The next big thing: Conventional wisdom

Mike Elko greets the Cameron Indoor Stadium crazies at a basketball game last month.

There is conventional wisdom versus regular wisdom.

For Temple fans, they have to hope the hiring of Stan Drayton was a wise one, maybe even better than conventional wisdom.

The validation so far has come to the fans of the program by the way Drayton has handled things.

Kids who didn’t buy in under the last guy have bought in under him. Nationally, it’s another story.

The “conventional wisdom” has it that one of the two combatants in the September opener for Temple made a great hire in Mike Elko and the Drayton hire has yet to appear on the national radar.

Such was the case last week in this article putting the Elko hire at the top of the list of eight new coaching hires.

Drayton?

Not even mentioned.

Of the 131 FBS teams, 27 have new head coaches and the Temple opener will be Drayton’s first chance to make a statement that he, too, should have received some props.

To be fair, the ranking of the new head coaches reflects the overall media bias slanted toward Power 5 schools. Also, P5 schools have the kind of money to buy the best head-coaching candidates so it’s only logical that they are mentioned over the new G5 hires.

Still, history has shown the best new hires have been about an even split between the G5 and the P5 schools. Not very many people on the national level gave Temple high marks for picking Al Golden or Matt Rhule but one was responsible for turning a 20-game losing streak into the school’s first bowl appearance in 30 years and the other was responsible for consecutive 10-win seasons.

If Drayton’s accomplishments here are similar to theirs, even Mike Elko might be hard-pressed to top those numbers at Duke.

Ironically, Elko turned down the Temple job before Pat Kraft turned to Manny Diaz for 18 days. He either didn’t believe he could get it done here, didn’t like Philadelphia or thought staying at Texas A&M gave him a better shot at career advancement.

Drayton believes. That’s just half the battle.

If he beats Elko in the opener, he will win the full battle–at least when it comes to the national media giving Temple some credit for this hire.

Friday: Help is on the way

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2 thoughts on “The next big thing: Conventional wisdom

  1. First off, who were the other schools that made that list? All P5ers? Anyway, Temple gets no respect for doing hires like that nameless guy for the last 3 years and, frankly, hiring a position coach for the HC doesn’t help. But to not even be mentioned is pretty crappy – we are a division 1 program after all. Temple obviously needs to rebuild whatever respect they had gained, and then lost. Let’s hope Drayton is the one to do that, but even our other successful ones took a couple years to rebuild.
    What do you think of the latest 3 recruits Mike?

    • I think the Houston offensive lineman could supply depth if he doesn’t start, though he was probably a backup at Houston for a reason. Still think Klein,Stoffel and Moore are better. Ian Stewart is intriguing at the WR position. They really need a P5 transfer quarterback or at least a high achieving FCS starter who is looking to move up.

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