All systems go: Why not The Citadel?

Now that all systems are full go for football practice at Temple University, getting a non-conference replacement to prepare for the AAC opener should be the highest priority.

Navy is going to have plenty of tuneups prior to the most important game on the Temple football schedule.

Temple has really one perfect shot at a tuneup for Oct. 3 and that’s The Citadel. Otherwise, the Owls have a chance to look as rusty as a 1959 Rambler in Annapolis on Oct. 10.

Why take that chance when there is an option to stop the option?

The Citadel plays exactly the same offense Navy does and it would give the Owls a chance to practice against one at game speed.

When we last saw The Citadel on Saturday it lost 49-0 to Clemson. Dabo Sweeney graciously offered to keep the clock running in the second half but Citadel declined.

Citadel’s reasoning was this. They only have four games scheduled and would like more. They wanted to play as many minutes as they could. Citadel’s league game with Mercer, originally scheduled for Oct. 3, has been canceled. Temple isn’t doing anything on Oct. 3, either.

A rusty 1959 Rambler in 2020.

One year ago, Citadel went into Georgia Tech and beat the overly verbose Geoff Collins so a 49-0 loss to basically an NFL team like Clemson cannot be held against them. Temple won’t beat them 49-0 but if Temple is afraid of playing The Citadel it probably should get out of the football playing business.

Citadel wants a game. Temple needs a game. Going into Navy by practicing against an RPO offense is a recipe for disaster. We’ll play there or they can play here. Temple needs the game that much. Plus, since no fans are allowed at the Linc, it would give the Temple kids the treat of playing in front of real fans, many of them wearing Cherry and White.

Someone in the athletic office named Fran at The Star Complex should be making a call to South Carolina today. That’s assuming Fran is showing up for work.

The guy to contact is athletic director Mike Capaccio. His phone number is 843-953-4806. His email is mcapaccio@citadel.edu. There is no time to waste.

Friday: The Hardest Part

Advertisement

15 thoughts on “All systems go: Why not The Citadel?

  1. Fran Dunphy seems to care only about round balls, not spheroid ones.

  2. It’s surprising the score wasn’t at least 60-zip or worse in the Clemson/Citadel game. Playing them in only 2 weeks from now maybe isn’t enough time according to Carey’s concerns about not enough contact practice time. But still seems like a good idea for a warmup before Navy. BTW, hard to believe Temple can’t figure a way to get a stadium like, of all places, the Citadel – what a nice facility considering the size and type of school. Oh well…..

    • Surprised that it seats 11K and change, which would make it smaller than Villanova’s stadium (12.5K). Doesn’t matter this year. I want Temple fans to at least have a chance to go to games and, since the Linc isn’t allowing it, I wouldn’t mind if we played nine road games.

      • I didn’t realize the Citadel’s stadium sat only 11+K but it was the nice design I was referring to mostly – more seating can always be included. And road games would save TU a lot of money not playing at the LINC, assuming it only pays rental fees if games are played there.

    • as far as Temple not figuring out a way to build a stadium, they did as much figuring as The Citadel, Navy, Houston, Tulane, etc. EXCEPT that those places have reasonable neighbors who allow stuff to get built on those university properties. To me, Temple should not have to ask the neighbors if it wants to build anything on its property. My neighbor doesn’t ask me if he wants to put in a pool. Same principle. No university has worse neighbors than Temple does.

      • We could go round and round with the stadium questions – we have been for years already, but there were several reasons it didn’t get past a certain point. And let’s start with dumping the old Temple Stadium up in Cheltenham. Don’t we wish we at least still retained the site now considering the Ambler Campus was discussed on this very website? For far less money a renovation with added seats could have been done. And a subway ride up to Fern Rock station with buses to get the students to the stadium wouldn’t be that much worse than the trip down Broad St. to the LINC or to Ambler. The administrative decisions to place the multi-sport field where it is instead of where the present plan sites the stadium, which would have allowed for the stadium site to be placed further within the campus, caused a couple major problems. One, with the neighborhood (and it’s councilman) and two, cutting off a city street, both of which were red flags downtown with city hall. I mean is it too much to expect the TU decision makers to look further ahead than just a year or two?

  3. (B)Eagles Note here, but with Temple FB Slant ; I wonder why Sean Bradley can’t get a chance at Line Backer with the Beagles ? He hits harder and pursues harder that what I saw yesterday of the Beagles D LB’s.
    Give SB a shot beagles, ‘You ain’t got nuttin’ to loose here’ .

    I really hope TUFB will allow we fans to sit in the stands, really. I wil not waste all my time watching the Beagles this year, what useless stuff they display.
    So far…..

    • When it got to 20-3 I got off my seat, put the running shoes on, and went on a two-hour jog. I have better things to do on a nice day than watch that slop. Totally different than Saturday when I sat glued watching college football from noon-6 p.m.

  4. Cinncy has Army this week. Game will tell us a lot about Cinncy.

    • Army’s pretty good. Saw them against MTSU. Should be a good game. Cincy scored the same number of points on Austin Peay that Pitt did (55). Cuse is getting 7.5 at home against GT. I’m taking the points in that one because I think GT’s win over FSU was probably overvalued.

  5. Dunphy continues his reign of terror over Temple Athletics. Nothing is getting done. There are not even rumors of potential actions pursued. Remember when you dreamt that he would be hard at work, scheming ways to line up non-conference opponents? He’s out golfing. Or maybe updating his fantasy picks. He needs to step aside, and TU needs to bring in a true leader. He mailed it in while ruining basketball and now this. Ticketholders and boosters have to start speaking up.

  6. Just thinking about Covid makes me sick. I’d love to see the Owls play Falcons, Firebirds, Cougars, AMC Pacers…anybody.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s