Author Archives: Mike Gibson

01.03.19
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Fizzy’s Corner: Follow-Up and Search

 

By Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub

After I sent out my piece, “The Green Flu,” I was contacted by someone very close to the situation at Temple.  He informed me that one of the two Temple players I mentioned as “quitters,” was indeed ill.  So to that player, I offer my sincere apology. As far as the other player who took himself out of the game, I guess it’s your point of view.   You know that my view is you play every game you can with your brothers. Every football player knows there’s a chance of injury whenever you step on the field, but you probably put it out of your mind way back in ninth grade. There were some senior players who had been selected to play in further bowl games didn’t play, and some who did.  Trace McSorley played last night until his leg almost fell off. (Of course, when I finished at Temple, the only organization interested in drafting me was the U.S. Army.)

patenaude

There are two other factors.  The first is the way the situation was handled. No one knew anything until game time.  (At least that’s when I found out the guys weren’t playing.)  If someone was taking himself out of the game, it should have been announced, not camouflaged.   The second factor is that if coaches quit, then players should start looking out for themselves. I have no problem with that. Just tell us.

Selection Committee

Our selection committee has a difficult task.  After five defections, do they go for the best coach they can find, or hire someone who hasn’t yet proven himself but might stay longer?  Just as you never know what high school player is going to succeed in college, you don’t know what assistant is going to make the grade as a head coach.  Of course, even if you select the guy who hasn’t proven himself yet, who says he’s going to stay if he is successful?  How about a pro coach who has already done it all?  It’s a conundrum if there ever was one.

Another way to handle the situation is, at the hiring meeting, have Guido sit in the corner with his hands folded.  (You all know Guido, he’s from South Philly. He looks like Michael Corleone’s guy who dressed in black and went after Hyman Roth.)

patenaudebox

Praise The Lord Department

It has now been confirmed that Dave Patenaude is the offensive coordinator at Georgia Tech.  Therefore, the Broad Street Offense is no more.  It’s now the Peachtree Street Offense. The Georgia Tech fans have been waiting for a new offense, just wait till they get a load of this.  The under/over on reverses for the 2019 season is “2.”  For bootlegs, at the goal line it’s “1.”

The $6.5 Million Windfall

Last, I think Temple should take the $6.5 M, split it up and give it to all us Temple football alums with bad knees, bad backs and concussions.

Saturday: The Slower Pace

 

01.01.19
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The Cleanup Begins

Pat O’Connor (left) to Pat Kraft on Monday morning

My only living relative who cares so little about football she watched Star Trek reruns during the last Super Bowl,  listened to my Manny Diaz U-Turn story and said:

“What a fine mess that guy who hired him got Temple into. …”

neal

“That pretty much sums it up,” I said. “It’s a nuclear-type cleanup now.”

Diaz was the Chernobyl of college football coaching hires.  If my relative thinks it’s a mess, I’m pretty sure Temple Board Chairman Pat O’Connor and President Dick Englert and a lot of the other trustees think it’s a mess, too.

That’s not to mention our players and fans. In addition, anybody who recruits against Temple now has fruit so low-hanging to pick from it has fallen on the ground.

Now the cleanup begins.

You are going to see a lot of Pat Kraft defenders on the internet who say: “He could not have seen this coming” and “he can’t be blamed for this” but if I saw it coming the guy who gets paid the big bucks to do the hiring should have, too. This is what we wrote in a caption the day after Diaz was hired:

disclosure

This was written 20 days ago

The point is that this hire was Temple’s way of telling Miami “we’re going to train your next coach and, don’t worry, he will make all of the mistakes on our watch at our expense and, by the time we hand him off give him to you, he’ll be a polished guy.”


Diaz was the Chernobyl
of college football
coaching hires

Everything about this guy, from an entire career in warm-weather climates to the fact that his dad was the freaking Mayor of Miami screamed he was going back to Miami. One year, two years, seventeen days, what’s the difference? That should have all been factored into the Temple hire. If Temple is going to get a rental, get a ready-made one–a guy who can give this current very talented team a path to next year’s AAC title.

This is no time for a trainee.

payraise

This is the answer Geoff Collins gave in his Temple presser two years ago when asked if he was here to stay: “Every kid in there is going to know that I’m going to love them and there’s too much to do now in every moment to think about anything than what happens in the current moment.”

This is the answer Diaz gave at his presser: “All you can do is give them everything you have at the moment. You’ve got to work to improve every day, then go on to the next one.”

Anything sound familiar in those two comments?

Nothing about staying at Temple and building a winning legacy.  Those days might be over, but to achieve a championship now, the days of training rentals for other programs should be over. They should have been over three weeks ago.

