Dr. Jason Wingard

President

Temple University

Sullivan Hall

Broad and Montgomery Aves.

Philadelphia, PA 19122

Dear Dr. Wingard,

Congratulations on getting the top job at Temple.

In my mind, Temple University could not have made a better choice. I hope to meet you at the tailgates this fall. Please stop by and say hello to the Bruce Arians’ former players (back of Lot K by the fence closest to Citizens Bank Park) and the Wayne Hardin guys (farther away against the same fence but in the very corner).

Although I do not know you know or even heard about you before (my bad), if someone gave me a pen and paper and told me what my wish list was for the next Temple President I would have written this:

Football guy

Philadelphia guy

Academic guy

Excellence guy

You checked all of those boxes.

If you think this is a negative review, please let me know. I don’t think I could have been any more positive.

I really don’t know who else would have been better, maybe former Philadelphia Mayor and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell but he’s getting up there and has health issues.

To me, your hire best reflected the priorities of not only the Temple Board of Trustees but the university as a whole.

The BOT has stated it wants a stadium and maybe you can help negotiate the political mine field and get this done so Temple, like just about every other great public university, has a stadium where the alumni can reconnect with campus at least six times a year.

That’s not as important as the excellence part.

As former Chancellor Peter J. Liacouras has stated, the football program is the front porch of the university. He is on record as saying this:

Nothing would put Temple on the forefront of the nation than a winning championship football program. We all saw that in 2015 when the Owls put a 27-10 beatdown on Penn State and took a 7-0 record (and a No. 21 national ranking) into a Halloween Night matchup with No. 9. Notre Dame. That game came down to the wire and remains today the No. 1-watched college football game in the history of Philadelphia TV.

You cannot buy that kind of advertising. Not with a million nor a billion dollars and I doubt very seriously a trillion dollars.

That’s why it’s important you watch the success of the football program very closely this fall. If Rod Carey has a winning season, he deserves to stay.

Simple as that.

A great CEO accepts no excuses. Not Covid, not the year after COVID, not anything.

Win and stay. Lose and go.

If not, Temple needs to look in another direction and find a dynamic person to be the front porch of the university’s CEO. There’s a big buyout involved but, as in any business, you need to spend money to make money. There’s a guy out there. Al Golden is the only one who has proven he can do it here but there are many more talented individuals who can do this job on the same level as Golden and Matt Rhule.

Maybe even better.

That’s should be Temple’s Golden Rule. There are many great people out there who can do spectacular jobs. You can’t be President and head coach at the same time, but there can be a guy with similar ability in both important jobs.

Not you, but someone like you. The fact that Temple found you means that Temple can find HIM.

Signed,

Mike Gibson

Editor and Publisher

Temple Football Forever

(graduate, SCAT)

Monday: The Playoffs