Saturday: Nostalgia and psychology

If you needed any further evidence that yesterday was better than tomorrow in college football on a macro level and Temple football on a micro level, all you need to do is get in the car and make the drive to Lincoln Financial Field tomorrow.

I will for the first time all year.

That’s because tomorrow (2 p.m. ESPN+), the Owls honor their greatest living moment of yesterday when they salute the 1979 Garden State Bowl champion Temple Owls on the 45th anniversary of the school’s first-ever bowl win. It will be a beautiful weather day (74, sunny), unlike the Dec. 15th 28-17 win over California at the Meadowlands before 40,000 mostly (err, all) Temple fans at Giants Stadium. That day I froze my ass off and was shocked to learn the high reached 40 at kickoff. Felt like 20.

Steve Conjar, who had pretty much the same number of tackles in three years that Temple’s all-time leading tackler Tyler Matakevich had in four years, asks the 40,000 Temple fans who attended the Garden State Bowl to come back and honor the Owls again.

Back then there was no NIL or transfer portal and Temple was able to field a great team by attracting a bunch of hungry guys who were overlooked by the larger schools and coach them up with a certified MENSA genius (152 IQ) at the helm in Wayne Hardin.

They became a band of brothers, never looking to go elsewhere and sticking with a great school in a great city.

Mix, stir and come up with the 17th-ranked team in the country and one of only 15 bowl winning teams that season. That Temple team was only 16 points shy of finishing unbeaten (12-0) and, if that happened, no doubt would have been named national champion.

Think about that.

Temple.

National champion.

In football.

Our low/risk, high/reward picks this week.

That’s because the resume would have included a 49-17 win over one of the other 14 bowl winners (Syracuse), a 39-16 win AT West Virginia and, say, a 12-10 win over Pitt and a 23-22 win over Penn State (the last two their only losses that season).

They didn’t need a Georgia election official to find them 11,680 votes to win that election. They needed 16 more stinking lousy points. Wayne Hardin should have been on the line to the football Gods because that needed to happen.

Supporting the kids this week could make a difference.

The flip side of that equation will also be on display on Saturday as the current Owls are stuck in the morass of a 1-5 season, following a trio of 3-9 seasons and a 1-6 season before that. Nobody knows what current coach Stan Drayton’s IQ is but after trying a tush push with a 160-pound redshirt freshman backup quarterback with the game on the line against UConn I’m guessing it’s not 152.

That’s where the psychology part enters into play.

Do the current Owls dwell on what might have been or are able to turn whatever positives they had against UConn–and there were many–into their play going forward?

If the current Owls are able to start with a clean mindset, they have a chance to finish 5-1 and get to a bowl game. Don’t think they have a shot against Tulane but they could run the table against all of those other teams on the schedule but it starts with crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s against Tulsa.

Or do they dwell on what might have been, keep turning the ball over and committing stupid penalties that have marked this season so far?

All they need to do is take a look at those old guys representing Temple at halftime to know what was once possible here when the playing field was even.

What’s possible tomorrow now may be less than yesterday, but certainly better than the string of 3-9 seasons that have made Temple football irrelevant over the last half-decade.

After Al Golden, Matt Rhule and even Geoff Collins (7-6 and 8-5), never thought I’d live to see this day. The current kids and the coaches can make Temple football relevant again but it starts by balling out on Saturday.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

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