Temple’s path to winning: A unique style

“You guys hang in there because one of our alums is going to win the MegaMillions Tuesday.”

Failing me winning the Powerball tonight or the Mega tomorrow, there are a couple of other pathways to respectability for Temple football that were apparent over the last few days both in the basketball tournament and the football scrimmage.

One, that probably can’t happen.

What we saw is that, after the first round, the teams who paid the piper (i.e., NIL) largely won and the brackets settled into favorite mode.

So Temple or any G5 team winning the national championship until this current financial landscape probably cannot happen in either major sport.

One, that could happen.

The teams who pulled off the upsets in the first round (Grand Canyon, Yale, Oakland, Duquesne) all had a unique style of play that other high-seeded teams were not ready for. Grand Canyon pressed and had line-change substitutions. Yale slowed it down. Oakland ran an offense that accentuated its strength (the three) by an entry pass into the paint followed kicking out to a shooter. Duquesne played a 1-3-1 zone that confused BYU.

All exceeded any national expectations.

Temple football could carve out that same niche in the G5 college football world if only it would embrace its recent past.

Fullback, two tight ends, establish the running game, chew up the clock with 7-8 minute drives each quarter and occasionally hit an explosive downfield play in the passing game by faking it into the belly of one of their talented running backs, and throwing over the heads of a defense whose linebackers and safeties were forced to inch up to the line of scrimmage to stop the run.

That’s how Al Golden turned Temple from a 20-game losing streak to a first bowl appearance in 30 years. That’s how Matt Rhule progressed from the morass of his first two seasons to double-digit wins in his final two.

That’s how Temple won an AAC championship, appeared on College Football Gameday, and posted the highest-ever prime time TV rating for a national college football game in the Philadelphia market.

After Temple beat Navy, 34-10, for the AAC title, Middies coach Ken Niumatalolo made a great comment about Temple being just as hard to prepare for everyone in the league as his team was because Temple didn’t do the same thing any other team did from a scheme standpoint.

The Owls lost their way and strayed from their roots since then and tried to do the same thing every other college football team did–a spread offense where the passing game was supposed to set up the running game.

That hasn’t worked here. Running to set up the play-action always did.

It was heartening to hear that the Owls established the run in their first scrimmage.

Keep it up and commit to it and the Owls can be the football version of Grand Canyon and Oakland this season.

If I win the Powerball tonight or the Mega tomorrow, they can dream of being a Georgia or a Michigan because the Owls will be the highest-paid team in the NCAA and it would be delicious irony to hear that “the only reason Temple is winning is because some alumn hit the $1.1 billion Megaball. Let’s go back to the old system of no transfer portal or NIL so Georgia and Michigan have a fair shot of winning again.”

Duh?

Until then, style over substance.

16 thoughts on “Temple’s path to winning: A unique style

  1. Sure hope you win.

    • Don’t have kids or living relatives outside of cousins who I see every five years or so. I’m probably one of the few Temple fans who can take 10 percent of $1.1 billion and be happy as a clam (are clams really happy?) and give the rest to something that might make me happier–like Temple winning a national championship in football. Can’t wait to hear the blowback from the North Philly community about the outrage of giving $900 million to Temple football. 🙂

  2. One more point on that. I’ve written this many times but it would take a rabid football fan of someone at a place like Temple or Kent State or Akron or Southern Mississippi or Troy or really most G5 schools to hit this and give at least half to the NIL fund of their G5 school to point out the absurdity of this system. Your bluebloods are not going to like, say, Kent State winning the national football championship every year because each football player makes 10x of what a Georgia player makes. The fact that it would take something like that to wake people up to how unfair this is points out the absurdity of the system better than anything else. So, if not me, the hope the guy who writes Kent State Football Forever or Troy Football Forever wins this.

  3. McDowell is gone. Zae Baines didn’t practice on Saturday. Injury, personal, or portal?

  4. I can’t believe some kind of swap can’t be worked out with another team playing on Aug. 31. Haven’t really looked at the schedule that day because I don’t think Temple has any interest in pulling out. As far as McDowell, OwlsDaily.com says Drayton is denying he needed a waiver to play for Temple. Hopefully, he will need one at his next school.

    • Just read that over there, I’m guessing either he didn’t want to compete for the starting job or wasn’t doing well enough to earn it???? Guess it’s just another day in the transfer portal world of NCAA sports

      • I think it was tampering. If he winds up at a more high-profile school (and thanks to Rod Carey and Stan Drayton) just about every other G5 team is now (i.e., Warner thought Rice was), we will know what school tampered. If he goes back to FCS, there will be no tampering. Talent-wise and from what he has accomplished in college football so far, he was so much better than Brock, Simon, etc. it’s not even funny.

  5. Brian Broomell time

    • Ha. By my calculations, he’s got to be at least 65. Interesting he started as a true freshman as a safety on defense and moved over to quarterback as a sophomore. Back then, no one started as a true freshman. Great athlete. Led the nation in passing efficiency his senior year for a team that was 16 measly points from finishing 12-0.

  6. Is there another angle we are not seeing?

    Get Simon to stop the bleeding. He may not be the guy so keep looking. And, the portal means he could leave at anytime.

    Now McDowell is gone and Simon can’t separate from Brock. Mirrored in deep trouble, TU vs Oklahoma.

    How much will the outcome of that game influence the new uni pres? Does the incoming athletic vision include the P5? TU vs OU might be insignificant.

    TUFB mirrored in deep trouble.

    • From the comments of Stan on OwlsDaily.com, it appears that he was blindsided by the decision and McDowell was doing great while here. A couple of theories from that assertion: 1) Another FBS team tampered (easily debunked if he goes to a FCS team); 2) All the other 27 places (exaggerating for effect, here) he played football at were unlike 10th and Diamond and he was more comfortable in a rural setting. Agree that Temple needs a more accomplished college football quarterback than the ones they have in the QB room now (not JUCO) already in the portal and the good news is there are plenty of those.

Leave a comment