After 24 hours of stewing over a game that should have been closer, a few things became clearer about Temple football from a 30,000-feet perspective.

One, from a sheer physicality standpoint, the Owls on both sides of the football more than held their own with one of the most talented rosters in college football. What needs to be cleaned up is getting the Owls’ athletes in space to turn the scoreboard into an adding machine and that did not happen enough. The Toledo game (3 p.m. Saturday, CBS Sports Network) will determine if the Owls fix that issue.

Two, Penn State fans actually thought Lincoln Financial Field was going to look like this …

… when, in reality, it looked like the photo at the top of this post. Even Co-Pilot noticed:

For the most part, the 12,500 students who currently live on the Temple campus deserve a big thumbs up from this space because that’s the largest student involvement at a Temple game since Luke Butler led the Cherry Crusade in the Al Golden years. Strong student leadership led to scenes like this back then:

If the students are going to show this kind of support for the rest of the season, the team should be in good shape because the players feed off that kind of energy. My only regret is that the Owls didn’t score more and we didn’t hear “T from Temple U” being sung from the stands enough because of it. A lot of Penn State fans were puffing their chests about their fan turnout but, for a team with seven-straight losing seasons, the Temple turnout was nothing to sneeze at. It’s easy to show up when your team has been in a bowl every year. It’s hard to show up when your team rarely sniffs a bowl. Memo to President John Fry: Close classes on the afternoon of the Army game so the kids can have some fun at LFF.

A lot of Penn State fans who thought the score was going to be 50-0 or worse left disappointed but their disappointment could wane if the Owls, say, won the American Conference title. More importantly, the disappointment of Temple fans. That means the Owls getting their athletes in space in one-on-one matchups. The best way to do create that space is to have a pass/run threat at quarterback who the defense has to account for and maybe even spy. After two weeks of watching these two quarterbacks, I have the nagging feeling that kind of dynamic runner and passer is maybe a year away from playing (Lamar Best). What we saw is the offense sputter after taking that lead into the second quarter. Interesting that in the 2015-win, Temple scored 27 straight points and in the 2026-win, Penn State scored 27 straight points. Both scores would have been 27-10 if the Owls just took the XP. Owls got great QB play from P.J. Walker that day, but neither of these two guys is P.J. Walker.

I hope I’m wrong and one of these two guys grab the job and show the kind of “it” factor in putting points on the board that Evan Simon had last year. There is not enough evidence of that yet.

That should be the goal and for the Owls to fight as hard as they did and refuse to be pushed around was the good that came from the loss.

That, and the students showing up. Good times ahead if that’s a trend and not an anomoly.

Friday: Toledo Preview