Author Archives: Mike Gibson

04.13.15
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Cherry and White Day All About Beating Penn State

While researching a story about Stan Hochman, I came across this story I wrote in 1986 for a chain of newspapers. Still chasing the dream almost 30 years later.

While researching a story about Stan Hochman, I came across this story I wrote in 1986 for a chain of newspapers. Still chasing the dream almost 30 years later. 

Having watched Cherry and White Day games at Temple Stadium (both when it was standing and after it was demolished), Lincoln Financial Field (once), Geasey Field (several times) and now at the E-O, the meaning this year as never been more clear.

Beat Penn State.

While ostensibly the reason for spring practice is to get ready for the season as a whole, the focus can be on this one game this time because it is the opening one.

That’s not to say the Owls can’t have a great season if they lose to Penn State, but they would be changing life-long perceptions by winning this game. Ever since sports talk radio began a generation ago, talk show hosts in Philadelphia laughingly dismissed the notion that Temple could ever beat Penn State.

Last year, a Penn State talker, Mike Missanelli, openly asked, “Is this the year Temple finally beats Penn State?” His producer, Jon Marks, a Temple grad said, “no, that’s never going to happen.” Missanelli said, “Yeah, I was just messing with you.”

That’s the kind of perception both Penn Staters and Philadelphians have about this game. It’s the kind of perception they always have had.

It will always be that way until Temple decides to put Christian Hackenberg on his ass as many times as it put three Vanderbilt quarterbacks on their ass a year ago.

It can happen, but until it does, the Owls will be still chasing that dream.

04.10.15
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Another Friend of Temple Football Passes

Stan Hochman wrote some of his best columns about Temple football.

Stan Hochman wrote some of his best columns about Temple football.

While the other guys I played basketball with on the sloped courts at my grade school in Northeast Philadelphia had Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Richie—yes, we called him Richie then—Allen for boyhood heroes, I had guys like Sandy Grady, Frank Dolson and Stan Hochman.

They would talk about the great catches or the long home runs. I would talk about the turning of a phrase or a strong take on an issue.

Stan writing about his Wayne Hardin column. and wishing he could have kept the stories Wayne told about the Continental Football League champion Philadelphia Bulldogs in the column.

Stan writing about his Wayne Hardin column. and wishing he could have kept the stories Wayne told about the Continental Football League champion Philadelphia Bulldogs in the column.

Now, with Stanley’s passing at the age of 86, I have not only lost a hero but someone I got to know as a friend and someone who was a friend of Temple football.  Of the three great Philly sports columnists, only Stan was a friend of Temple football. (The other two guys pretty much wanted the school to drop the sport.) Stan always felt there was room for a big-time college team in the city and wanted Temple to thrive, particularly at the box office.

As an active and credentialed (if that means anything) sportswriter with the Doylestown Intelligencer and Philadelphia Inquirer, I got to know Stan because he was one of the few guys who would show up with me in a largely empty press box at Veterans Stadium to cover some Temple games. Stan wrote some of his best stuff on Temple football, lately writing about a guy (appropriately enough named Doolittle) who was working on a never released movie about Temple football fans and later about Wayne Hardin’s attempt to fill the stadium for an Al Golden-Era Temple game. As always, Stan’s emails were full of wit and I thought it was an extra good day when I got one.

Related:

http://articles.philly.com/2007-08-21/sports/24995401_1_temple-campus-wayne-hardin-navy

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2002&dat=19971116&id=Xe1fAAAAIBAJ&sjid=I7YFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5562,3515204&hl=en

04.01.15
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Now that the Basketball Season is Over …

Now that the basketball season is over–sorry, we don’t count women’s basketball–the attention of the Temple University sports community rests with the improvement of the football team.

The team is in full pads now and plenty of positions are up for grabs.

We don’t usually talk about basketball here, but congratulations are in order for head coach Fran Dunphy and the men’s basketball team. Fran did a fantastic job and the team was robbed of an NCAA bid by the corrupt Selection Committee. They turned that into winning three more games after Selection Sunday and it could not have been easy to get up for those games when lesser NCAA achievers were included in the field.

Start with UCLA, a 20-13 team from the Pac-12 that did not have a quality road win the entire season. Continue with Indiana, a 20-13 team from the Big Ten that went 9-9 in its own conference, which was not as good as it has been in the recent past. Oklahoma State and Texas, among others with far lesser resumes than Temple, were included in the field.

