A long time ago, a former colleague of mine in Doylestown, Steve Wartenberg, wrote a book about legendary Temple basketball coach John Chaney.

Steve followed Chaney through a season and mostly ups and really pinpointed why Chaney was a great teacher, recruiter and coach.

The title was “Winning is an Attitude” and it encapsulated what it took to win and maintain that attitude. Wartenberg was especially impressed that Chaney surrounded himself with winners, recruited team captains of winners from champion high school teams and only hired assistant coaches who were winners.

That mindset trickled down to every single Temple basketball player.

Too bad Steve didn’t follow Temple football head coach Stan Drayton around this season. His sequel could have been “Losing is an Attitude” because for every reaction there is an equal and opposite one.

From jumping offsides after stopping one series in the fourth quarter to hitting a quarterback clearly out of bounds after stopping another series, those were losing plays. They ferment a losing attitude and Temple football clearly has one now.

In reality, though, the game should have never come down to that because Temple spotted South Florida a 17-0 lead.

It’s hard enough to win in big-time college football as it is. It’s almost impossible to win spotting another team 17 unanswered points.

An absolutely mind-numbing decision contributed to that deficit. Temple won the coin flip but instead of giving the ball to its best unit, the offense, it went on defense. That’s the conventional wisdom but Temple is not a conventional team.

Two problems with that.

One, you have a kicker who kicked the ball out of bounds FIVE prior times this season and you give him a chance to kick it out of bounds a six.

He took it. Hell, go for the record. (Tried to look up the record for kicking it out of bounds but can’t find it. Wouldn’t be surprised if this was it.)

That’s a losing decision right before the kickoff, especially considering the Bulls gave up over 50 points in three of their prior four games.

Two, the winning move there is “let’s give our best player the ball and have him give us a 7-0 lead and build off that confidence.”

Instead, USF gets great field position from the jump and attacks the weakest part of the Temple team: The secondary.

Not a surprise that the Owls had to use most of the afternoon to dig out of the grave they dug for themselves. Through no fault of the kids, the coaches gave themselves no room for error and the “normal” errors that kids make followed after that: three interceptions, a key lost fumble out of a long gain and those two stupid penalties.

It was an inordinate number of player mistakes but coaches should know their team better than that.

Had they got that 7-0 lead, who knows would have happened?

Ironically, they didn’t learn from the success against Navy because they had the same decision to make a week ago and took the ball. That resulted in a 17-0 lead. This decision resulted in a 17-0 deficit, setting the stage for all the losing moments that followed.

John Chaney would be turning over in his grave.

Friday: UAB Preview