Post-practice interview sessions in August are a little like prospecting for Gold in 1849.

Put the pan in, do some swishing, move some dirt and look for the kernels of knowledge.

Owlscoop.com’s John DiCarlo is a good guy and a fine journalist, but he’s a master of the 35-second question, trying to frame the answer.

Fortunately, Temple head coach Matt Rhule gives the answers he wants to give.

Here’s what we learned:

• Romond Deloatch overslept and was late for practice so he got switched from tight end to defensive line. He had seven or eight sacks, or so Rhule says. (Hey, the kid is  a great athlete, so it’s believable.)
• Rhule still has the New York Giants’ playbook. (If one is missing, coach Coughlin, now you know where it is.) Hey, I know a Temple fan who has a UConn playbook but I’m not saying who he or she is.
• Pete White is playing great at right guard for the Owls and Rhule wants to “trade” him to the NFL at the end of the season.
• P.J. Walker is progressing at about the same rate as Teddy Bridgewater did before his freshman year at Louisville and that’s a very good thing. I hope the Owls can keep him away from the memorabilia guys.
• Connor Reilly has a slight ankle sprain.
• Juice Granger is throwing the ball better than ever.
• One of the goals of the team is getting back its sack mojo (40-45 a year during the Golden/Rhule Era).

Good stuff, but I can’t wait until 8/31/13. The countdown continues:

Matt Rhule talks to the Inquirer’s John Mitchell (left) and assorted media types.

Those of you who’ve read this site for the last eight years know I’m not a big guy on practice.
The one “practice” I pay a lot of attention to every year is the Cherry and White game and since that’s always the good guys against the good guys, I don’t get much satisfaction out of that either.
Wake me up when the real games begin.

To me, any good story has to have a protagonist and an antagonist.
The story of Temple football so far has been a protagonist and a protagonist.
The antagonist shows up in this story on Aug. 31, not before.
Still, I recognize that practice is a necessary forward in this great football book.
So the good news for me out of Saturday’s first scrimmage was that the pass rush is back and disrupting things.
Let’s hope that’s because of the pass rush and not the offensive line, but that’s a different chapter for another day.
To me, the key to winning in football is ball security.
You take care of your responsibility and hold onto the ball and then force the bad guy, the antagonist, to give it up.
The best way to force the other guy to give it up is a good blindside pass rush that forces fumbles in the backfield or a quicker-than-timed release that results in interceptions.
Temple had that pass rush yesterday. Let’s hope the Owls keep it up for the next six months or so.

I really miss Fran Duffy and Scott “Our Very Own” Hartkorn.
Those were the video guys from back in the day with Al Golden.
Not only would they file a report a day, they’d send me the link and I would post it on TFF immediately.

Duffy and OVO brought the fans close to the team by interviewing a different group of players every day. The personalities of the  players showed through the screen, with guys like Adrian Robinson and Morkeith Brown doing dances and Morkeith coming up with his own Temple cheer. I hope the current video guys are allowed enough rope to do the same thing with the players as the summer progresses. In the video below, you see Morkeith Brown leading the guys in the ahhh-HAAA cheer. To me, that’s what Temple football is all about. No, not the cheer itself but the fun of playing the game and the swagger, the confidence,  that Temple brought to the stadium every Saturday.  AS much as I missed the winning,  I missed that swagger and fun last year.  Connor Reilly said something the other day that indicated to me the fun is back. “The whole atmosphere is changed around here,” Reilly said.

For a couple of years, Fran Duffy and his crew gave fans an insight into Temple football in their daily “Owl Outlook” features.

Duffy, who Al Golden called “the best in the business” at the team’s football banquet, is now producer with the Philadelphia Eagles television network. You’ll see some of his work Friday night on TV against the New England Patriots. OVO was Duffy’s right-hand man at TU.

Still, you’ve got to take what you can get and what you can get these days is an interview with Matt Rhule. Love the way Matt talks to the press. He’s honest and straightforward and doesn’t try to hide or sugarcoat anything.
Got a report from a few of the ex-players who said Connor Reilly has the “it” factor. I like the “it” factor. You know it when you see it. Adam DiMichele had it. Chester Stewart and Vaughn Charlton didn’t have it. Chris Coyer had “it” when Scot Loeffler was the OC. He didn’t have it when Ryan Day took over. I think Juice and P.J. have “it” as well.
The it factor can win a lot of games for you.
Also like that Rhule is saying the younger players are the story of the defensive secondary. After that secondary was torched last year (not really ALL their fault, there was no pass rush), it’s time for younger blood, although I think Anthony Robey is an NFL-caliber DB.
Rhule said today was the first day heat was a factor. Looking at the long-range forecast, doesn’t look like heat will be much of a factor going past the next day or so.
Unlike last year at this time, when Steve Addazio was complaining about the quality of the wide receivers, it looks like that group is a strength of this team.
See what happens when you commit to throwing the ball?

Throwback Thursday (skip the preliminaries and jump ahead to the 3:30 time stamp … this is what Temple football is all about):

Temple football after working out on the Art Museum (Rocky) steps recently.

