Bars in Philly, unlike Somers Point, were packed last Tuesday cheering on the Owls.
By Mike Gibson
A couple of days ago, I dashed off a note to Inquirer TV writer Mike Klein and asked him to get the ratings for Temple’s EagleBank Bowl football game with UCLA.
I thought they’d be high because Temple always did well on TV when Paul Palmer was going for the Heisman Trophy in 1986 and before that when Wayne Hardin put together a string of winning years.

My email to Mike Klein
From: Mike Gibson
To: mklein@phillynews.com

Date: Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 9:20 PM
Subject: Ratings for Temple-UCLA football

Hi Mike,
I don’t have access to local Neilsen TV ratings, but you might so I thought I’d ask this question:
Could you please publish in your column the local Neilsen ratings for the Dec. 29th TU football game with UCLA?
I was in Washington, but my guess is that the game did very well.
Thanks,
Mike Gibson
Temple Football Forever

There always has been a lot of interest in a “winning” Temple team.
While the “hardcore” fan base delivered some impressive numbers at RFK Stadium, with 20,000 Temple fans making the trip in brutal cold, the “softcore” fan base also produced last Tuesday.
While there were reports all over the place that several watering holes inside Center City (the game was played during Happy Hour) were packed with people cheering on the Owls, there’s nothing like cold, hard numbers produced by the ratings folks at ESPN.
The numbers Klein found were even beyond my expectations and ran in his Inqlings column Tuesday.
I dashed off a similar email to Daily News’ columnist Dan Gross, a Temple grad, who wrote me back: “I’ll try to get you the numbers, Mike, but I don’t think I’ll put them in my column.”
Klein beat Gross to the punch.
Page under “Owls fly” and Klein’s numbers is really the best empirical data supporting the “latent” support and interest for Temple football in the Philadelphia area.

An estimated 140,000 viewers watched the game, which made it the most-watched ESPN bowl game in Philadelphia since 2007 (Penn State was in the Alamo Bowl then).
All of this proves a couple of points:
A winning Temple football team can deliver the fourth-largest market to any football conference in the country and there is a “softcore” group of fans just waiting to jump on the bandwagon and follow a Temple team that proves to be a consistent winner.
The bandwagon’s journey will get underway only with a convincing win over Villanova to start next season but there is enough evidence that there are thousands of people waiting to jump on this Owl Express once that happens.
Warm up those engines.

The EBB’s MVPs (most valuable persons)=Temple’s fans

2010 Recruiting checklist:
1. Long-snapper
2. Pass rushing DE
3. Big-time JUCO QB

WASHINGTON, D.C. _ Walking out of RFK Stadium, I thought about this town just about 150 years ago.
Ford’s Theater, the place where Abraham Lincoln was shot, is only two blocks away from the Renaissance Marriott, the Temple team hotel.
I thought about the famous phrase born out of that tragedy.
“So, other than the ending, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”
If we have any Temple fans named Mrs. Lincoln who care as much about the Owls winning as I do, she’d probably say the same thing about Tuesday’s EagleBank Bowl game with UCLA.
Liked both the play and the game, but the ending was, err, shot.
Lead?
Check. (Owls were leading, 21-20, 2 minutes, 29 seconds into the final act, err, quarter.)
Fans?

Hardin: ‘You always wanted to put your team in a position to go.’

“Cal wanted to exchange films of every game,” Hardin recalled. “Usually you just take the first one, one in the middle and the last one. So I said, ‘Find out which coaches on their staff want them?’ Turned out, it was the defensive coaches. OK. We spent night after night after night, digging and digging and digging. We came up with one or two things we had to do.
“We found out that if we pulled our guards up the middle, we’d end up with one of them going down the field untouched into the secondary. So did the back. Get the hell out of the way. There was no one to block. We had 21 points on the board before we even started. We probably would never have discovered that, had we not graded all the film. That’s how things work. You just don’t know. They did me a favor. We got into the defensive coach’s head.”

The Owls outrushed the Golden Bears, 300 yards to 23.

