By Mike Gibson
There’s been an Elephant in the room for the past few days.
Elephant with a capital E.
Seems like no one in either Vivacqua Hall or the Edberg-Olson Football Complex wants to look at it, but it is an unwelcome visitor right there in the living room, unexpectedly coming through the sliding glass doors and destroying the brand new furniture and eating all of the peanuts on the dining room table.
Not even the media seems to be addressing it, other than superficially.
Well, today, Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub saw the Elephant, pointed to it and tried to get the trainer to take it out of the living room in an excellent letter to the editor in the sports section of today’s Philadelphia Inquirer.
I was privileged to be introduced to Fizzy and have known him from the pre-game tailgating scene at every Temple football game.
He is a terrific storyteller (ask him about Bill Cosby some day), very funny and an all-around great guy.
He shows up at every Temple home game and probably has gone to some long before I started to be a fan as a 10-year-old kid.
If every Temple alumnus did what Fizzy has done, we’d have 250,000 at our games. We only need 69,999 more Fizzies to never have any problems.
His support of the program should never be questioned.

I appreciate everyone who supports Temple football, whether it be the big spenders in the Club Box level or those in section 101 like Fizzy, Cap Poklemba and myself.
Temple invested a lot of money in its current head coach, money it probably couldn’t afford to pay because it wanted a taste of what other schools had on the football field for a change.
People like Fizzy, Cap Poklemba and other very hungry supporters deserve that taste.
All they’ve gotten so far is 1-11 and 4-8 and promises.
That’s not tasting. That’s not even sniffing.

I’m not a great guy like Fizzy, just a good one who, like him, is perplexed by the sight of an Elephant in any place other than a Zoo.
I’m a guy who gets to work on time every day.
I keep my appointments.
People who know me know that when I say I’m going to meet them at a certain place and a certain time, I’m always there.
I believe your word is your bond and that no amount of money can change that.
I believe if I say I’m going to do a certain job by a certain time, I’m going to get it done.
Only then will I move on to the next task.
I believe if I demand integrity, honesty and commitment from my colleagues that I should give no less in return.
I believe if I tell you I’m going to build you a brick house and sign a contract to build that house, I’m not going to leave when just one wall is up and say, well, the guy down the street gave me a better offer.
That doesn’t make me better than anybody else. It’s just the way I was raised.
Temple should hold its football coach, both current and next, to that same minimum standard.

“This university has made a commitment to me and my commitment to it is that I will build a house of brick, not straw” _ Al Golden ….. …………

Al Golden argues holding call against Alex Derenthal versus Penn State.

