What if College Football News is Right?

Shockingly, I did not win the $875 million in Saturday’s Powerball so that means no new state-of-the-art stadium for Temple until possibly tonight at 11 p.m. Don’t worry. I won’t allow those trees to obstruct fan views.

Most people are predicting improvement for the Temple football Owls in the 2023 season.

The key words are significant or incremental.

It ranges from a significant jump to fourth place but at least a couple of publications all the way down to the College Football News predicting the Owls would finish ninth in the AAC.

The improvement CFN sees for the Owls?

A whole lousy stinking one win over the back-to-back three-win seasons the Owls posted the last two years. They predict the Owls will go 4-8.

Not good.

We don’t think they are right.

I’m thinking the minimum is six wins while the maximum is about eight.

They got me to thinking about something else.

What if CFN is right and the rest of us are wrong? CFN sees wins over Akron, Norfolk State, Navy and Memphis.

I don’t think the Owls will be beating Memphis but USF (a team they beat 54-28 last year), Navy, Akron, Norfolk State should be very doable. To get to six, I can see the Owls beating Rutgers and Tulsa or even North Texas. UAB has a new coach in Trent Dilfer. I don’t see a significant dropoff if any in talent between Temple and UAB.

Certainly, it’s possible Temple could win four games but in this age of the transfer portal it would not be enough to change national opinion about Temple football.

Sure, head coach Stan Drayton would probably be able to keep his job but the damage to the program with a four-win season would be, well, significant because of the incremental nature of the improvement.

Fans who were energized by Rod Carey’s firing and Drayton’s hiring would start to tune out and think “same old Temple” and the empty seats won’t do anything for Drayton’s ability to bring in players the next season.

Last year was a year where the culture needed to be changed and Drayton accomplished that. This year it’s time to win and four wins just doesn’t cut it.

In this age when a whole roster can be upgraded in a matter of months, Temple can’t afford to be known as a team treading water and four wins would be the definition of that.

The Owls need to speedboat through that water this year as opposed staying afloat last.

Friday: We All We Got

Monday: A Kernel of Truth

8 thoughts on “What if College Football News is Right?

  1. He likes these 10 Owls and sees marked improvement in this year’s team. Check it out:

  2. The conceptual stadium drawing looks like something that could fit nicely at the EO field.

    • Much nicer looking than the one Temple came up with but I don’t think they’d go for it because everyone on the street would be able to see the game for free. Love to plunk that Georgia Tech stadium right in the middle of 15th and Norris.

      • It comes down to wanting an OCS or not. That design, on campus, around an existing field even if it only seats 20-25K, could be done tomorrow. (Use shields to keep people from watching from the street for gosh sakes.) Start winning consistently, ticket sales go up, then add more seating. No-brainer. MAC schools have nice but small stadiums and hardly ever fill them up. Temple would fill it up at 20-25 K. And it seemed that blocking off 15th St. was a main reason for not getting that other plan approved by the city.

  3. I believe that for Temple to have any hope of being invited to join a P5 conference, a stadium a good bit larger than 20 – 26 K cap is a must. A Rutgers style stadium (SHI holds just over 52K) would be ideal, but not likely to ever get city approval to be built on main campus. I say stay at the Linc and do the best we can in terms of a reasonable lease from Jeffrey Lurie. The Linc is conveniently located and has plenty of tailgating space in K-Lot and other areas. Yes an on-campus stadium would be ideal. But unless we get the city council and the surrounding neighborhood on board, it just isn’t going to happen IMO.

    • Mostly agree Jim, but Temple gets, most of the time, only about 20-25K down at the LINC. My point is do something modest and reasonably priced on campus to start, at the existing EO field, getting out from under Lurie’s robbery and see how things go from there. Why the admin has totally given up on any kind of OCS is a mystery.

      • Actually the Owls averaged somewhere around 27,000 at home games over the last ten seasons or so, the exception being in 2015, the year we beat Penn State and nearly beat Notre Dame, both games sellouts. I was at both of those games, seated on the visitor’s side where you could really see student section enthusiasm. The average attendance was 44,000+ that year, for obvious reasons. Owl football has a loyal fan base, one that has been through thick and (lots of) thin. For various reasons, the program has ended up a conference bottom feeder right now. But I believe believe we will see marked improvement this year from what I’ve seen thus far. But I guess my point is that for the program to ever return to national respectability and reignition as in 2015 and 2016 (conference title), a few big names such as PSU and ND need to be on the home schedule every year, and that would require a facility that would hold far more than what might be possible for an OC stadium. Things are a bit uncertain right now with an acting university president and decreasing freshman enrollment (much of which is due to the recent crime situation on and around main campus IMO). In the meantime, we need to hope for the best.

  4. Jim, it has been suggested many times in the past that an OCS should accommodate most game attendance but play down at the LINC once in awhile for big-time games. Just seems like something could be designed to utilize the existing EO field for whatever the average attendance is for most games. And just maybe since some facilities are already there, downtown and the neighbors would go along with it – maybe. Heck, before, they were planning something that would cut off a street that went all the way downtown – that was asking too much apparently. I also think having the railroad tracks there would add to the Temple tough concept.

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