post, there is one room left on the night of Sept. 28^th in a hotel nearby Boston College at the very reasonable price of $93 a night. It’s a significant jump to the next, err, cheapest room ($152).

One year, two great road trips and, if you are planning to stay in Boston, making the necessary hotel and car reservations now is probably the time to do it.

Maryland, that sounds like a fan bus to me but hopefully as much fun as the last fan bus there turned out to be, basking in a 38-7 road win while watching Caddyshack broadcast on the bus TVs on the way home. When it got to a topless scene, you could hear a couple of the older ladies in the back of the bus gasp.

An athletic department representative then took to the bus intercom:

“This is a Bill Bradshaw-approved video.”

Great line about his boss, the Temple (now LaSalle University) athletic director and a funny way to end a fun day.

Here’s hoping the road trips on the docket in a few months are just as fun.