“It’s unbelievable,” Hardin went on. “The quarterback [Rich Campbell] was taught, which we knew, to read when he didn’t see anything [to] throw blindly into the flat to the fullback. I mean, game after game. The fullback was catching the ball and making big yards. So we developed a two-man [pass] rush, which we wouldn’t have done. We’d have one guy come up to meet the fullback, whichever way he went, 5 yards deep in the backfield. And eight guys would drop into coverage. So there’s nothing to read, except a lot of jerseys.

“The first time they do it, they completed it. I told Vince Hoch, the defensive coach, ‘We worked on this. If our kid can’t get to the guy, put [somebody else] in there.’ I had already told [linebacker] Steve Conjar that he was going to intercept one for a touchdown. The second time, he makes a tackle. The third time, the ball hits him in the hands and he drops it. He would’ve walked in.

“You always wanted to put your team in a position to go.”
Complete Mike Kern story here

Well, 20,000 of the 23,000 were from Temple, so check. Great job by our terrific fans, by the way. Loud and proud and everything I dreamed they would be.
In the seconds before Temple scored that second touchdown, the loud “Let’s Go Temple” cheer shook the old stadium so much I thought it was going to collapse.
Jonathan Tannenbaum, in his excellent blog Soft Pretzel Logic, wrote that the roar of the Temple fans after the first touchdown was “as loud I have heard for any” D.C. United soccer goal in that stadium.
D.C. United, by the way, has scored a lot of goals in that stadium.
Maybe three or four thousand.
So Temple’s fans deserve my MVP (most valuable persons).
Then the game, like the Mrs. Lincoln’s play, imploded.
I don’t care too much about theater, but I care a lot about the game, the team and the school involved, that’s probably why I walked around the stadium about 45 times before leaving Tuesday night.
“I thought you were still walking around the stadium,” my friend, Mark, said when I finally arrived at the team hotel.
Hell, if I didn’t realize I was in a supposed dangerous neighborhood (I couldn’t tell, but my pre-game briefing cautioned me), I’d probably still be walking around the stadium.
On the train down to D.C., I read a terrific article by Mike Kern on Temple’s last bowl game and how Wayne Hardin outsmarted Roger Theder, the then California coach.
Hardin said Cal asked for game films, then made a point to ask his assistants which Cal assistants wanted the films. He gave them three, then tailored the game plan to counter what the Cal assistants would see.

Pure genius.
Pure freaking genius.
I wasn’t surprised. Hardin outsmarted everybody, including Joe Paterno.

Other thoughts walking around RFK:
• On my 24th pass around the stadium, I wondered why it’s always TU messing up on center snaps and never another team.
• On my 27th pass around the stadium, I wondered why Kee-ayre Griffin wasn’t out there at right cornerback (I saw him at the team hotel and he looked healthy and wasn’t limping).
• On my 29th pass around the stadium, I wondered where was Jason Harper, who defined the term “warrior” all season and someone who can make yards after the catch and refuses to go down.
• On my 32d pass around the stadium, I wondered what would have happened had their been a smooth transition of Adam DiMichele to a quarterback with similar skills and toughness and leadership.
  (There wasn’t.)
• On my 37th pass, I wondered what Chester Stewart did wrong to lose his job over the last month.
• On about my 44th pass around the stadium, with steam coming out of my ears (I swear it was from being mad TU lost, but it was probably just the cold), I thought about that Hardin story.

Could you imagine Al Golden intentionally deceiving a fellow member of the coaching fraternity so Temple could benefit?
Could you see Al Golden cutting Rick Neuheisel’s throat (I mean that figuratively, of course) to win a game?
I couldn’t.
Al Golden is a very good coach in every way and a great (and I mean GREAT) CEO/Ambassador of Temple football, but I’m not ready to say he’s a great game coach.
Or even a better-than-average one.
I will say that when I see Temple do all the little things (i.e., fix the kicking game) a good team needs to do routinely. I mean, snaps on punts are routine for just about everyone else.
Why not Temple?

From the Ball State game on, snapping on punts has been a needless adventure and the CEO needed to fix that long before now.
That’s what he needs to do before I can call him an above-average game-day coach.
Great game-day coach?
Who knows how long that will take, but I don’t think it will be long because Al is a smart guy. Remember, Hardin came to Temple as a head coach with prior experience from a then big-time Navy program. Golden, who was never a head coach before, is still learning on the job.
Hardin was a smart guy and great game coach and he’d do everything short of robbing a bank to win a big game for Temple. That’s how much Temple winning meant to him.
Afterward, Al Golden said he hopes the team learns from the experience.
I hope he doesn’t exclude himself from doing the same.

