Somebody please bury the White helmets

When Penn State lost at Temple a mere decade ago, James Franklin made the major subject of his Monday press conference burying the game tape.

These helmets look good.

We don’t know where. It might be on a remote farm in State College.

If the Temple football Owls are lucky, K.C. Keeler will find at least a dog park in North Philly to bury about 105 helmets.

All White ones.

I didn’t remember Temple ever winning in the combo of White helmets and Cherry uniforms, but I did a deep dive over four years of American Conference highlight reels and did find one victory in that combination.

These helmets are better carried than worn. They look like total crap and the Owls don’t play well wearing them.

Oct. 19, 2024 when Stan Drayton’s Owls doubled up Tulsa, 20-10, at last year’s Homecoming.

That’s it.

We did find a win over Navy (2023) wearing White helmets with gray jerseys, but only one with White helmets and Cherry tops.

The uniform combination of White helmets and Cherry tops is 1-9 against all competition, most of them Ungodly blowouts like Saturday’s 45-14 loss to East Carolina.

The Owls have won with White helmets and White uniforms (UMass this year) but White helmets with any combination of Cherry are no bueno.

No only does it look like crap, the Owls almost always play like crap with the White helmets.

Now that’s probably not the reason why they played like crap on Saturday–you have to give some credit to the Pirates–but why risk it?

This is the only Temple helmet ESPN Gameday allows on the set.

Take me, for instance. Rocked the Temple No. 1 game jersey for a 55-7 win against Howard and then wore it again against Navy. The Owls looked good and played well in both games (wearing Cherry helmets).

Because of the Navy loss, retired it for this season for the gray Temple hoodie.

Now the gray Temple hoodie is retired, and I will pull out the Cherry hoodie for the Army game a week from now. Had to buy one on the concourse today ($85, 2XL).

At this rate, I will go broke.

Superstition notwithstanding, a great day up until 2 p.m. was ruined by what happened between 2 and 5 p.m. The defense that completely shut down a scoring machine in UTSA either didn’t show up or was too banged up to duplicate that effort.

The Owls were on the precipice of becoming bowl eligible and that’s something Keeler and company embraced that thought all week.

Now the next thought should be to win the next play, the next game, and not look at the scoreboard or the implications of it.

Leave it to the equipment crew to take a sledgehammer to those God-ugly White helmets. It might have had nothing to do with the latest loss, but even to tempt Karma on All Soul’s Day was probably not a good idea.

Monday: Last Chance Hotel

Friday: Army Preview

6 thoughts on “Somebody please bury the White helmets

  1. On to Army in Cherry Helmets. ECU was just the better team. We tried hard. We’ll get them next time.

    KCK made a big mistake gaslighting ECUʻs 16 day layoff during the presser last Monday. They took note and made us pay.

    The Temple D needs a good medicine man. They are banged up. Army will bring the wood.

  2. ECU is much better than their record shows. Hats off to them, they are a good football team. Don’t be shocked if they end up playing in the conference title game.

    Losing a few key members of the secondary early on was brutal – we needed every starter out there to have a fighting chance against one of the better offenses in the conference. 340 yards in one half is insane.

    For as good as the offense and Simon have been this season, they looked lost today. The o-line was bullied, and we really don’t have a receiver that can stretch the field.

    It’s sad how bad the turnout was, and not fair to the players. I’ve been to all 5 home games this season but unfortunately won’t be able to make the Tulane game due to a schedule conflict.

    Onto Army. It would have been nice if the bye came next week but it is what it is. Our best chance of becoming bowl eligible is going to be a win against them or Tulane at home, who looks a bit more winnable after they got whooped by UTSA Thursday.

    • If the Temple of the Navy game shows up, we have a good chance. If the Temple of today shows up, we have no chance. I’m going to watch the entire Tarleton State win at Army to try to determine what they did. Hope the staff does, too.

  3. Hopefully just an off game where nothing seemed to work. ECU dominated at the line of scrimmage – both ways. What happened to our D-lineman coming back from injuries who we thought would pressure their QB? ECU is really good!

    • I usually watch the entire game when I come home. Only had the stomach to watch the highlights because I know what I saw. No. 0 (Kromah) and No. 55 (Badmus) were in there but nowhere near as effective as they were against UTSA. Hopefully, it was because of rust and not lack of effort. I saw a little bit of the latter, unfortunately.

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