Go through just about every single thread on the Rutgers’ fan base board and you will find a lot of predictions.

I found three to be particularly amusing:

Rutgers, 69-0. Rutgers 51-3 and, lastly but by no means least, Rutgers, 92-3. Not a single one picked Temple to win.

Rutgers’ fans full of themselves?

Shocked I tell ya. Shocked.

It’s pretty much the Mets’ fanbase of college football. They think their team is a whole lot better than it is.

Always have. Always will.

I do remember a game where I had a transistor radio in one hand and my program in the other walking into Rutgers Stadium in the otherwise regrettable Bobby Wallace Error.

Listening to the pre-game show, I heard the Rutgers’ color guy tell the Rutgers’ play-by-play guy this: “Let’s face it: Rutgers should never lose to Temple.”

“Who the hell do they think they are?” I thought, almost tossing my radio along the road.

Temple won that game, 48-14, and the quarterback for the Owls, Mike Frost, became a successful bartender on campus and later head manager of the Draught Horse.

A couple of years later, Temple was kicked out of the Big East for “non-competitiveness” but a less competitive team, Rutgers–who the Owls had beaten four-straight years–was allowed to stay.

After that announcement, Temple beat Rutgers 20-17, on a Cap Poklemba field goal in the rain and that was a night when a terrific back named Tanardo Sharps ran 48 times for 246 yards. Once that game was over, the entire 55-man Owl traveling team went over and danced on the Rutgers’ Big East logo and sang “T for Temple U.” Joe Klecko and I tailgated with a small group of our friends before and after.

The beers never tasted better.

Now Temple plays Rutgers tomorrow (7:30 p.m., Big 10 Network) and a lot of those same assumptions are still in place.

Temple should never beat Rutgers (according to RU fans) despite the fact that Temple hung with two teams arguably better than RU in the final games of last season, Houston (42-35) and ECU (49-46). Owls lost both games in the last 1:22 but probably should have won both. At the same time, Rutgers was being beaten up by Penn State (55-10) and Maryland (37-0).

Yes, the same Penn State program that lost, 27-10, to Temple in 2015 and the same Maryland program that lost to Temple in consecutive pre-Covid seasons, 35-14 (in College Park) and 20-17. That last Temple win over the Terps came in the same year Maryland beat RU, 48-7.

But Rutgers should never lose to Temple. Right.

We do know two more things: Both Temple and Rutgers have highly paid professional coaches who have studied the tendencies of the opposite team so much that they are ready.

The team that throws a wrench into those preparations by showing the bad guys something they haven’t seen is probably the one that will win.

Throws being the operative word and Temple being that team.

If there has been one predictable pattern about the Owls for the last two years, it has been whenever backup quarterback Quincy Patterson comes into the game it’s almost always on short yardage situations and it pretty much is a run on every play call. Patterson always comes in about four plays a game and those four plays are always short-yardage runs.

That hasn’t fooled many people.

The one time Temple was courageous enough to break that pattern, Quincy threw a jump pass to the tight end for a touchdown in a 49-46 loss to bowl-bound East Carolina in the final game of last season. Temple head coach Stan Drayton has praised Patterson for the last nine months by saying his passing game has improved substantially. It’s time to let that baby exit the birth canal and for Stan to put his -8.5 money where his mouth is.

In order to beat a team like RU, Temple is going to have to show Greg Schiano what he hasn’t seen on film and what he has seen so far is a Patterson run. He hasn’t seen Patterson put that ball in the belly of a running back, pull it out and toss it downfield for six.

In a game where the line is single digits, a simple thing like a couple of well-timed Patterson passes in short yardage could be enough to put Temple over the top.

Any other surprises will have to be cooked up by the Temple coaches. They know what they’ve shown Schiano on tape so far. The more new wrinkles they show the better their chances will be.

Sunday: Game Analysis