Temple should go out and get a polished head coach who can give these fantastic returning players a championship in 2019. There’s a guy named Brown who can do it and it’s not Fran. It’s Neal. All he has done for Troy is do something Temple has never done–win 10 games three-straight years and beaten teams like LSU and Nebraska. Troy is paying him 1/3d of what Temple could and he would be worth every penny.

A 2019 AAC championship and an NY6 bowl would clean up a pretty big mess.

Thursday: Fizzy’s Corner

Saturday: The Slower Pace

 

12.31.18
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Comical If Not So Sad

leipold

Lance Leipold is probably the best available head coach out there, but does Kraft know that?

Mulligans are usually associated with the game of golf, but Temple athletic director  Pat Kraft now has a chance to have that kind of do-over in football coaching searches.

He missed this most recent two-foot putt by a mile but this is a chance to correct his mistake.

worstthing

This is what we wrote 20 days ago and Kraft did exactly the worst thing–bring in another team’s coordinator.

The $6.5 million question now is whether he admits his hiring model was a flawed one or does he take this as an opportunity to create a new model?

Manny Diaz lasted all of 17 days as Temple football’s head coach and, frankly, I’m glad he’s gone. He was never a fit for Temple. The guy never coached North of Jacksonville, had no recruiting ties to the area and probably doesn’t even own an overcoat. Temple was going to train him to be Mark Richt’s successor for one year and he would move on to his “dream” job, Miami. He would make all the mistakes first-year head coaches make–all the ones that Matt Rhule made in a 2-10 season and Collins did in a 7-6 one–and the Temple fans and players would be the ones paying for it.

interstate

A busy day ahead for the Interstate sign company

Now Kraft will have to juggle several balls in the air with the $6.5 million buyout money ($2.5 million for Geoff Collins and $4 million for Diaz) and hope he can catch them all:

    • No more carpetbaggers. Kraft, in his message to the players last night, finally used the word “stability.”  That word has never appeared in his vocabulary before and it is a concession to the fact that this revolving door is getting comical if it wasn’t so sad. Is there someone out there who has not lost to Duke and Wake Forest by a combined score of 101-53 who feels that TEMPLE is his dream job? Surely that man exists.
    • Keep contractual obligations. Another ball that is difficult to catch. Temple has the names of Fran Brown and Gabe Infante (and probably Ed Foley) signed on the dotted line and the university has a moral duty to keep them onboard and find a next guy who can work with both. Moral duty may mean nothing to Diaz, but it should mean something to Temple.
    • Forget coordinators.  Both Foley, who lost to Wake and Duke by the above-mentioned 101-53, and Fran Brown are good men who may consider Temple their “dream job” but neither has won a single game as an FBS head coach and probably are not ready for prime time. Nonetheless, we don’t want to learn the hard way.

It is time for Temple to finally bring in an established head coach and not another coordinator to have to learn on the job, someone who will bring some stability to the program and has loyalty to Temple.

stability

Al Golden said on national TV Temple TUFF is spelled T-U-F-F (and it is)

 

That would probably rule out a terrific head coach like FIU’s Butch Davis, who will probably spend his entire year here looking out the window. Buffalo’s Lance Leipold parlayed a 108-6 record at Wisconsin-Whitewater and six national championships (real ones, not fake ones like they have in FBS) into a 10-4 record with the Bulls and is ridiculously underpaid at $325K. Can he be talked into keeping Foley, Brown and Infante, guys who he never met? Waving a couple of million at a guy like that can be convincing. Nothing would scare the shit out of Geoff Collins more than facing the guy who kicked his ass last September at Lincoln Financial Field this September at LFF. He’s a perfect geographical fit for Temple in that Buffalo is a major Northeastern city like Philadelphia. He probably owns several overcoats.

disclosure

… and this is what we wrote 18 days ago

Al Golden is a guy who knows Temple and loves Temple and HAS PROVEN HE CAN WIN AS A HEAD COACH AT TEMPLE and would get along with Foley, Brown, and Infante and deserves a hard pursuit by Kraft. He gave Temple five terrific years, is still young and probably knows more than anyone else that the grass is not greener on the other side of the 10th and Diamond fence.

Todd Bowles would be a good co-defensive coordinator for Fran Brown to learn from but I’m told his lack of a Temple (or any other) college degree ruled him out of the coaching search in 2010.

The worst thing, though, would be for Kraft to go back and churn the coordinator pile of guys like Mike Elko and Don Brown and come up with a guy whose dream job is elsewhere.

Other people’s dreams are Temple’s nightmares.

New Year’s Day: The Cleanup Begins

Friday: The Pace

12.30.18
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Fizzy’s Corner: The Green Monster

weinraub

Fizzy here at the Boca Raton Bowl, where 6,000-plus Temple fans attended and because of this Independence Bowl fiasco that might be the last time where Temple has more than a hundred fans at any bowl game.

