Gut feeling that De’Carlos Young becomes Temple’s featured back in 2025 and that Jett White and Jayvant Brown make immediate all-AAC impacts.

You won’t find Temple football in the top 10 of recruiting classes.

You don’t have to.

All you need to do is compare Temple not necessarily against the best AAC recruiting classes (Memphis and Tulane’s were better) but against the G5 as a whole.

Nobody said Sam Houston’s recruiting class was No. 1 in the Group of Five a year ago. In fact, it was much closer to No. 64 than No. 1.

What Sam Houston had then and what Temple has now is a College Hall of Fame football coach in K.C. Keeler. It also had no NIL money. It also finished 9-3 in the regular season.

That means a lot.

A year ago Temple had neither a highly rated recruiting class nor a Hall of Fame college football coach.

One out of two ain’t bad.

The reality of college football today is that the schools with the alumni with the rolls of money will always have the top-ranked classes.

Temple will never have that.

The sooner we accept that reality the better.

So what’s the path forward?

Keeler and a very smart staff identifying diamonds in the rough is acceptable alternative.

Make a bowl game right away and challenge for the AAC title in a couple of years.

That appears to have happened on Wednesday with this recruiting class.

Put it this way: Does even a Temple team coming off consecutive 10-win seasons ever dream of recruiting a player like Jett White or Jaybrant Brown?

The answer clearly is no.

The transfer portal taketh away but it also giveth.

White and Brown were big-time P4 recruits and would not have given Temple a second look first time around.

Now, they can help Temple inch closer to the top of the AAC.

How close?

Maybe not to the Memphis or Tulane level but certainly to that level just after those two teams

Keeler as my coach over Stan Drayton as my coach makes me think 6-6 is much more attainable than the 3-9 we’ve been used to as fans.

Now this guy still has six scholarships in his pocket with about 2,000 players to chose from and they better be defensive linemen who can put the quarterback on his ass and offensive linemen who can protect a franchise quarterback like Evan Simon.

If he doesn’t deliver them by the summer, you will read your first criticism of Keeler here. Until then, trust a process demonstratively better than the last process.