About the same time the best golfers in the world will be teeing up in Georgia for the penultimate round of that sport’s best tournament, two colors will be teeing it off at 10th and Diamond.

The Cherry and The White.

Jim Nance likes to call the former thing: “A Tradition Like Any Other.”

That’s why anyone mulling over whether or not they should attend this year should go.

The Masters will go on for many years to come.

The Cherry and White game will probably not.

Another casualty of the madness–and the sickness–that plagues college sports in general and college football in particular.

New Temple head coach K.C. Keeler floated the idea that this might be the last Cherry and White game ever and if he decides to end it, I agree with him.

What a great tradition, though.

Maybe golf fanatic Nance is right, but do you know a sports tradition that has–within the last 20 years or so–been played in at least six places and been part of a transition from bottom to (nearly) top as Temple football’s Cherry and White game?

I didn’t think so.

In the last 20 years, Temple’s Cherry and White football game has been played in 1) The Old Temple Stadium (2004), 2) Ambler (2006), 3) Cardinal O’Hara (2008), 4) Lincoln Financial Field (2010), 5) the soccer/field hockey complex (three times recently) and the 6) Edberg-Olson Football Complex (five times)?

Find me a moveable tradition like that and we can start the conversation about any other traditions.

It’s OK, too.

This year (April 12) the game will be played at the E-O. It’s also been played at Broad and Master, a $22 million “minor sports” site.

About 4-5,000 people will be attending the Cherry and White football festivities.

It’ll be different this year and in a bad way because of all the nostalgia.

Old-timers like me remember when it was a “real game” with tackling and a final score. Keeler has promised that much because “this is really important to Temple alumni that we play it as a game and we will.”

The last three years were glorified drills like hitting a running back with a tackling dummy. That sense of urgency carried over to the games in the fall.

This time, the simulation will be real and it will be a welcome change because we’ve seen the very same process during Cherry and White Days presided over by successful coaches like Wayne Hardin, Bruce Arians, Al Golden and Matt Rhule. Whatever we watched the past three seasons did not work.

All of the prior Temple guys believed that the fall process included meaningful business in front of the fans on Cherry and White Day.

The fact that the new guy believes that, too, is a good sign for the fall and makes attendance by serious Owl fans mandatory.

This is a damn good tradition that will, sadly, come to an end until any sanity is restored to college football and that day is so far off I can confidently say I won’t be here to see it with you.

In between, though, we need to do what we have to do to get Temple football to the other side and, if ending the showcasing of our players for other teams to steal is over I’m all for it.

Monday: What’s Happening Here