03.15.24
by

ACC Might Have Taken The Wrong TV Market

The first Temple basketball highlight film ever on TFF. These guys deserve that honor.

After a couple years of misery for Temple sports fans, what the men’s basketball team did on Thursday night was super sweet.

No matter what happens now, history will read that SMU’s final men’s basketball game in the American Athletic Conference was a 75-60 loss to Temple.

At home in front of the same rich Mustang fans who put up the big bucks for SMU to move to the ACC.

In my mind, Clifton McDowell will be a huge upgrade from E.J. Warner for Temple in that he will be able to make all the passes E.J. made and give a multi-dimensional look that Temple hasn’t had since P.J. Walker.

In a tournament game that meant everything.

Now it’s up to the football Owls to prove one important point: The ACC might have taken the wrong TV market.

Philadelphia, despite being the sixth-largest city, is still the fourth-largest TV market due to the density of the population in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey suburbs that surround the city.

Dallas/Ft. Worth, the market SMU is in, is one market behind in fifth place but the big difference is this. TCU is also in that same market. That market was already taken by the Power 5.

The Philadelphia market is owned by Temple and available to any Power 5 conference that wants it. It is also the largest TV market without a P5 team.

Temple could change all that. If Adam Fisher has proven anything in his first year, is that he has immediately improved the Temple basketball program. It might not show in the 14-19 record but it shows in how competitive the team has been even in their losses. One more thing is that Fisher has been able to recruit. He is already bringing in the top player in the state of Texas, Dillon Battie, the son of former Owl great Derrick Battie and bringing in the best player in Delaware in Aiden Tobiason.

An example of how Temple owns the Philly market over Penn State is that Penn State played Notre Dame six times on ABC prime time and never even approached the numbers Temple was able to put up for this one game. The X Factor was Temple, not Notre Dame.

There is reason to believe that the men’s basketball Owls can immediately go to the head of the AAC class next year. No bellyaching from Fisher about the transfer portal or NIL. He’s finding a way to win and get recruits. Women’s basketball coach Diane Richardson won the AAC regular-season title in her second year.

The one thing holding the university back has been the abysmal performance by the football program.

Stan Drayton gets a pass for the first year’s 3-9 because he showed the kind of competitive improvement that Temple fans needed to see after the Rod Carey Error.

The second year, though, was as bad as Carey’s 1-6 and 3-9 seasons from a competitive standpoint and raised major red flags.

Now Drayton is slowly–maybe too slowly–is showing signs he gets it. Short of bodies last year, Drayton overbooked the personnel flight and is now seven scholarships over the limit.

That means the Owls can have a physical spring practice and they need it. They had the worst-tackling game in recent Temple history in a 45-14 loss at North Texas and got only marginally better after that.

They lost a record-setting QB in E.J. Warner but Drayton showed he “gets it” by not settling after signing Rutgers’ backup Evan Simon. He went out and got a difference-maker in Clifton McDowell, who can do things Warner never dreamed of doing. They improved their running game by signing two first-team JUCO All-Americans and a solid Big 10 backup.

Now if the Owls can put that physicality together with the explosiveness of McDowell and Company, the football Owls can shock the world the way the basketball Owls did on Thursday night.

Do that enough times, and thousands of fannies return to the seats and millions of eyeballs to the screen and the ACC might be wondering if they picked the wrong TV market.

3 thoughts on “ACC Might Have Taken The Wrong TV Market”

  1. The Defense…..,

    “ I commend the coaches for doing a great job of evaluating and doing due diligence on character and love of football…., It’s still early, but I think the coaches have done a good job getting guys in the program that could at least help us compete at a high level.”

    Sounds like something from the HC, right? Not! It’s a quote from the DC. Translation, the DC doesn’t recruit, and for good reason.

    SMH, who does he think he is? Is he too good to recruit, or just too old and lazy?

    If you can’t, or are unwilling to recruit then you can’t coach.

    Withers may be the only DC in the country who believes he personally doesn’t have to recruit.

    Reply

    • Always has struck me as a clock-watching guy who is around to pick up a paycheck and nothing more. I saw enough of those kinds of guys when I was a sports editor hiring people to be able to steer clear of them.

      Reply

  2. Every dollar counts when you are poor. TUFB needs a DC who has the Energy to actively recruit, study film, and coach. TUFB can ill afford to pay someone full time for part-time half-a** work.

    Reply

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