By Mike Gibson
Green Day had a song not too long ago with a chorus that included the line “wake me up when September ends.”
Well, I’m going to take a nap now.
Wake me up when September begins.
Nah, not really but there’s real evidence, empirical evidence, evidence based on the science of mathmatics that September could be a very special month for Temple football fans.
Heck, throw in October, November and December and, hell, maybe even January.
That’s January, 2009.
Temple football is on the upswing.
It’s not because I say so, or because I author a blog dedicated to it.
It’s just nice to offer some empirical evidence in support of the claim. Evidence based on real, not imagined, numbers.
Here are just some, in no particular order:
1. One-hundred and seven (107) _ That represents points gained in games against teams Temple lost by more than a touchdown to a year ago. Included in that figure is is 21-point gain against Kent State, a 16-point gain against Penn State, a 23-point gain against Navy and a 24-point gain against Western Michigan _ and that’s only a sample. Al Golden’s Owls are closing the gap on teams that reappear on the schedule. Next year, the gap could very well be on the other side.
2. Eighty-two, 71 and 60 _ Where Scout.com has rated the first three Al Golden recruiting classes, in order. Note every single one of those classes were ranked No. 1 among MAC teams. Independent recruiting services who rank players are beginning to take notice of the Owls. One of the reasons the Owls are getting players who have been offered by BCS schools. One such player, Unionville’s Steve Caputo (see quote of the day) turned down Syracuse to take Temple. Another, Central Bucks South’s Eric Reynolds, could turn down Boston College to take Temple. It’s all about being a hero in your hometown, which both Caputo and Reynolds would be. It’s all about helping to write the biggest story in sports history, the resurgence of Temple football. It’s all about being part of something special, about filling up Lincoln Financial Field with 250,000 alumni starving to support a Temple winner. An Erey signing at Boston College would evoke a yawn, maybe at best a curled up smile. Here, it would be greeted with bells and whistles and fireworks. Huge stories in the Bucks County and Philly papers. Mentions by Gara Papa on Action News. We know Erey here. We love him here. Plus, due to injuries and such, there’s an opening for running back here that doesn’t exist elsewhere.
3. Four (4) _ Number of touchdowns the Owls left on the field against Penn State. I reviewed the tape twice. This is what I found. There was no holding (but there was a call) against Alex Derenthal, a call that negated a great touchdown catch by D’yonne Crudup. There is a photo of Al Golden arguing that call accompanying this story and he didn’t even need to see the tape twice. Alex Joseph and Omar McDonough-Hales dropped interceptions with no one in front of them except non-athletic Penn State quarterback Anthony Morelli. And who knows what would have happened if the Owls went for a touchdown on their first drive of the game, instead of a 23-yard shanked field goal. It was 31-0, but could have easily been closer. A lot closer. Golden is taking all of those Owls to State College with one Mantra: Making those plays this time.
4. Twenty-three and twenty-two _ That’s what the score of the Temple vs. UConn game should have been. Temple 23, UConn 22. Even the few UConn fans living in Egypt along the DENIAL river know that. I’m getting a T-Shirt made up with that score and a photo of the Temple touchdown made up for sale on this website in the coming months.
5. Twenty-nine thousand _ Actually, 28,859, the average home attendance at a Temple game this season, the top figure among MAC schools. That’s for a 4-8 team. Imagine what it would be like for an 8-4 team or better?
The numbers suggest Temple fans won’t have to imagine for much longer. While recruiting season is nice and spring practice is better, September can’t come soon enough.

In this great Daryl Rule photo, Adam DiMichele going back to pass on the final play of his football season against Miami of Ohio; in hindsight, looks like a shovel pass to Daryl Robinson would have worked quite nicely instead of the deeper drop but, as they say, hindsight is always 20/20.
By Mike Gibson
To no one’s surprise, Adam DiMichele was named team MVP at last night’s Temple football banquet.
There is a terrific recap of the banquet available on the school’s official website, Owlsports.com.
One of the curiosities coming out of the banquet was junior center Alex Derenthal being named offensive MVP, even though DiMichele also plays offense. Last year, though, Derenthal was named Team MVP so the move was seen as honoring what have been clearly the two offensive leaders so far for head coach Al Golden.
Another was that Golden spoke for only five minutes, presumably because there were so few seniors to talk about.
The banquet, sold out a month ago, featured a terrific video by Temple student Fran Duffy, not to be confused with head basketball coach Fran Dunphy.
Hopefully, the university will make that video available online soon.

Deven Baker gave fans a little preview as to what to expect at Temple University in the upcoming four years.
He kicked some serious arse, as Jim Rome might describe it, in some recent games this fall.
Deven Baker’s most recent game is describe in this article in the Bridgewater (N.J.)
Courier-News
All over, future Temple players are not only part of the story, but THE story for their high school teams.
When they come here, they will expect to make no less of an impact.

By Mike Gibson
Some strong praise from Western Michigan coach Bill Cubit in this latest Kalamazoo Gazette preview, including mention of Al Golden’s salary.
Five-hundred-and-seventy-five-thousand dollars a year.
Hmm.
Just as we thought all along.
Al Golden is going nowhere, not because he makes $575,000 a year, but because both Temple and Golden’s people, including his agent, wanted to make the deal a lock-solid one.
Temple, for its part, took a risk _ hiring an unproven assistant coach for a salary double what the next-highest coach in the MAC made.
The TU administration needed an insurance policy and Al Golden gave that to them in writing. There is no buyout. There never needed to be one.
Any buyout clause will be written into the next contract, after Golden gets the job done here.
That’s where the “this university has made a commitment to me and my commitment to them is that I will build a house of brick, not straw” comment came from. That wasn’t something Golden made up as a nice sound bite. It was part of the fabric of the contract between him and the university.
The straw house takes about three years to build.
The brick house takes five.
Al Golden is in this for at least five, hopefully more, years.
Golden realized a day or two before he was even hired that this two-way commitment was the minimum that was needed for Temple to turn this thing around.
For that, among all other things, he should be applauded.

