Temple fans know Daz is susceptible to a trick play. Watch the center here.

Everyone on the campus of Temple University and the extended family wants to hand Sgt. Slaughter a loss.

The man who currently is head coach at Boston College deserves his fate as the most-disliked coach on the Temple schedule in 2018.

Despite proclaiming his love for the university and “South Philly ravioli” and wanting to be “the head coach for life here” Steve Addazio skipped town after two years.

In retrospect, it was the best thing to happen to Temple football. Most at the time did not know it but me, pounding the steering wheel with unmitigated joy upon hearing the news on the car radio, knew that the Temple football program had dodged a huge bullet.

Daz wanted to run off tackle on seemingly every first and second down, passing only if it was third-and-long. That got him (and Temple) a lot of bad-end sacks. Daz staying here would have retarded the development of the program. In a way, hiring Matt Rhule was a two-step forward move without the one-step back.

Daz last season was 4-7 and, if Temple acted like a “normal” school, it would have fired him. At Temple, though, the commitment of the school is for life—or at least the full term of the contract—even though the commitment by the person on the other end is not.

All of the above being true, the Owls’ test at Boston College in late September ranks as their second-toughest of the season.

Here are our rankings of the 12 toughest Temple games, from 12-1:

12) Villanova—Beating this team “only” 16-13 was an unmitigated disgrace last year. Elon and Rhode Island had an easier time with the Wildcats. It’s high time that Geoff Collins finds the find print in his $2 million-per-year contract that dictates blowing this team out is a must.

11) UConn—The Owls have pummeled this squad in two of the last three years but last year’s 28-24 fiasco was probably the worst-coached Temple game of the last decade. Got to think that game got into Collins’ gut and he wants to throw up. Blowing this team out in East Hartford would be the perfect bromide.

10) East Carolina—The Owls won at this place, 34-10, last year with a FCS-level quarterback and a backup fullback as the featured tailback in the second half. At home, with a FBS-level quarterback and both Ryquell Armstead and Jager Gardner healthy, got to figure that the Owls could do even better this time.

9) Buffalo—the last time Al Golden played this team at Lincoln Financial Field, he came away with a 37-13 win. As someone on one of the other boards said recently, Collins gets paid the big bucks to beat the crap out of teams like Buffalo. The only online computer simulation of this game has the Owls winning, 30-7. I think that SHOULD BE about right.

8) Tulsa—Temple won in Oklahoma, 42-22, last year with the key plays in the game made by returning Temple starters. Got to figure the Owls repeat that in the friendly confines of the Linc.

7) Cincinnati—Despite some pretty good recruiting by Luke FIckell, he is far from a proven game-day coach. The Owls won the last two games with the Bearcats pretty easily and should win this one at home.

6) Navy—This is probably the best-coached team the Owls will face all year. That said, Temple broke a nation’s-best 15-game home winning streak there in the AAC championship game last time simply because  the Owls were able to bring as many fans to the game as Navy was. If Temple fans bring the noise again, they should win this one.

5 South Florida—The Owls won the last LFF meeting between the two teams, 46-30, and USF is not nearly as it was in 2016 (now without Quinton Flowers and Marlon Mack) and the Owls might be as good as the squad that handed out that 16-point beating.

4) Houston—In Texas, it starts to get tough for the Owls against Major Applewhite’s squad. The Cougars have the best player not only in the league in nose tackle Ed Oliver but the best player in all of G5 football. Still, it’s high time for Temple to beat Houston in football, something it has never done.

3) Maryland—Owls won at Maryland, 38-7, the last time they visited but last year’s Maryland team won at Texas and improved the defense with the hiring of Chuck Heater as co-coordinator. This is a game the Owls could win, but will probably not be favored.

2) Boston College—Plenty of reasons for Temple FANS (see above) to want to win this game but that’s tempered by the knowledge that no current Temple player ever met or was recruited by Addazio nor does Collins, who also was a coordinator at Florida, has any animosity toward him. Plus, Daz has recruited many “dudes” so whether his “dudes” are tougher than our dudes is yet-to-be determined. Still, on May 8, I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream that had the Owls winning, 42-14, and Daz refusing to shake Collins’ hand afterward because Temple was throwing touchdown passes in the fourth quarter (true story). That was my favorite dream of the year and I hope it comes true.

1) UCF—Any team that goes 13-0 with a national championship (at least in the minds of the fair-minded) deserves mad respect but remember that first-year head coaches (who have not been a head coach anywhere else) not named Tom Herman struggle in the AAC and that’s the best hope Temple has of winning this one on the road.

Wednesday—Our annual one-week vacation begins but we will be running surprise “Best of TFFs” starting on this day and returning to fresh perspectives on Wednesday, July 25