Editor’s Note: Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub, a former Temple player, brings up the interesting concept in this piece that can simply be boiled down to this: If you are going to have a bowl game with no Temple head coach, no Temple star players, then get ready for no Temple fans in the future. 

By Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub

Our two best players quit. Our best offensive player, Ryquell Armstead, and our best cornerback, Rock Ya-Sin, who was supposed to cover Duke’s best receiver, both quit and didn’t play in the bowl game.  Instead of coming clean, coach Ed Foley came up with some claptrap about this was a medical staff decision.  If you believed that, then you must also believe that the Eagles’ Jim Schwartz is a great defensive coordinator.

Why?

nothappy

Temple fans were not happy with the two Rocks

Both players accepted invitations to the Senior Bowl on January 26th, and Rock will also play in the East/West game on January 19th. That’s why they declined to play; it’s called the green flu.  I sure it’s because they thought they might get hurt and ruin their chances to be highly drafted by the NFL.  Two tough as nails football players let their brothers down after fighting with them through thick and thin. If you don’t think that had a major effect on the outcome of the game, you’re just naive.

I was at a friend’s house watching the game ( I left after the third quarter.), and when I got home I told my wife what happened.  My wife knows very little about college football, but Cheryl’s first words were, “Why does that surprise you?  Their coach quit.”  Yes indeed, their coach did quit as did the previous three before him. Is it any wonder it was only a matter of time before this, me first – screw you, attitude filtered down to the players.  Thinking back to the guys I played with, it’s unimaginable to me that a teammate would do this.  But then again, I’m now sure I’m the one who’s naive.

As far as the coaching, well, I’m so pissed right now that the coaching seems relatively unimportant.  The butchering of the last sequence of plays right before the end of the first half with three timeouts left should go down in the hall of shame. Slowing down the blitzing in the second half only allowed a great pro prospect QB all the time in the world to catch fire.  Of course, we dropped untold passes.

So in college football, the coaches quit on their teams, and now seniors quit on their teams.  When is it our turn?  It’s been sixty years of Temple football for me now. Maybe it’s time I say, “Fer who, fer what?”  How about those who spent a few grand to travel to the game, only to see a half-assed effort?  What about the undecided recruits? Major college football is now as much “pay to play” as the NFL.  I wanna go back to the last century.

P.S. The only good news, was great news. Marc Narducci reports unsubstantiated sources say that Temple’s offensive coordinator, Dave Patenaude, is going to Georgia Tech with Geoff Collins.  Thank you, oh great omnipotent being.  Maybe our Broad Street Offense can become the Philly Soft Pretzel Offense, under the new guy. (You want some mustard on that?)

Wednesday: The Cleanup Begins

 

12.28.18
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Winning Is the Only Thing

ultimate

TU played like walk-ons, Duke like scholarship players

In a far-off, long-ago era of football, Vince Lombardi probably had the best quote in the history of the sport:

“Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”

The great ex-Green Bay Packers’ head coach, if he were still alive, probably would have repeated his second most famous quote during Temple’s meltdown in a 56-27 loss to Duke yesterday:

“What the hell is going on out there?”

fifteen

Good words, Vince, that perfectly described an Independence Bowl where the wheels came off for a 3.5-point favorite.

The quotes are reminders to me of a conversation the other day I had with an otherwise sane and rational Temple fan on my decision not to attend this bowl.

“C’mon, down, Mike,” he said, “bowls are about the pageantry and the band, not really about the game itself.”

“Huh? If I’m going down, I’m going down to win. I don’t give a whit (minus the W) about the pageantry. The only reason I go down is to see Temple win and there’s too much uncertainty and I would be way too pissed off if I spent that much money to see a loss.”

All that said, the night before the game I wrote this nugget:

“If Temple controls the clock behind Ryquell Armstead and Russo is effective in the short passing game, (Duke quarterback) Jones won’t be able to do too much damage.”

To me, there was no doubt Armstead would play. He was quoted as saying on Dec. 17 that he was excited to play “one last time with my brothers” and participated in every practice, several of them full contact. He was listed as “probable.” What did he do in the minutes before the game, trip over the Elvis Pressley statue? This news completely came out of the blue.

downmoney

Both cornerback Rock Ya-Sin and Armstead did not play and interim head coach Ed Foley said those were for “medical reasons.” Photos, though, of the two showed them smiling (not grimacing) before the game, so who the hell knows? All I know is that Armstead was a warrior who wanted to come back into the ECU game (and did) despite a sprained ankle and he looked a helluva lot better walking around the sidelines yesterday than he did that day in October.

Jones, the Duke quarterback who is a far better prospect than Armstead or Ya-Sin, did play “one last game” with his brothers and that set the tone for the entire day.