I wish all Temple fans stood up and cheered like this guy.

By Mike Gibson
Al Golden, meet Cap Poklemba.
Oh, you have?
Kinda sorta.
“I’ve never really met coach Golden,” Poklemba said Saturday. “Well, I did give a speech at the pep rally for Penn State and then I handed the microphone to him and said, “Good luck against Penn State coach.’ He looked at me like, “this guy is crazy.’ “
Well, he is, Al, but crazy in a very good way.
I have a feeling Al Golden would like Cap Poklemba very much if he ever got a chance to know him.
When we last saw Poklemba on the field in a meaningful game, five years ago almost to this very day, the Owls’ kicker drove a stake through the hearts of Rutgers’ fans in the final seconds of a 20-17 win at Rutgers’ Stadium. He then led the team over to the Big East logo in the corner of that stadium and stomped on it with 55 other players as the strains of “T for Temple U” rang in the background.
It was a Delicious moment for the program.
Ever since, Poklemba has been doing his part to make Lincoln Financial Field a homefield advantage for Golden’s Owls.
Poklemba is a one-man raving lunatic with a purpose, at times going into the heart of the lower deck to yell out, “I DON’T CARE WHAT AGE YOU ARE, YOUNG OR OLD, I JUST WANT YOU TO GET UP ON THIRD DOWN!!” He then alternately leads the crowd into chants of “Let’s Go Temple” or “DEE-FENSE, DEE-FENSE” or “MOVE THOSE CHAINS, MOVE THOSE CHAINS, MOVE THOSE CHAINS … HOOT” … after each first down.
Then he runs to the student section and acts like Eugene Ormandy or Leonard Bernstein and orchestrates that section in the same manner. They respond to him with a wall of beautiful sound. Poklemba is only missing a baton.
Golden himself must have noticed, or heard, the nearly 17,000 fans sound like 70,000 strong in a 24-14 win over Kent State on Saturday afternoon because, after the game, the first thing the coach did was run up to each member of the team and direct them to the sidelines to high five the fans.
Or he must have noticed the 21,000 for Homecoming Day sounding like 200,000.
There is one person responsible for this and it’s Cap Poklemba.
Al Golden gets it.
So does Cap Poklemba. Nobody asked Cap Poklemba to do what he’s done, but what he has accomplished is demonstrate that one man can make a big difference.
It’s a lesson all of us can learn and part of the fabric of Al Golden’s character.
It’s a shame the two have never been formally introduced. It would be nice (i.e., smart) if the university found some sort of kicking coach/promotions position for this dedicated young man soon.
Whatever, in some storage room at Edberg-Olson Hall there is a most valuable player award for this year’s Temple Owls and it’s going to deservedly go to Adam DiMichele.
Yet somewhere in some box way in the back there should be a most valuable Owl award and it would be nice if Al Golden gave it to Cap Poklemba at the football banquet.
There’s not a more deserving Owl, past or present.

Temple fans were there in force; just wait and see what happens when the school wins the MAC.
Great photos by Darryl Rule

