Who Should Temple Root For Today?

To me, a Saturday without Temple football is a Saturday without sunshine.

This time, figuratively and literally as the rains will be pouring and the winds will be howling in Philadelphia–which would be a terrible time and place to host a home game today.

Call it a blessing in disguise.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t anything on the line today for the Owls in AAC football.

On the surface, you might say root against all of the AAC East teams in action today–specifically, Cincy and USF–but I’d say hold on a minute.

If you are Temple, you’d WANT Cincy and USF to beat the two Texas teams, SMU and Houston and here’s why: If Temple is able to beat UCF next week and South Florida on Nov. 17, it will have beaten three ranked teams in four games. If Cincy beats SMU, it also has a chance of getting ranked again. Houston, even with a win over USF, will probably not crack the rankings.

Temple controls its own AAC East destiny and if this truly is going to be a great season (or a “ridiculous” team as Geoff Collins called the Owls before the start of it), you’d want the best possible resume at the end. Because with wins over UCF and USF, the Owls will hold AAC East tie-breakers and a berth in the title game. Even a loss to Houston could be absorbed in that scenario. Temple has to beat both the Florida schools anyway so go Florida schools.

That said, I think USF’s unbeaten season ends today.

tvsaturday

Here is our six-pack (home teams in caps):

HOUSTON 21, Usf 10 _ The host Cougars easily cover the 7.5 spread. They have speed to burn and may end up as the overall league champion.

Cincinnati 35, SMU 20 _ Cincy will find the crowd noise not as loud in Dallas as it was in Philadelphia so there will be no snafus with the snaps and the Bearcats will easily cover the eight points.

NC State 24, SYRACUSE 17 _ ‘Cuse changed quarterbacks from Eric Dungey last week and that indicates a level of panic in upstate New York. This game went from a pick to ‘Cuse being a one-point favorite to now the Wolfpack being a two-point favorite. The movement of those points tells me something.

BYU 20, Northern Illinois 10 _ Somewhat surprising that this is only a 7.5 line because NIU is a run-of-the-mill MAC squad and BYU was good enough to beat Wisconsin.

VIRGINIA 24, North Carolina 10 _ Virginia has been an up-and-down team, but UNC has been mostly trending down. Cavaliers should easily cover the nine here.

MISSOURI 42, Kentucky 19 _ While UK has shown some life this season, it is still a basketball school. Missouri sold me with a 66-33 win over a halfway decent Memphis squad last week and should easily cover the modest 6.5 spread.

Next week, we get to go to Parx Casino and put real modest money on the non-Temple slate, even though the house and the farm remain off limits.

Last Week: No Picks

Overall: 14-9

ATS: 8-16

Monday: The Fan Experience

 

 

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11 thoughts on “Who Should Temple Root For Today?

  1. He was sort of right…..losing to Vilanova was ridiculous, so was Buffalo. Having an offense with this much talent and being that low in the rankings is ridiculous as well. The hashtags and slogans may be ranked high though….haven’t checked.

  2. He was sort of right…..losing to Vilanova was ridiculous, so was Buffalo. Having an offense with this much talent and being that low in the rankings is ridiculous as well. The hashtags and slogans may be ranked high though….haven’t checked.

  3. I root for the best AAC teams to win. makes us look good by association.
    Does it make the OC Paten look smart by ASS-sociation too. I think not.

    I am rooting for $$$ MONEY DOWN $$$$ teams.
    Last game I just groaned when I saw that stupid jackass dance those kids do that third down dance with signs. I feel sorry for the kids that get forced to do it, they must feel stupid. More stupid is why the hell someone thinks its clever and helpful- still ?????

  4. The Nova loss continues to look worse and worse every week. They lost to 1-6 (before today) New Hampshire 34-0 this afternoon at home. Any coach with a sense of pride would have kissed the rear ends of every TU fan after that Nova debacle. Not our clowns who doubled down the next week against Buffalo with that crap offense. Like I said after the Nova game, it would not assuage that loss even if TU won the national championship. I don’t give the coaches on offense any credit except for the Maryland game, for the current streak and give the players on offense kudos for stepping up despite being handicapped by Patenfraud and, by extension, Collins.

    • Agreed. The farther we get away from this game the worse Patenfraud looks. Surely the New Hampshire, Towson, JMU and Stony Brook OCs would do a better job for Temple than he does. Add about 91 FBS coordinators, too. Collins has a blind spot for this guy and it’s going to ruin his career unless he wises up.

    • The more hilarious thing is that Pravda defends the guy and thinks he’s a good OC. In what world is the OC of the 92d offense doing a good job?

  5. I think Nova played, far and away, their best game of the season against Temple – the players executed a great game plan that their coaches developed. That and the fact that Temple wasn’t prepared well at all brought about the disaster loss. Nova’s horrible season to date proves how badly Temple was not ready to play, no excuses just bad caoching.

    • Agreed, and I wrote pretty much that at the time. Villanova did the same things they did in the 16-13 loss and they did them better. Temple’s “braintrust” should have had a plan to counter that and did not. Offensively, it was a clusterbleep, but it’s been a clusterbleep on offense all year (except for the Maryland and BC games).

  6. Who to root for today? Redskins. Matt Ioannidis had at least 3 sacks and dominated the Giants OL.

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