Today, Temple football is back (officially).
Anyone who takes the train into the city on a regular basis as I do knows that Temple football has never left.
You could see the guys holding some sort of unofficial practices in the snow, rain and sleet all winter,  the cool spring  mornings and the heat of a mid-summer afternoon.

That’s the life of a major college football player these days.
For all of that work, you get only 12 Saturday afternoons _ 13 if you are lucky _ to show the fruits of all that lifting and studying and drills.
One of Saturdays is the last one of this month.
If football was a school play, this play skips the auditorium and goes straight to Broadway, where it will be scrutinized by all of the major critics in the media.
Now the practices are more structured and with a sense of purpose.
Rocky vs. Rudy.

Rudy Ruettiger (45) played for Dan Devine, who once applied to be head coach at Temple.

Temple vs. Notre Dame in about 26 days, give or take a few hours.

That’s almost four weeks to get ready for a top-level BCS team.

For all of the excitement about Notre Dame, though, there is a more important goal ahead than winning that first game.
For the past few weeks or so, the poll question on this website has been:
Would you rather …

a) lose to Notre Dame and go 11-1

b) beat Notre Dame and go 6-6

c) go 6-6 only if two wins are over ND and Rutgers

While C is my second choice, there is a right answer to that question and it’s No. 1.

Temple football should strive for excellence but Notre Dame recruits in a different stratosphere than the Owls.  (Notre Dame also recruited in a different stratosphere than UConn, USF and Navy and lost to all those schools in recent years. Temple beat all of those schools in the same time frame.)  That said, I don’t see a game among the final 11 (with the possible exception of Louisville) that can’t be won. Rutgers lost almost its entire team and Tommy Tuberville ran off just about the entire Cincinnati recruiting class after he signed to be head coach. The most important thing is winning as many of those final 11 as possible. I’m greedy, though. I’ll take all 12, but seven is the minimum this team should get. Anything above that is gravy and there’s nothing better than gravy around Thanksgiving.
Rocky vs. Rudy is a tremendously compelling matchup, but Rocky vs. the rest of the American Athletic Conference is far more important in the grand scheme of things.

Joe Klecko (left) hugging Wesley Walker. Read my story on Joe on Rantsports.com by clicking on this photo.

As much as I love watching the Pro Football Hall of Fame Induction Ceremonies (tonight, 7 p.m., ESPN), the last 20 or so years I’ve had to shake my head when I hear all of these speeches.
I mean, Warren Sapp is a great player and all and deserves to be in the Hall of Fame but does anyone who saw both Sapp and Joe Klecko in their primes REALLY think Sapp is a better player?
I didn’t think so.

Joe Klecko deserves to get into the Hall of Fame, as the great New York Times’ columnist Dave Anderson argues in this well-written piece.
Sapp wasn’t as a strong an interior presence as Klecko, never occupied as many blockers as Klecko and, unlike Klecko, was too fat and slow to get to the quarterback on a regular basis. But what can be said about the Sapp/Klecko comparison can also be said about the Dan Hampton/Klecko comparison or a number of other linemen who are already in with Klecko out.

Klecko led the league in sacks with 20 1/2 in 1981 and Sapp never led the league in sacks. Sapp’s season-high in sacks was 16 1/2 in 2000 and had only three other double-digit sack years.
Yet Sapp will get up there, make his speech and sit down and I will think that should have been Joe.
Again.
I hope that Temple people and Jets people can combine forces and push the Hall to get Joe Klecko in, if not next year, then the year after.
I do know when Al Golden got up and spoke for coach Wayne Hardin that made a little bit of a difference and I would hope that Matt Rhule does what he can to add his voice to the call for Klecko into the Hall, as do the New York Jets’ players, coaches and fans.

My only beef with Joe is a very minor one. When his son, Dan, played at Temple, he used to tailgate with us all of the time. At one game at Rutgers, I turned to Joe and said, “Now, Joe, just because Dan’s career here comes to an end, that doesn’t mean you have to stop tailgating with us.”

Joe turned to me, looked me in the eye and said: “Mike, I’ll still come back and tailgate with you guys, I promise you that.”

Joe’s never been back, but that should not disqualify him from the Hall of Fame.

The Joe Klecko Hall of Fame Facebook Page

Please read my AAC story on Rantsports.com here.

Sadly, and I hope this level of interest doesn’t translate into Temple football attendance this fall, BUT we haven’t had a TFF donation since July 9 and every click on this story sends about 25 cents TFF’s way. With this new site and the increased start-up costs, we could use the additional revenue. Thanks again.

Matt Rhule takes the podium tomorrow at noon.

Nothing says the start of college football season like Media Day.
(Actually, nothing says the start of college football season as the opening kickoff of football season but, for now, Media Day will have to suffice.)

Temple head coach Matt Rhule will be the last coach to take the podium at noon tomorrow in Newport, R.I..

Rutgers’ coach Kyle Flood will be the first coach to speak.

In this case, hopefully the first will be last and the last will be first.

There are a number of options for Temple fans to participate via twitter and on the internet.