This is the way I thought it would play out …
I’m never going to use this blog to criticize the kids, but let’s just say I’m hopeful certain players who had prominent roles last night get diminished ones next year.
I’ve always said that last year should have been a better year, but this year’s gravvy and next year’s the year.
If the devil came to me with a contract before the Villanova game and said 9-4, I would have signed off on that.
(Now if he had said 7-5 with a bowl and a win over Villanova, I would have traded for that, but that’s another story.)
We’ll talk about the X’s and O’s some other time.
I’m excited to see a healthy Bernard Pierce for a full year.
I’m excited to see that we’ll have a Nate Smith or a an Ahkeem Smith or a Nahjee Gibson (no relation) as an option should he go down again.
I’m excited to finally get some balance in our offense.
I’m excited to see what a defensive front four that includes Mo Wilkerson at an end (yes, I’d move him to end) and Levi Brown and Kadeem Custis at tackles can bring.
Heck, I’d go with a 3-4, move Adrian Robinson to RUSH linebacker, put Brown on the nose and Custis and Big Mo at the ends and move Amara Kamara back to his natural linebacker position.
No X’s and O’s talk today.
Just looking ahead to our next BOWL game.
Villanova.

Photos by Ratna
The Eagle Bank Bowl gambled and rolled the dice with weather.
Actually, it’s a gamble any outdoor Northeast bowl takes this time of year.
It could have won.
It could have lost.
I will call this year’s bowl, at least in terms of weather, a push.
The “average” high temperature for Washington, D.C. for Dec. 29th is 48 degrees.
The high on Tuesday is expected to be 16 degrees below that, or freezing.
Yikes.
It’s going to be cold.
It’s going to be damn cold.
It might be the coldest Temple football game I’ve ever attended and I’ve attended most over the last 30 years.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that there won’t be a snowstorm.
So weather, at least in my mind, is a push.
You can play football in it and, if you are a smart fan, you can survive in it.
I consider myself a smart fan, so here’s my survival plan:

• Two (2) T-shirts;
• Two pairs of sweat pants;
• Three (3) pairs of socks;
• Two Temple sweatshirts, both hooded (I will wear the zippered one on top of the regular Cherry Temple one);
• Ear Muffs;
• One light pair of gloves to be worn under one heavy pair of gloves;
• One heavy winter coat, to be worn on top of everything (also with a hood);

The all-time low D.C. temperature for Tuesday is minus-2 degrees.
Just be thankful you aren’t these girls:

If these girls can be there (and they will), so can you …

Graphics courtesy of Victory Engineer (I had nothing to do with the incorrect use of the word your, but the graphic is too good to leave it out).
Every morning for the past month or so, I’ve gotten up and wiped the sand from my eyes, stretched a little bit and sprinted to the door for the morning paper.
I quickly thumbed to the second sports page and checked the bowl pairings.
There it was.
I wasn’t dreaming after all.
Thirty years of being bowl-less will play mind games with a person’s psyche.
Temple’s football team is in a bowl game and the opponent, geez, is UCLA.
Damn.
It’s not in Idaho or Kansas, either.
It’s in D.C.
It’s within driving distance.
How the hell did we not win the Mid-American Conference (err, that would be no pass rush or blitz) and get the marquee matchup of all MAC matchups?
I pinched myself for good measure to see if that part wasn’t a dream, either.
I’m so pumped I would walk down to D.C. to see the Owls in a bowl game but, thanks to Amtrak, I don’t have to do that.

