It’s not often a third-year head coach can learn from a rookie one but maybe Fran Brown is onto something here.

Brown, the new Syracuse head coach, promised “hitting” as a requisite of his first spring practice and it makes sense for Temple for a couple of reasons:

A) Temple, at least on the defensive side, played the entire three months of the fall season as though that end of the sport was anathema.

B) The Owls were so short of bodies last spring that they avoided hitting at all costs.

Brown has a history to rely upon. During Matt Rhule’s first year, he said he wanted the Owls to “learn the system” and went less with hitting and more with the fundamentals during spring.

A year later, Rhule changed philosophies in order to “re-establish the Temple TUFF” culture and the Owls practices–according to many players–were tougher than the games.

Brown was an assistant during those days (and later under Steve Addazio) and that’s all he knew at Temple. Then he went to Rutgers, which cut back on the physicality, and onto Georgia where the hitting was pretty much like Temple days due to the depth the Bulldogs had.

So Brown is firmly in the hitting camp.

Things got so bad at Temple under Rod Carey that one “Cherry and White” Game featured no more than running drills through foam rubber obsticles.

Certainly not football.

My guess is that the Syracuse spring game on April 20 will look more like a real football game than any Cherry and White Game has looked since Addazio. Back then, the Owls were hitting from the time spring ball started in March until the last game of the season.

If Stan Drayton beats Brown to the punch by a week (the Owls’ spring game is April 13), that could be just what this team needs.