06.20.24
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Gone too soon: College Football

Steve Levy delivered the line of the week on ESPN during a Tuesday break in the Stanley Cup finals from the Bristol studios:

“The Say Hey Kid, is gone. Too soon. Willie Mays has passed away tonight at the age of 93.”

Say what?

Say hey.

Too soon?

With all due respect, I’d sign for 93 and I might do it on my 92d birthday.

You know what’s gone too soon?

College football.

Born in 1869 with a game at Rutgers with visiting Princeton, the game should have lasted until at least 2069. Unless you are in the SEC or the Big 10, I very much doubt it will.

Temple football allowed a few loud mouths derail its only chance to grab a P5 spot.

It died with the NIL and the transfer portal and not just for Temple. It died for every G5 school with the possible exception of Memphis, who might eventually slip its way into the big boy club. (I even think it is too late for the Tigers.)

Forget Temple football, which is what we almost exclusively talk about on this site. The other 63 teams playing the same level of G5 football do not have a chance to make a significant impact on the national level for a long time, maybe ever.

The NFL is a fair system and college football fans in big cities will soon realize that and abandon college football. The NFL lifts up its lowest teams with a draft that gives those teams a chance to succeed.

College football tells its lowest teams to go to hell.

What do the fans of those teams do?

Hope and pray.

Neither has ever been a good plan.

The BEST plan for Temple was the one I heard a decade ago at a Cherry and White game.

“Mike, the ACC told us that if we built a stadium, it would be LIKELY that we’d get an invitation,” a source told me that day.

That source was no random guy. It was a member of the 18-person Board of Trusteees.

Made sense because the next season Temple, located in the 4th-largest TV market, had the largest attendance in the AAC.

So what did Temple do?

Fast track a stadium only to back away when a handful of neighbors objected.

Would Navy have backed away on Navy-Marine Corps Stadium or Georgia Tech backed away on Bobby Dodds Stadium if Annapolis or Atlanta objected?

Probably not.

Because Philadelphia politics is a special kind of corrupt (on a level with New York City’s 19th century Tammany Hall), Temple threw up its hands.

Now here we are in an NIL and a transfer portal world where Temple can’t afford players or can’t even afford to get TEMPLE painted on the field.

The end is near and there is no Hail Mary (congressional action) in sight.

Willie Mays lived long enough. College football died way too soon.

Monday: Running over the AAC

4 thoughts on “Gone too soon: College Football”

  1. My wife and I caught that reference Steve made. We both looked at each other and said, “too soon?” I do think a stadium build back then would have been a strong move towards regaining some football relevancy.

    Reply

    • My question is and has always been why is it OK for Georgia Tech to build a stadium in downtown Atlanta and USF to build a stadium in downtown Tampa and not OK for Temple to build a stadium on its own property in North Philadelphia? The America way is that you can always build any damn thing you want on your own property. The only school to ever face that blowback was Temple and that’s not fair to Temple.

      Reply

      • Mike, you did an article not long ago about Temple’s bad luck. Is this OCS thing another example? We were the only school to ever get kicked out of a conference also. Leadership at Temple is sorely lacking for these kind of things to happen – that ans poor planning are the only reasons for Temple to have such bad “luck.” No OCS, ridiculous FB HC hires and contracts, a lousy deal at the LINC, the list goes on.

  2. If I lived in North Philadelphia, I’d get down on my hands and knees and thank God every day that Temple is there. At least the Green Zone of Temple (15th to 12th and Cecil B. Moore to Susquehanna) is about as secure as you can get in an urban setting. Venture West of 16th or North of Susquehanna and you are in no-man’s land. That’s exactly what the current Green Zone of Temple would be if the BOT took Liacouras’ suggestion and moved the entire campus to Ambler. Don’t understand the hate for Temple. The community should bend over backward for Temple and allow a project like a stadium (which would inarguably make the neighborhood safer).

    Reply

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