Stark and indisputable visual evidence of a Temple fan-dominated side of the field
By Mike Gibson
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
I thought about that while watching a usually sure-handed Temple tight end drop a sure-handed touchdown pass.
I thought about that while watching another sure-handed Owl, Daryl Robinson, drop a pass over the middle with plenty of real estate in front of him.
I even thought about it while watching the most glue-fingered Owl, Bruce Francis, foul up what looked like a promising pass off a double-reverse.
Al Golden and George DeLeone led their horses right up to not water but champagne yesterday in a 31-0 loss to Penn State and they took one sniff, reared their hind legs and walked away in the opposite direction.
If they had just had a taste.
One touchdown, to Matt Balasavage, would have made it 14-7.
Who knows how far Daryl Robinson would have gotten in the open field?
Or what would have happened if Bruce Francis been able to get a grip?
The defense of Mark D’Onofrio had been playing with a swagger all day.
Had the offense helped out by putting points on the board, maybe they would not have been as tired as they were at the end when they gave up a couple of relatively meaningless touchdowns.
Maybe next week.
Maybe next year.
It’s all part of the process, as Golden likes to say.
This time, the coaches did their jobs about as well as expected.
The lesson learned was to catch those balls, execute those plays, put points on the board.
Penn State did not stop Temple on those plays. Temple stopped Temple.
Just once, it would be nice for this thirsty program to sip the same kind of drink Appalachian State and Stanford tasted earlier this season.
That something will have to come another day.
There is only one thing more frustrating than to contemplate what might have been and that’s musing about what should have been.

Owls: Your town, your team
(Story appeared on op-ed page of The Daily News Nov. 2, 2007)

IF Horatio Alger were still around, he’d love writing about Temple football. Is there anything more rags-to-riches than a three-game winning streak after 0-12 and 1-11 seasons?
“We’re America’s Team,” ex-coach Wayne Hardin once said. “You know, ‘Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor. ‘ “

America’s Team. Temple is indeed that more than the Dallas Cowboys. America likes a Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story. Dallas never was that. Temple is.

It certainly is Philadelphia’s team, with many more Philadelphians playing for the Owls than for the NFL team that plays in the same stadium.

The starting tailback? From North Catholic. Starting linebackers? Bishop McDevitt and Germantown. One starting cornerback for the opening game is from Gratz. (He’s hurt. ) The current starting quarterback? Suburban Avon Grove. The rest of the roster is almost entirely from eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

That can’t be said of the Eagles. The one Bird who played in college here, Brian Westbrook, is from the Washington area. Everyone else is a carpetbagger.

If Temple doesn’t deserve America’s support, then it certainly deserves Philadelphia’s.

The city’s football fans should come over to the other side and support a team that plays hard-nosed, aggressive football – a group of kids who more represent them in reality than the overpaid, spoiled and passive pros who frequently don’t.

The Temple Owls are an exciting team playing an exciting brand of football, much like Hardin’s teams did in the 1970s.

If you went to the last Temple game, you saw a heartstopping throw-back pass from wide receiver Bruce Francis to quarterback Adam DiMichele that went for a near-touchdown and a long bomb from backup quarterback Vaughn Charlton to Francis that did go for score.

You also saw a third-straight win from the hometown team.

At the time Hardin made his remarks about Temple being America’s Team, he was specificially talking about Temple football recruiting.

Under Hardin, Temple got a lot of players who were hungry to prove themselves to the higher-profile schools who overlooked them in the recruiting process. It got a lot of players tired of people telling them they were an inch too small or a step too slow. It got players who were poor in numbers of scholarship offers, but rich in areas like reputation and character.

Hungry, tired, poor.

The formula worked before.

And now it’s working again.

The current Owls are an interesting mix, but this group reminds me more of Hardin’s era than any team since because of the character of the players.

This group, like Hardin’s, have so many players who were captains of their high school teams. Eighteen members of the 1-2 depth chart were captains of teams that won their high school championship. And most were large schools in high-profile environments and most of those players excelled under pressure.

It was a proven recruiting template 30 years ago – and it’s proven to be the same under coach Al Golden.

Golden has a bunch of leaders, captains, who play aggressive, not passive, football.

“People in Philadelphia will be proud of this team once it starts to develop because it’s tough, it competes and we have fun out there,” Golden said.

You won’t be able to get into the Penn State game on Nov. 10 because it’s sold out, but check it out, Eagles fans, on Nov. 17 against Kent State. *

Mike Gibson is editor and publisher of Temple Football Forever (http://templefootballforever.blogspot.com), a Temple football blog. E-mail

templefootballforever@gmail.com.