In the grand scheme of things, this is about the 147th-most important thing that happened on Saturday but seeing Temple football come out in those God-awful-looking white helmets certainly didn’t meet the moment.

Not when you have the best helmet in college football sitting back home in the equipment room at 10th and Diamond.

When you look sharp, you play sharp and the Owls certainly didn’t look sharp.

Then the game started and it wasn’t long before first-year Temple head coach K.C. Keeler made the most perspicacious statement of the day.

Doing a first-quarter interview on ESPN2, Keeler said: “I thought we didn’t meet the moment.”

This time, he wasn’t talking about the equipment room.

There were plenty of moments the Owls didn’t meet but a few of them came on defense early when they hit Oklahoma quarterback John Mateer early and didn’t bring him down. Other times they touched him and he spun away.

A lot of that is traced to Mateer’s talent but when the Owls were touching quarterbacks–good quarterbacks with FBS starts under their belts in the first two games–they were bringing them down.

That was meeting the moment. Albeit the moment became bigger against better players on Saturday getting to Mateer and not putting him down didn’t meet the moment. He’s human. If hit hard enough, he goes down, too.

The Owls had a minus-6 deficit in the turnover battle in last year’s game and lost, 51-3. They stopped Oklahoma on third downs 13 of 14 times in that game and still lost by 48.

The Owls cleaned things up this year to have no turnovers and still lost by almost the same margin. That does not compute except that they didn’t do as good a job getting off the field defensively as last year’s team.

The formula to win wasn’t there against Oklahoma but the formula to stay in the game certainly was and the Owls didn’t have the right mix. Limit turnovers. Check. Repeat last year’s performance on third down. Not check.

Throw some trick plays in there to keep Oklahoma off-balance.

Definitely not check. Would have loved to seen Evan Simon toss a throwback pass to Hollawayne and have the former UCLA QB hit JoJo Bermudez for six on that first series. That would have fired everyone up. Instead, a couple of boring handoffs to Jay Ducker got nowhere.

OC Tyler Walker–who had a fantastic first two games–didn’t meet the moment, either.

A lot of national type guys–Chip Patterson of CBS sports and Kirk Herbstreit of ESPN–thought the Owls had a chance to stay in the game against the Sooners. Now that those national guys saw what happened, they are off the Owls. The Owls showed in the first two games that they are deep and talented along both lines but allowed themselves to get bullied by the Sooners.

I didn’t see that happening. Maybe neither Patterson nor Herbstreit did.

Maybe that’s what Keeler meant by not meeting the moment but they really have one more big-time moment to meet on Saturday at Georgia Tech.

Like Oklahoma, the Yellowjackets have a big-time quarterback in Haynes King. The lesson of Saturday is when they get their hands on him, they have to put him down.

That’s meeting the moment on the field.

Off the field, leaving the White helmets home might not help, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.

Friday: Georgia Tech Preview