“I hate to say it but it’s doubtful that I will be going … I don’t want to go alone … secondly, I just can’t see myself sitting outside on a December night. … I can’t take the cold …”
alleged Temple fan Philly Brian on Owlscoop.com

After about 10 days of going through this routine, I logged onto a computer.
Sports message boards are the next stop on the technology train above sports talk radio. You can check the pulse of the sports community by reading these boards and you can even add a viewpoint or two without having to talk to a producer.
Most of the fans were like me, pumped and ready for the trip.
Then I came across a segment of the fan base that pretty much disgusts me.
The posting was entitled “The EagleBank Bowl is pretty much a made for TV game” and the poster went on to say that because “it’ll be too cold and I’m all alone I’ll be watching this game on TV.”
Cripes.
I’m going all by myself and it’ll be just as cold for me. Fifty percent or so of the people I know going to this game will be making the trip alone and I’m guessing it will be just as cold for them, too. I know at least four guys driving up to the game from Florida and my guess is that it will be colder for them than all of us.
It’s almost fitting that fate would place the Owls in the town of Obama because, for Temple, this matchup is all about hope.
Hope that Temple’s football program has arrived to the point it can beat a name BCS school.
Hope that Temple can prove to the nation its fans care.
We’ll find out both Tuesday. The Owls must win and they must prove to be a big-time draw.
Conferences are realigning as we speak and nothing would be a better 1-2 punch to the nation that Temple has arrived than winning the game on the field and in the stands. It’ll be on national TV. This is a dress rehearsal for the big time in more ways than one.

“Yes, Virginia, there is an EagleBank Bowl. And yes, Temple will play UCLA there on Dec. 29.
Is it just another meaningless bowl? Yes… Will it be the most beautiful football game I’ve ever witnessed? Yes.”
_Todd Stanford, The Daily Item, Dec. 23d, 2009
(Temple grad)

The guy, any guy, who pretends to be a Temple fan and can’t even get off his ass to get on a train or a Greyhound Bus or thumb a ride to get down there is really not a Temple fan at all.
This is a time for all Temple fans to answer the Clarion call.
The Temple fan base isn’t big enough that we can afford to have even one of the “hardcore base” sit at home and watch the game on TV and I don’t care how cold it is. I’ve always said and I think I’m right that Temple has a hardcore base of 15K and a softcore group of 20K.
In D.C., the entire hardcore base is required to be there and, on top of that, an urgent appeal is being made to many of the softcore fans as well.
In my mind, Temple has two magic numbers to reach to impress people across the nation on Tuesday.
They must draw more than 28,786 (what Navy and Wake Forest drew last year) and they must have more points than UCLA at the end.
I know the football team can hold up its part of the bargain.
The time has come for the fans to do the same.

I want to see a crowd this big at RFK Tuesday night, wearing all Cherry and White.

Free tickets

ESPN’s Harry Mayes (left) will give away free trips (transportation and tickets) to the Eagle Bank Bowl. Listen at 12:45 and call in to 97.5 The Fan
Tuesday and Wednesday

By Mike Gibson

Not an empty seat in the background … of the Garden State Bowl.
Dec. 29th is the most important date in Temple sports history.
Not just Temple football.
Temple sports, period.
Not because of what the football team might do that day, but because of what YOU might do.
Yeah, you.
If you ever cared about Temple University or care about the future of Temple sports, you will be in the stands on Tuesday, Dec. 29th.
We all can’t be Bill Cosby and donate millions to the university.
We all can’t be Dennis Alter and write out a $15 million check to build the best business school in the nation.

Andy Talley with his daughter, Gina.

Enemy/friend Quote of The Day

“Make no mistake about it. We were lucky … lucky … to beat Temple. Let’s not fool ourselves.”
_ national championship coach and person Andy Talley, Villanova coach, in a CAA conference call
and ….
“I knew Temple had a very special team. We thought they would be the best team we saw all year. In hindsight they were.”
_ Talley from post-game press conference after 23-21 win over 14-0 Montana

But we all can bring $30 or $50 to the Liacouras Center today and walk away with ducats in hand for the game on Dec. 29th.
If we work, and 90 percent of us do, we all can take a personal day that day or trade that day for another day.
We can all buy an Amtrak ticket.
If we can’t afford that, we can all get to a Greyhound Bus station.
We can all drive down I-95 for two hours.
We all can do that.
And we all should.
Imagine the reaction of the nation watching IF all they see is a packed RFK Stadium (it holds 46,000 for football under its new configuration) wearing mostly Cherry and White?
It sure would open up a lot of doors to the university’s sports teams that were previously closed.
The Big East, for example, might extend an all-sports invitation on, say, Dec. 30th.
That’s how much of an impact a huge Temple crowd would have.
The football Owls would also have their pick of bowls next year because Owl fans have proven they can and will travel.
Today, Dec. 18th, is pretty important, too.
It’s the day the tickets for the Eagle Bank Bowl have arrived at the Liacouras Center.
Ticket office workers are busy ripping them apart and sorting them for mailing.
I will be there sometime this afternoon.
If I have to wait in line to get my two ducats (I’m buying one for myself and donating one back to the student pile), it will be a great day.
If I walk into RFK Stadium and see 46,000 Temple fans, that will be the greatest day ever.
These kids and this university deserves it.
Beating UCLA would be the icing on this delicious cake.

