03.17.24
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What the UAB-TU hoop run can teach the football Owls

As someone who won The Philadelphia Inquirer employee NCAA pool (2011), the No. 1 thing that helped me was the full broadsheet page that included in small type (we in the business call it agate) every single score of every single game of every single team in the tournament.

Before every game, Stan Drayton should show this clip to his team as an example of how to dive on a ball when the other team fumbles.

Really, it was the secret sauce.

Kept checking and cross-checking comparative scores before I made my picks. When the tournament was over, I got $2,400 in cash delivered in a brown paper bag at Westy’s Bar (15th and Callowhill) at nearly 2 a..m. Never was more nervous walking to the Inky parking garage in my life. That’s when the Inky had its full complement of employees and the cash haul was impressive. I still haven’t paid taxes on them but I think the statue of limitations has passed so I should be OK.

Reid Tuvim, an Inky copy editor who ran the pool, did a nice analysis of my picks in the employee internal newsletter and why they were so good. Inky and every other paper in the country stopped publishing that cheat sheet. Not the same clicking and re-clicking to find the same info that I could hold in my hand. What then took seconds now takes hours.

As a result, I never duplicated that monetary success.

Give me something I can hold in my hand that has every score of every team and I can win just about any NCAA pool there is.

Adam Fisher had Temple sports trending on Sunday. Maybe Stan Drayton will be able to do the same come December.

That’s the lesson I’ve learned about NCAA pools.

There is a more important lesson Temple football can learn from the recent unlikely basketball runs of both UAB and Temple and those are just as clear as the small agate type was on those pages.

One, Stan Drayton’s emphasis on getting JUCOs is a Hail Mary prayer that just might be answered.

Two, if the Temple football defense gives even half the effort on every fumble by the bad guys that Hysier Miller gave on that Saturday loose ball, the Owls can improve from last in the nation in defensive turnovers to at least the middle of the pack and that will be twice as good.

Being twice as good usually translates into twice as many wins and hopefully that will be the case for the football Owls.

Back to the JUCOs, though.

That’s the strategy Drayton and his staff designed for Owl recruiting in the offseason. While my preferred pathway would be heavy on the FCS stars and lighter on the JUCOs, maybe Drayton is right. Hell, his $2.5 million salary per year is a lot better than my $2,400 haul that night at Westy’s. So he’s getting the big bucks to solve big problems.

Andy Kennedy proved you can win a AAC championship in a major sport with a heavy emphasis on JUCOs.

Maybe Drayton can do the same.

If so, that will be his secret sauce.

Friday: March Gladness

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