A little bit after Temple beat Penn State for the first time since 1942, Matt Rhule visited our tailgate and was holding the game ball.

He gave it to 90-year-old Wayne Hardin, leaned over and kissed him on the cheek and said, “Coach, this is for all the times you came close and should have had one of these.”

Taking it all in, I turned to my good friend, John Belli (RIP), and whispered, “These are the good old days.”

He understood.

It wouldn’t get better than beating Penn State and extending them the courtesy of a worse beatdown that 27-10 by taking four knees to end the game on the Lions’ 12-yard-line.

Tailgating late into the night afterward was the Cherry on top of that White.

Why didn’t it finish 34-10?

That was a little bit of the Penn State in Matt Rhule. I would have scored the touchdown to make the final 34-10, but that’s me remembering Joe Paterno rubbing it in when Penn State won by 47-0 and 55-7 scores.

Today, a football site dedicated to the G5 remembered that 2015 team was a damn good one. What they forgot to note was that the team in the next year was even better.

That got me to thinking.

Was I right when I mentioned that to John?

Yeah.

Not only did Temple beat PSU that year, it went 7-0 and hosted No. 9-ranked Notre Dame and drew the highest rating for a Prime Time game ever in the 4th-largest TV market. Had safety Will Hayes turned the right way on a touchdown reception, the Owls would have started 8-0.

I shouldn’t have thought beating PSU was the Zenith of Temple football but I said it out loud then. Maybe it was prescient.

Because in no way did I ever dream that college football would devolve into what we have now. You not only pay to play, but you pay to win.

As much as I would love to beat Penn State in September of this year, I’m a realist, too. They pay to win and as much as I like to think Temple has a chance to win that game, I don’t.

What will the next “Halcyon Days” at Temple look like?

Webster’s dictionary refers to Halcyon Days as being “a very happy and successful period in the past.” We can be happy in the future, but I think it’s unrealistic given the current landscape to expect to be as happy as, say, 9/5/15 or championship Saturday the next season. I think K.C. Keeler is every bit the coach Rhule and Al Golden were so there could be happy days in the future.

Happier?

I think Temple–with the No. 1 recruiting class in the AAC and the No. 1 transfer portal class–has an outside chance to win the league this year but I think that would be more likely next.

Still, would it match that two-year stretch in 2015/2016?

No, because the student involvement with the program then was much more strong than it is now and enabled the Owls to draw 35,000 of their own fans for a 48-14 Homecoming win over Tulane in 2015. You need sustained winning seasons to build that kind of support and even if the Owls have one now after four 3-9 and one 5-7 seasons the fan momentum is not at the level in 2026 that it was a decade or so ago.

So, what do we have to hope for?

Minimum 6-6 seasons going forward with an occasional league championshipis the ceiling.

Even though that ceiling isn’t high, it certainly beats the floor we’ve seen in the six years of Carey/Drayton.

Unless college football goes back to the foundation it had then, that’s a ceiling we will have to embrace.