No better time to turn the two Josephs and John Haley loose on the QB than now.
John Haley Photo by Ryan Porter, courtesy Porterhouse Productions

Enemy Quote of Day
“I hear Temple runs the ball a lot. … They’re like 23rd in the country in rushing, I hope they run the ball every play. I’ll be waiting.”
_UCLA linebacker Reggie Carter in today’s Los Angeles Times

Somewhere between the time coach Al Golden told Cincinnati to pound sand (well, sort of) and now, Temple’s football team first practiced at the Eagles’ facility for two days last week to get away from the inclement weather.
“The Eagles were good enough to let us do that,” Golden said last week at the bowl party.
Hopefully, defensive coordinator Mark D’Onofrio rifled through Sean McDermott’s drawers on the way out and stole the book that the late Jimmy Johnson wrote on blitzing.
If the Owls are serious about winning and not just making a good showing on Dec. 29, they will blitz UCLA from the opening introductions until the closing gun. Coach D’Onofrio had a reputation as an aggressive, crazy, no-holds-barred linebacker at PSU. I like that trait in my linebackers and my defensive coordinators. This year, though, for some reason I don’t understand, D’Onofrio has orchestrated a conservative, bend-but-don’t-break approach on defense.
UCLA has a very capable quarterback, freshman Kevin Prince, who is battling a shoulder injury right now.
Go get him and put him down hard and often.
Bring violence to the football.
People who read this blog know my philosophy of defensive football is a mind meld of Johnson’s.
If you can’t get to the quarterback with four, send five. If you can’t get to him with six, send seven. If you can’t get to him with seven, send eight.
Blitz early and often to send a message to UCLA offensive coordinator Norm Chow that we’re not staying back in our base defense and getting picked apart like we did against good quarterbacks from Villanova, Miami and Ohio.
Surely Chow, a smart guy, will be dissecting Temple film and come to the conclusion that the Owls like to sit back in coverage rather than come after the quarterback.
What he won’t see is a whole lot of blitzing.
Even though rush end Adrian Robinson leads the MAC in sacks, he’ll need all the help he can get against UCLA.
I’ll stop only at sending eight, because I believe Dominique Harris, Marquis Liverpool and Kee-Ayre Griffin have the talent to keep anything that breaks in front of them.
I believe a blitzing scheme is perfectly suited to the personnel Temple currently employs on defense.
The Owls have terrific run-stopping linebackers in Peanut Joseph, Alex Joseph and John Haley specifically. But those guys also have the speed and the nastiness necessary in chasing down a quarterback and either making the tackle, stripping the ball or forcing an interception.
They are not great at pass coverage, so why not sic these dogs on the quarterback instead?
That’s what I’m talking about.
Hopefully, D’Onofrio smells meat and goes in for the kill on Prince, changing the Owls’ scheme to where nine guys line up at scrimmage and either fake the blitz or go for the kill on every passing down.
I vote for going for the kill.
Think about it.

D’Onofrio had a reputation as an aggressive, crazy, no-holds-barred linebacker at PSU. I like that trait in my linebackers and my defensive coordinators. This year, though, for some reason I don’t understand, D’Onofrio has orchestrated a conservative, bend-but-don’t-break approach on defense

Over your years of watching football, what decides games more than any other factor?
Turnover ratio.
You can hope the other team fumbles or throws the ball between the two numbers on your jerseys or you can force them to do it.
Nothing puts fear in a quarterback’s eyes and the ball up for grabs more than a collapsing pocket.
Nothing collapses the pocket like a blitz.
“I’ve tried (throwing) but I’m not at the stage where it’s really comfortable,” Prince said.
The whole idea is making Prince feel uncomfortable. His stats are the best of any UCLA quarterback (157 completions in 277 attempts for 1,827 yards, six touchdowns and seven interceptions). There’s a huge dropoff in his backup, Kevin Craft (60 for 107 for 722 yards, two touchdowns and three interceptions).
The game plan shouldn’t be that complicated to develop and put into practice the next couple of weeks.
It’s one word.
Blitz.
Click on logo below to order tickets THROUGH TEMPLE … PLEASE HELP THE UNIVERSITY BY ORDERING THROUGH TEMPLE ONLY