This post by Owlsdaily.com editor Shawn Pastor was uncanningly prophetic and it came at 10:03 a.m. on Selection Sunday, approximately eight hours before the Owls were not included:

“Speaking of the committee, my biggest paranoid worry right now is about its current membership.  For whatever reason, the committee is heavily populated by individuals from the West, Midwest, and South.  The only East Coast guy on the committee is Northeastern AD Peter Roby (DOB’s successor, incidentally).  The next best thing is the AD from UNC-Asheville.  But the committee chairman Scott Barnes is from Utah State (Mountain West), and the rest of the committee is from BYU, Stanford, LSU, Michigan State, Creighton, and Conference USA.  I guess Creighton is “sort of” an East Coast representative.  But the bottom line is that BYU and LSU definitely have an advantage over the other bubble teams.”

All of this points to the fact that Temple must get into a Power 5 conference or the AAC must become one.

That happening probably is closer to being an April Fool’s story than it is a reality.

Speaking of April Fool’s, we considered some ideas for our annual April Fool’s Day feature but rejected them as unbelievable:

  • Team’s second-best offensive lineman gets arrested and will miss the season due to getting into a fight:
  • Heavily recruited linebacker “retires” at 19;
  • Team that desperately needs slot receiver allows SR candidate to transfer because he doesn’t want to play DB;
  • Starting guard in final game at Tulane transfers so he can play FCS football;
  • NCAA gets rid of the hardship waiver rule just to deny Temple the ability to start a four-star WR.

Nobody would believe any of that, so we’re posting a best-of here:

https://templefootballforever.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/big-10-explores-idea-of-adding-temple/

https://templefootballforever.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/addazios-first-5-star-recruit-urban-meyer/

https://templefootballforever.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/skys-the-limit-for-6-11-walk-on-freshman/

https://templefootballforever.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/robby-anderson-the-prodigal-son-returns/

03.28.15
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Who is Here and Who is Not?

Jihaad Pretlow will not be roaming he secondary for the Owls next season.

Jihaad Pretlow will not be roaming he secondary for the Owls next season.

Every spring practice season, only the most ardent of Temple fans frequently updated rosters on Owlsports.com trying to cross both fingers while holding a rabbit’s foot.

The goal, of course, is hoping that “nobody good” has left the team. I do not know about you, but I want the money for my rabbit’s foot back.

Jacob Quinn will be leading the way for a Delaware back this fall, not an Owl like Zaire Williams (23) in this 2013 game at SMU.

Jacob Quinn will be leading the way for a Delaware back this fall, not an Owl like Zaire Williams (23) in this 2013 game at SMU.

I didn’t need to open the roster to find out that the team’s best offensive lineman, Dion Dawkins, might be facing some legal problems after being involved in an off-campus fight. I’m always one for “innocent until proven guilty” and the day Jim Gardner led Action News that “a Temple football player had been involved in an alleged rape” I dashed off an email to Gardner asking that if the player got exonerated to please lead off Action News with that exoneration. He later was exonerated and Action News underplayed that development as much as it overplayed the player’s arrest.

Hopefully, Dawkins will have the same fate but another offensive line starter (at least in the final game at Tulane), Jacob Quinn, has decided to eschew his final year of eligibility and go home to Delaware to play for the Blue Hens. He will be eligible immediately. Buddy Brown, who came to the school as a highly recruited linebacker, “retired” from football.

Another guy not here, Jihaad Pretlow, one of the team’s best defensive backs transferred out of school.

All good guys and players, unfortunately. Someday  I’d like to open up the roster and see the only news is that the fifth string quarterback or the fourth-team offensive guard leave the team but that never seems to happen at Temple.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that 100 or so players do remain.

Unfortunately, college age kids being what they are, this kind of thing happens everywhere but it’s a two-steps-forward-one-step-back kind of thing with the Owls. An offensive line that already was a weakness became weakened in two areas and there are only so many good players to go around. The defensive backfield and linebacking corps lost some depth.

How this impacts Temple won’t be known this spring. Heck, it will not be known by Cherry and White Day. The Owls will have to wait until the Penn State game for that answer.

03.17.15
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Football Must Now Help Basketball

This kind of student turnout is mandatory if the Owls ever want to be treated fairly.

This kind of student turnout is mandatory if the Owls ever want to be treated fairly.

The entire Temple campus is still stinging from the latest proof that college basketball is now as corrupt as college football.

The old terms used to be RPI, strength of schedule, injuries, how teams play down the stretch. Now the only thing that’s meaningful is the vague “eye test” which means, if you are not a Power 5 team, we cannot see you.

I created an open group in the Fox Sports bracket called "Temple Got Screwed." Anyone is invited to join.

I created an open group in the Fox Sports bracket called “Temple Got Screwed.” Anyone is invited to join.

