As a kid, I was a Penn football fan.

Watched every game on TV. Went to every home game and watched running back Adolph Belizaire, wide receiver Don Clune and a quarterback from Bishop Egan named Billy Creeden terrorize Ivy League defenses.

Still, something was missing.

Never understood why Penn was big-time in football and gave that up to pursue academics. There was a void in the City of Philadelphia, one of the largest cities in the country without a big-time football team.

I was a football fan, not a chemistry class fan, and looked on the other side of the city and saw a legendary coach named Wayne Hardin try to fill that void with Temple.

For awhile, he did.

That’s when I became a Temple fan and turned down a full academic ride to Cabrini University (RIP) to walk on (err, pay my own way with a college job at the Philadelphia Bulletin) with the Owls and try to get a journalism degree. All the while my goal was to cover my new favorite sports team, the Temple football Owls.

That dream was achieved both at The Temple News and professionally elsewhere.

Temple had four-straight winning seasons under Hardin capped off by a No. 17 ranking in the country with a 10-2 season in 1979.

To me, if Hardin proved Temple football could be a factor on the national scale, subsequent coaches could.

So far, Bruce Arians did. Al Golden did. Matt Rhule did so those “eras” only reinforced my belief. Winning football is not only possible at Temple, but winning football on a national stage.

If they can do it, and they did, it can be done.

Some say the 53-52 Ron Dickerson loss at Pitt was the worst in Temple history. Or the 2024 29-20 loss at UConn was bad but none, in my mind, surpassed the debacle we saw on Saturday at Toledo.

Maybe it’s recency bias but based on what I saw last week against Penn State, this defense should never have given half a hundred to anybody else.

Even Hardin had his brutal losses but the difference between his 26-25 loss at Franklin Field in 1975 and the next year 31-30 at Veterans Stadium, both against Penn State, is that Hardin made no tactical errors in those two losses, coached brilliantly, and lost.

On Saturday, at Toledo, Temple made plenty of coaching mistakes.

The first as detailed here on Saturday was not rushing the passer. The second was throwing a fade to the tight end in the end zone when every Temple fan in America who followed Hardin, Al Golden and Matt Rhule knew the call would have been a rollout pass for a mobile quarterback. Those coaches took advantage of the unique talents their players had. They would have not turned Ajani Sheppard, a rollout passer, into a pocket passer with the game on the line.

Mental mistakes that turned a 42-28 lead with 1:11 on the fourth-quarter clock to a 49-48 OT loss.

Unacceptable.

Everybody has said that North Carolina State’s fumble in the end zone that led to a 35-31 loss to host Vanderbilt was the most brutal loss on Saturday.

To me, that paled by comparison to Temple’s because all the Owls had to do was put the bad guys’ quarterback on his ass or roll out the good guys’ quarterback for a run/pass option that Toledo could not stop. If the easy flare toss to, say, Colin Chase, wasn’t there, Ajani Sheppard would have took it in for the winning 2-point conversion and a 50-49 win.

Don’t force your running quarterback to be a pocket passer on the most important play of the game but that’s what Temple did.

Tried to watch and enjoy the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday but could not enjoy it because I kept thinking about the Temple loss. When the Eagles lose, nobody calls for the team to drop out of the NFL but for the last 24 hours or so on social media, I’ve had to listen and read the bullshit that Temple should drop football for losing to a team that was a 6-point favorite. When the Phillies lose two straight to the Mets, nobody has to hear that the Phillies should shut down Citizens Bank Park.

Every Temple loss, Temple fans have to listen to this crap.

That’s why every Temple loss cuts deep followed by the knife being stuck in the next day with the reaction. Things were supposed to be different with this winningest ever head coach in college football and we were going to show these losers that we are winners this year.

So, yes, this was the toughest Temple loss ever and there have been many. Hopefully, the kids are more resilient than the adults who have loved this team for the longest time but the flip side is those kids have done the hardest work and have nothing to show for it. Maybe some will say fuck it. Let’s hope not.

They have a choice now. Turn that hard work into a 10-2 season or turn that disappointment into more losses down the road.

They will now have to do it without a lot of Temple fans who saw what happened on Saturday and checked out. Getting them to check back in will take a few wins at least.

Friday: Army Preview