Temple footbal isn’t playing today, nor will it for the better part of three weeks.
It just feels like it to me.
I’ll be rooting for Navy today (2:30 p.m., CBS) against Army.
I don’t know of a single Temple fan who isn’t.
It’s not like Temple feels the matchup with UCLA, who the Owls get to face, will be easier.
In fact, I think everybody thinks it will be the harder game of the two.
What’s that they say, the higher the mountain, the more satisfying the climb?
(If they don’t say that, I just made it up.)
Think about it.
Temple, a non-BCS school, against the big, bad, BCS school from the West Coast.
Does Rutgers (with UCF) have a better bowl matchup?
No.
Does any Northeastern school, with the exception of Boston College (USC) have a more attractive bowl matchup?
No.
I’m from the school of thought that feels we won’t have to root much.
I’m still hoping that the infamous Navy fan whistle-blower is there (pictured, who ruined Temple’s would-be win two years ago) is there and blows his whistle every time a Navy ballcarrier is stopped near the goal line, only to see the Navy guy continue on his feet into the end zone.
That’ll help.
But I don’t think Navy will need even his help today.
I’ve seen both Army and Navy and I can’t see Army stopping Navy at all.
That’s why even though Temple isn’t playing today, it’ll be another big win for the Owls anyway come sundown.
Once the sun comes up tomorrow, please plan to purchase your bowl tickets from Temple within the next day or two.
PURCHASE YOUR TICKETS FROM TEMPLE NOW BY CLICKING BELOW:

Click on above logo to order tickets through Temple.

Owls and Brian Sanford rejoice in one of the two greatest photos ever (the other is below).
Owlsports.com photo

Photo courtesy Philadelphia Newspapers, LLC

There’s a saying way older than I am that pretty much describes what happened yesterday at the Liacouras Center.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

That might come from an old Chinese Proverb, although some internet sources dispute it.

While on the subject of a picture being worth a thousand words, UCLA will bring its cheerleaders and band to D.C., unless (wink, wink) Army beats Navy.

Until yesterday, I didn’t think much of the phrase.

“Yeah, right,” I always said. “The Chinese guy who wrote that never read a Gary Smith story in Sports Illustrated or never enjoyed morning coffee over a Bill Lyon column in the 1980s or never heard the beautiful word pictures as described by Vin Scully or Harry Kalas.”

Then I saw the photo in today’s Daily News by Charles Fox and that changed my mind.

That photo, which is credited to Philadelphia Newspapers, LLC and appears above this story, says it all.

The sheer joy on the faces of the wonderful kids who play football for Temple University is genuine and spontaneous and cannot be conveyed by mere words.

So I publish it here instead with a plea.

Nobody took a photo of us in the parking lot during that 2005 game against Miami, but it would have been a lot uglier than that beautiful shot. There were less than 10 of us left tailgating in the rain but, before we even heard about Al Golden, we had a dream that someone, someday would come and lead us back to a bowl game.

That day and that someone has come.

That’s why it’s important that all 21,046 of you who showed up for the last home game against Kent State purchase tickets for this “home” game in D.C.

All of you and, hopefully, 21,000 more on top of that.

For maximum impact, please purchase your tickets through Temple University by clicking on the logo above. By buying through Temple, the university will be able to show future bowls that this fan base will travel and have concrete figures to back it up.

Please buy as many as you can and give to those who can make the short trip down I-95 and cheer on these great kids. Or you can wait until Monday morning at 10 a.m. and walk up to the Liacouras Center ticket window. The best seats are on the Temple (South) side 200, 300, 400 and 500 levels. Don’t buy the obstructed 100-level seats.

But buy them through Temple and don’t procrastinate like thousands of folks did only to be caught waiting in long lines at the ticket windows at the last home game.