The best way for Temple to become a Power 5 team is to win in football. No longer will 6-6 be acceptable. No longer will losses to Penn State be acceptable. A win over Notre Dame would hasten the call, as will filling the stadium for the other games. None of this is easy, but nothing worthwhile is.

By all NCAA criteria, Temple’s resume was superior to that of both UCLA and Indiana in every respect except the one that should not have mattered at all: Its athletic program was not a member of the Power 5, which has taken over the NCAA and remade it into its own playpen.

The NCAA’s No. 1 criteria is RPI, and Temple’s RPI of 34 was better than the RPI of Georgia, Ohio State, Texas, Iowa, UCLA and Oklahoma State, along with six other teams in the tournament. Another factor the NCAA says weighs heavily is how the team plays down the stretch, and Temple won 10 of its final 12 games, a superior run to most of the schools in the 68-team field, let alone the Power 5 schools.

Temple has a 25-point win over a No. 2 seed, Kansas, and none of the other bubble teams had a win like that on their resume. Only Kentucky has beaten Kansas by a bigger margin.

UCLA getting in over Temple was particularly galling. Temple’s record was 23-10, while UCLA’s was 20-13. Temple’s RPI was 34, while UCLA’s was 47; Temple’s record against the RPI top 100 was 8-8, while UCLA’s was 5-10. Temple’s best win against the RPI top 100 was Kansas (No. 2), while UCLA’s was against Utah (No. 20). Temple’s conference record was 13-5, while UCLA’s conference record was 11-7.

Most bracketologists dismissed Steve Alford’s team from the field altogether, but UCLA comfortably made the field of 68 while also avoiding a First Four game in Dayton. Most of those same bracketologists had Temple comfortably in the field.

Those experts assumed that the selection committee would follow its own guidelines, but failed to consider the fact that the Power 5 gets what it wants. That’s the reason why Sunday was a sad day not only for fans of Temple, but for all fair-minded sports fans.

Hmm. No mention of a stadium.

Hmm. No mention of a stadium.

03.10.15
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Jennings Should Sue If Not Granted Hardship

Adonis Jennings, Temple football, Pitt football,

Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

There are plenty of double-standards that make college football less appealing to the average fan, but none more unfair than the double-standard involving players and coaches and that is why the case of Temple’s Adonis Jennings is particularly interesting.

Jennings officially committed to Temple on Monday with this tweet:

A coach can sign a contract with one FBS school and then “transfer” by taking a job at another without sitting out a year, while in most cases, a player trying to transfer and, in effect, take a job playing football at another FBS school has to sit out a year.

Jennings should be able to do the same thing head coach Paul Chryst did when he jumped from Pittsburgh to Wisconsin for the same job. Jennings was recruited to Pitt by Chryst in good faith and was one of the main reasons why he accepted a scholarship offer there. Chryst, in turn, burned Jennings’ red-shirt in a few late November games. Now that Chryst had a change of heart with Pitt, the NCAA should give player Jennings the same opportunity it did with coach Chryst. Jennings signed to play both at Pitt and for Jennings; now that those circumstances have changed, Jennings should be allowed to move just as freely.

A player like Jennings, a four-star wide receiver recruit who initially committed to Rutgers and then changed his commitment to Pittsburgh, should not have to go through the red tape he is now by reversing field and coming home to Temple. Philadelphia is just 15 minutes across the river from Jennings’ home in Timber Creek, NJ, and that will be the crux of his hardship waiver appeal, saying he wanted to be closer to his family. Temple is the closest FBS program to Timber Creek and that could be enough for his waiver appeal to be approved.

Still, if Chryst doesn’t have to sit out a year before taking over at Wisconsin neither should Jennings nor any other player caught up in those kind of coaching staff changes. If the NCAA balks, Jennings has what appears to be a great case for a class-action suit.

03.02.15
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Complete Coverage of the On-Campus Stadium Announcement

An empty Howard Gittis Room at the Liacouras Center yesterday where university exterminators spent the afternoon looking for crickets.

An empty Howard Gittis Room at the Liacouras Center yesterday where university exterminators spent the afternoon looking for crickets.

That’s it, an empty Howard Gittis Room on a Sunday when nothing was happening in Philadelphia sports and an announcement of an on-campus stadium would have been front-page news in all three Philadelphia daily papers and right at the top of all the sportscasts.
It would seem to me that the uni should now give up this pipe dream and begin to negotiate in good faith with the Philadelphia Eagles because the other options–Franklin Field and Chester–would be a Doomsday Scenario for Temple football.
Maybe the Phillies will move to Oakland and the Owls can slide into a more fan-friendly Citizens Bank Park.
That seems to be a scenario just as plausible as coming up with $300 million of private funds to plop a stadium down at 15th and Norris before 2018.