08.31.26
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After 259 days without it, we now have Temple football

Thirteen days passed between the Temple football Owls “winning the second half” against North Texas and New Year’s Eve.

Since then, as of today, 253 days have passed in this calendar year.

Six more to go means 259 without Temple football.

About damn time we get it back.

After trying to get a Lot K pass for the Penn State game two weeks ago (and failing), I’m going to roll up like Ice Cube five hours before Saturday’s 2 p.m. home opener with Rhode Island and say, “this is going to be a very good day” and thank the attendant and pay my $25 or $30 or whatever for parking. No need to get a pass in advance.

In a way, kind of wish it was as hard to get parking for Rhode Island as it was for me to get parking for Penn State because that would mean the crowd would be closer to 60,000 than the 20,000 I expect. There are other factors to consider. Temple finished 3-9 for five straight seasons before new head coach K.C. Keeler infused life into the program.

One 5-7 season isn’t going to get back the fans to the 30K level the Owls had in consecutive double-digit win seasons.

There is, though, a beginning and it might have been beating the North Texas guys, 18-17, in the second half. North Texas was a damn good college football team last year. Those North Texas guys are pretty much now at Oklahoma State while the USF guys are at Auburn and the Tulane guys are at Florida, only the good ones following their head coach to so-called greener pastures.

At Temple, the “good guys” remained which gives the Owls a leg up on the American Conference competition. One of Walt Disney’s famous quotes is “the difference between winning and losing is most often not quitting.” Since nobody quit Temple, it only follows there should be a lot of winning.

Right now, though, that doesn’t matter.

All that matters is finding a starting quarterback with the moxie and the “it” factor to not only beat Rhode Island but give the Owls a fighting chance against the rest of the schedule.

So the intrigue on Saturday probably will consist of two “starting” quarterbacks facing live bullets (a pass rush and hitting) for the first time at Temple and finding out which guy dodges those bullets the best. Fortunately, the game that decides that will be Rhode Island and not Penn State. Pretty similar to a year ago when both Evan Simon and Gevani McCoy were locked in a struggle for the starting job and Simon got on the field first and kept throwing touchdown passes until they couldn’t take him off the field.

This year, it’s between Penn State transfer Jaxon Smolik and Washington State transfer Ajani Sheppard and there is as much space between them as there was between Simon and McCoy a year ago.

These things have a tendency to work to work out but, at least at Temple, it’s the first time we’ve seen this since Frank Nutile won the job outright in the 2017 season. That year, Nutile–who never started a college football game before–threw for 1,600 yards and 12 touchdowns and was the MVP in a bowl win for the Owls.

Should the same thing happen with both the position and the team this year, Owl fans will take it.

At least this one will. The wait has been long enough, both for this season and a bowl win.

Friday: Rhode Island Preview

Late Saturday Night (pushing midnight due to tailgating): Game Analysis

One thought on “After 259 days without it, we now have Temple football”

  1. The URI defense will be better than the UMass defense was last year. Probability is high we’ll see both QBs play. A bullet always tells the truth.

    Go Owls, beat Rhode Island.

    Reply

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