As someone who was assigned to cover the best college football head coach who ever lived and the best high school head coach ever lived, one truth became apparent.

There is no sport in history where head coaching matters more than football.

When I was in college, the head coach I covered as sports editor at The Temple News was Wayne Hardin. Even before I went to Temple, I felt Hardin was the best head coach in America.

My earliest memories included watching the Army-Navy games with my dad, who was a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy.

“Mike, this guy (Hardin) is a great coach,” my dad would say. “Anybody who can get Navy ranked No. 2 in the country with a five-year service commitment, is a a great coach.” (Back then, five-year service commitments meant the Vietnam War and no pro football until the age of 26.)

Later, I would become a Philadelphia Bulldog fan and Hardin would win a CFL pro championship with the Bulldogs at Temple stadium.

Three years later, Hardin was the head coach at Temple and I was sold on both Hardin and Temple.

While at Temple, I got to know Wayne very well.

My proudest moment was in the press box at Penn State during the 1979 Temple game when the Owls took a 7-6 halftime lead over a much more talented Nittany Lions squad.

The entire Beaver Stadium press box got real quiet and the then dean of Penn State beat writers, John Kunda, of the Allentown Morning Call, blurted out: “Hardin is outcoaching Joe again.”

(That wasn’t the first game a less-talented Temple team took a more talented PSU team to the wire, a 26-25 loss in 1976, a 31-30 loss in 1977 and a 10-7 loss in 1978 were Exhibits A through C.)

Everyone, and I mean everyone, nodded in agreement.

Never prouder. First, I was in college and my college guy was outsmarting their college guy. That meant I was in the right school.

A few years later, I met the greatest high school coach in history (at least in my mind), Mike Pettine, Sr. He took a Central Bucks West school of 1,500 students (800 boys) and dominated the state of Pennsylvania by brilliant gameday coaching and better fundamentals. Nobody got more out of teams of 5-10, 170-pound suburban kids more than Pettine, who was 364-46-2 with five state titles. Pettine said, “Mike, you know football because you are a Temple guy and Wayne gave you a crash course.” That didn’t mean I couldn’t learn more watching Pettine’s teams, who were never offside and never false started.

At Temple, lesser coaches followed but will have to give a nod to Bruce Arians (6-5 against two Top 10 schedules), Al Golden for applying CPR to a dead Temple football program and his lieutenant Matt Rhule for building on that legacy.

Stan Drayton?

Haven’t been impressed as much because of his inexperience but his heart is in the right place.

When I heard Drayton say everything would be re-evaluated at the end of a third-straight 3-9 season at Temple, including the coaches, I thought maybe the worst DC in the history of the school would be released.

That hasn’t happened.

Yet Drayton did release a couple of coaches and add a couple more and the new guys have credentials.

One of them is wide receivers’ coach Tyron Carrier, who has coached in five bowl games. In 2018, Carrier was named Football Scoop’s receiver coach of the year at West Virginia.

The other coach in defensive line guy Kevon Beckwith, who led Incarnate Word to a nation-high 43 sacks in a 12-2 2022 season.

Nobody heard of Incarnate Word before Beckwith and his fellow coaches took over there.

Temple has been pretty silent since guys like Hardin, Golden and Rhule left.

If Carrier and Beckwith make a difference, maybe the worst DC in the country’s influence can be mitigated.

It won’t mean 12-0 but it could mean 6-6 and after a steady diet of 3-9, that could taste pretty good.

Monday: Spring Practice Priorities

Friday: Big Mad