Over the next few weeks, fans are going to be hearing a lot about Quadrant 1 and 2 wins.

It’s a new way for the NCAA to determine the at-large teams in the 68-team men’s basketball field and assigns weight to each win based on a formula of RPI, the strength of schedule and home or away.

Fortunately, college football fans don’t have to worry about that.

Every win is just as important as the rest and that’s why I have never understood the phrase “trap game” or “letdown.” When you play only a dozen regular-season games, there should be no trap games or letdowns. You work your tail off for 353 days and get to show the fruits of that labor on the rest of the days so every Saturday should be showtime.

Penciling in wins and losses this far away is a fun exercise fraught with dangers. In Temple football history, there have always been unexpected wins and losses and that’s every year, not just every few years. The only outlier was the 1979 season when the Owls won every game they were supposed to win and reached up and upset a team or two on the way to a 10-2 season.

Cupid loves this Temple schedule, with the exception of the Bucknell game.

Still, the season can somewhat be broken down into quadrants. The technical meaning of a quadrant is four quarters of a circle.

In college football, that’s three games apiece.

Coming out of the first quadrant, the college football “world” probably expects Temple to come out 2-1 with wins over Bucknell and Buffalo and a loss to revenge-minded Maryland. Temple fans know better. I have to like the Owls’ chances at home in that one. Bucknell is a given and pretty much this same team (minus Rock Armstead) was able to thrash Maryland on the road last year.

So that’s a 3-0 quadrant in my mind.

The second quadrant is a little tougher with a home game against Georgia Tech, a trip to ECU, and a home game against Memphis. In my mind, any time you take Dave Patenaude off Temple you give the Owls an extra seven points. When you take him out of Temple and give him to the bad guys, that’s another seven points for the Owls. So that’s a win.

ECU will not be a 49-6 cakewalk that it was last time because Mike Houston is a far better coach than Scotty Montgomery. Memphis has had four solid recruiting years and seamless coaching so that’s a tough one, even at home. We’ll give that quadrant a 2-1, leaving the Owls at 5-1 at the midway mark.

Owls should win at SMU to kick off the third quadrant but UCF will be tough. That game looked winnable when Milton McKenzie–easily the single best player who faced Temple last season–went down with a broken leg, but UCF went out and replaced him with Brandon Wimbush. So that game suddenly becomes more problematic than it already was and, realistically, a loss. Owls bounce back at SMU. Getting a week off before traveling to USF for the next game should help so we will make that a 2-1 quadrant for a 7-2 record.

Owls finish off with home games against Tulane and UConn sandwiched around a tough trip to Cincy and 2-1 would be a decent way to finish up that quadrant for a 9-3 season.

Of course, you always hope for 12-0 and a league championship but, given these quadrants, signing for 9-3 right now would be a nice consolation prize.

Saturday: The Alliance of Football and Temple