This year, the cliche is true about first games

I’m not touching the Temple game but I really like Northwestern getting 6 at Rutgers right now.

The odds came out this week for the first college football weekend of the year.

Temple opened as a 10-point favorite over visiting Akron in the opener and that immediately dropped to nine the next day.

While it’s nice that Vegas set the Owls as a double-digit favorite, the public wasn’t buying it.

The old cliche is that your most important game is your next one is especially true about Temple hosting Akron this season.

If the Owls win, they are off and running and probably bowl-bound.

If Joe Dickhead, err, Moorhead can beat Matt Rhule with Fordham talent, he can certainly beat Stan Drayton with Akron talent. I’ve had a lot of low moments as a Temple fan, including suffering through a 20-game losing streak but this post-game tailgate was definitely the worst.

If they lose, some serious questions arise about whether they will be 3-9 for the third-straight season. Or whether they have the right leadership going forward.

Make no mistake about it. Akron CAN beat Temple.

Whether it will or not is another question.

Put it this way. The Akron team facing Temple in 2023 will be a lot more formidable one than the Akron team that lost to Rod Carey in the otherwise forgettable 2021 season, 45-24.

First, the Zips have a big-time coach in Joe Moorhead. There is no question he can beat Stan Drayton because he took lesser talent and beat an objectively better coach than Drayton (Matt Rhule) in 2013 when he took an FCS Fordham team into Temple and came away with a win.

Since then, Moorhead became a head coach in the Power 5 (Mississippi State) before Drayton did and fell victim to the unreasonable expectations that come with P5 fan bases.

Last year, in his first one at Akron, his team got better as the season went on and it finished with a 44-12 thumping of a Northern Illinois team and almost beat a better Buffalo team the next week, losing by just a point. That Buffalo team finished 7-6 and beat Georgia Southern, 23-21, in the Camellia Bowl. (Yes, the same Georgia Southern that beat Rhule’s current Nebraska team earlier in the season.)

Here’s why I think Temple will win. Akron needed overtime to beat St. Francis last year and St. Francis lost to a Lafayette team Temple hammered, 30-14. Also, the Houston and ECU teams Temple hung with in the latter half of the season were probably significantly better than Buffalo and NIU. Probably, but I don’t know for sure.

Not much evidence to go on since both the learning curves for Temple and Akron went up significantly as the season progressed.

Not enough evidence to bet the house and farm on the Owls so they have to make sure they cross the I’s and dot the T’s on a solid game plan over the next three months. The first film to dissect is the Fordham at Temple film of 2013.

The Owls will have to make sure they are ready for everything and anything Moorhead will throw at them and, hopefully, they did not bury that game film.

Monday: What’s The Deal?

9 thoughts on “This year, the cliche is true about first games

  1. That old saying “we can beat anybody and we can lose to anybody” is probably only half true for TU at this point – we’re not ready to beat “anybody” yet, but sure could lose to anybody. Let’s hope Drayton gets us off to a good start.

  2. Drayton took a severe drubbing at Duke last year to start off the season when many thought that Temple could win the game. They were clearly unprepared to play. Whatever the outcome, the Owls better be competitive and prepared.

    • Good point. They had nine months to come up with one of the worst offensive game plans in Temple history. Hope they do some introspection and are determined to rectify that this year.

  3. Think about this for a minute, TUFB pays more to play Home games than any team in the history of college football.

    TU pays more to play home games than any team in the History of College Football.., wow, what a distinction, right up there with the local community shooting and killing us.

    The BOT is supposedly comprised of people w/high intellect. They can’t come up with a better solution than being in the worst Home game situation in all of college football? That basically sums up the BOT support for TUFB. Content with the status quo.

    I used to blame Lurie and the Eagles.., but Philly capitalism is not their fault.

    100% of the blame goes to the BOT, they suck!!

    • The lack of an oversight body on the Temple Board of Trustees is truly discouraging. Mitchell Morgan is essentially a King without a Parliament of caring Owls overseeing his mistakes/missteps. It names the President and it can fire the President at any time. They finally got something right when they approved a stadium on campus and then backed down when about 23 members of the community objected. Who fires the BOT? No one. That situation doesn’t exist in any other business where the stockholders can hold the BOT accountable.

  4. Once again, this is NOT Capitalism, when will some people ever understand that ? This is Gov’t croney-ism where Laurie and his kind were GIVEN lots of Tax Payer monies and extraordinary privileges beyond the normal legal process. This is State maintained version of Socialism to their Insiders. Get it ? I doubt that….

    • Econ 101. Supply vs Demand.

      When Supply (where can TUFB play home games) is Low and Demand is High relative cost will be high. Get it? I have confidence most folks will.

  5. Mike: Present to the readers a comparison of the deal TU has for the Linc against the deal Pitt has for “used to be Heinz Field.” Then provide emails for BOT’s and readers here can make those fine people aware of the discrepancy. Same goes for sharing the info with your former Inquirer buddies. Also, some of the state senators and reps out of Harrisburg. Unfortunately, taking the plight to WIP or The Fan would get crickets.

    This so-called large alumni group from this university might be motivated to make a little noise for a change and get the right people’s attention.

    I wonder if Lurie would be broken hearted if Owl games moved over to CBP? Owls have buzzard’s luck though. If such a deal would happen, guarantees the Phils are in the World Series, so no home games until November.

    KJ and OhWell: Root of the situation is there are only 32 NFL franchises. Remember what happened when Leonard Tose threatened to sell the team to someone who’d move the Eagles to Phoenix (to cover his gambling debts)? City ponied up $ to add sky boxes and gave up parking revenue to bribe him to sell the team to someone else who’d remain here (Braman). (Why anyone would want to watch a game from the top of the 700 level and pay top dollar always confused me.) There’s only one football stadium in Pittsburgh as well (and Miami). USF could play at Tropicana if they so desired until they build their on-campus facility.

    The push for new stadia continued here and in Pittsburgh. Since cities at either end of the state were getting money, the measure for the state to fund was easily passed in Harrisburg. Perhaps the Rooney’s, being local people with roots understood the Panthers are part of the city and offered a reasonable contract. And there are even HS playoff games held there. Lurie, being an outsider, didn’t feel that Temple football mattered; just a cash cow to him.

    Like OhWell stated, it’s cronyism (and Mike did not “blame” capitalism). Think of the oligarchs in Russia who personally profit from government programs set up for them.

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