After the Super Bowl and March Madness, there is a dead spot in sports for me that doesn’t get filled in until Temple football’s Cherry and White game.

I mean, after baseball’s opening day, there are about 161 more games, most boring until something big happens.

So, being the movie buff I am, I thought which cultural movie icon did I miss that I need to see to fill the void? That was an easy answer in the wake of the death of probably the best Youtuber I have ever followed, Adam The Woo (real name David Adam Williams).

Adam was a big fan of Back to the Future. Having never seen that trilogy, I absorbed the first two over the weekend.

In one of them, BTF travels to the year 2015.

They saw flying cars, which didn’t happen, but missed out on Temple beating Penn State in football, which did happen. Robert Zemeckis didn’t know specifics, just generalities so he gets a pass.

Temple fans who travel to 10th and Diamond for this year’s Cherry and White game might experience a little back to the future on their own because now, like then, Penn State is coming to town and now, like then, Temple has a chance to put itself on the national map with an upset win.

There are other factors even Zemeckis couldn’t see back in 1985 when he made BTF (like the transfer portal and NIL) working against the Owls’ chances but there are others that are similar. Now, like then, Temple has a great head coach (Matt Rhule, K.C. Keeler) who had some experience as Owls’ head coaches under their belts. Now, like then, Penn State has a first-year head coach (James Franklin, Matt Campbell), who is coming over from Iowa State but feeling his way around in a new job for the first time.

Now, like then, Temple players have bought into their head coach. The thing I remember most from a fan perspective is that Rhule made a point of hitting all of the major tailgates to interact with the fans in the hours before kickoff and I hope Keeler does the same kind of networking. That was a contributing factor, albeit small, to Temple having a big homefield advantage on 9/5/15, where 2/3s of the 70,000 in attendance were wearing Cherry and White. If I had to ask Keeler one question it would not be who the quarterback is going to be or why the pass rush is going to be better, but why the hell does he approve White helmets?

Answer: There is no good reason.

White helmets have been Bad Karma for Temple football since 1884 and they need to go in the trash heap of history. Football-wise, the only thing we will learn is if the players have the same kind of urgency that 2015 group seemed to have. That group was coming off a 6-6 season. This one is coming off a 5-7 season that could just has easily been a 7-5 one except for one-point losses to the service academies.

Now, like then, the current players understand the quality of the opponent ahead and the urgency between April 11 and September that it takes to compete with them.

We got a sense for that urgency in April of 2015 and will eagerly see if we get the same vibe at 2 p.m. on Saturday that punched us in the gut a little over a decade ago.

Monday: Cherry and White Recap