Do I think Temple would have benefited from having Armstead in there to run the ball with a 27-14 lead in the second quarter? Hell yes. Do I think he would have scored the six touchdowns that he did against Houston? Hell no, but three would have done the job and 30 carries would have kept the ball away from Jones for 30 plays. Play-action would have aided quarterback Anthony Russo if he had Armstead to put the ball in the belly of and pull it out.

Do I think Ya-Sin would have batted down a couple of those Jones’ touchdown passes?

Hell yes.

Football is a team game and the next man should step up but Temple had no “next man” nearly as capable as those two. Maybe part of their decision had to do with coaches coming and going at Temple, but it still sucks.  Ed Foley is now 0-2. He talks a good game but I’d rather see actions than words. I always have.

This is what bowl season at Temple has come to, though. Maybe forever. Maybe just for the foreseeable future:  Decide to go down to see the band, go to pre-game events and walk around a small town in the middle of nowheresville but don’t be upset if Temple losses the game.

No thanks.

I feel most sorry for all of those Temple fans who paid their hard-earned money thinking they would see the full Temple team for one more time.

Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing. My good Temple friend can go down for the pageantry and the sightseeing next year, but it will be a hard pass for me unless it’s an NY6 game and everyone from Temple from the head coach to the waterboy is 100 percent committed to winning.

Sunday: Fizzy on The Green Flu

Wednesday: Some New Year’s Resolutions for Manny Diaz

Friday: Infante Impact

Sunday: Comparing First Years

Tuesday: (1/9): Pressing Needs

Thursday (1/11): Impact of Bowl Loss on Future

12.26.18
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Bowl Game: Keeping Up With The Joneses

chronicle

The closest thing Philadelphia drive-time sports talk radio got around to talking about the Temple’s impending bowl game tomorrow was on the Mike Missanelli Show two days ago.

Missanelli was making a point about trading Carson Wentz for a No. 1 and keeping Nick Foles to run the show and mentioned the name of the Duke quarterback as a draft possibility should the Eagles designate Foles as a placeholder for the next couple of years.

“They could even draft a guy this year,” he said. “Let’s look at the list of projected No. 1 NFL quarterbacks. How about that Daniel Jones of Duke? If you reject the notion that Wentz is the last franchise quarterback the NFL draft will ever produce, and I do, then now is the time to get rid of Wentz and get something for him. You can draft a guy like Daniel Jones, have him learn from Foles for a couple of years and then he could turn out to be as good as Wentz. You never know.”

Silly me.

templenews

My 40-year-old Temple News jersey did not survive as well as Mr. Russo’s 40-year-old Bishop Egan jersey

I thought that was a lead-in to talking about the Temple-Duke game, but Missanelli beat about 20 other Eagles’ topics to death and left Daniel Jones floating out there. Philly talk show hosts probably don’t even know Temple is playing in the Independence Bowl against Duke (1:30 p.m., ESPN) tomorrow but the Owls can certainly open some eyes with a big win.

First, there will be a lot of draftniks watching Jones to form their own opinion of him and, second, there is another very talented quarterback on the field named Anthony Russo who can establish a reputation of his own with a good game. There was a terrific story by Marc Narducci on Russo’s wearing a 40-year-old Bishop Egan jersey that his dad wore as a QB there. I also have a jersey over 40-years old–my game jersey for The Temple News’ intramural basketball team–but it has not survived as well so I don’t know how he preserved it.

comey

Shreveport’s Channel 3 is calling for an 80 percent chance of AM rain and 70 degrees by the afternoon.

Jones still has a year of eligibility but it would be crazy for a projected first-round pick to come back to college. Jones checks all of the boxes. Like Wentz, he’s 6-foot-5 and, like Wentz, he can do damage with his feet. He had two runs in excess of 60 yards in a 42-35 win over North Carolina. Jones will be looking to move up the draft board with a strong game against Temple because he hurt his prospects some in a 59-7 loss to Wake Forest in his last game. He was 17-of-36 for 145 yards and a Pick 6.

He’ll be motivated but facing a Temple secondary with two NFL hopefuls in safety Delvon Randall and corner Rock Ya-Sin. Since Duke coach David Cutcliffe is adept at breaking down film, expect Jones to try to attack Linwood Crump Jr.’s side of the field. Crump has been pretty solid as well, but sliding over Randall in help is probably the way interim coach Ed Foley is leaning.

Temple is a four-point favorite, but there’s very little to base that upon since there are no common foes. Interestingly enough, this fall Duke owns wins over both the incoming Temple coach (20-12 at Miami) and the team the outgoing Temple coach (28-14 at Georgia Tech) is taking over so there will be bragging rights to be had for the Owls. Another twist is that Duke beat Baylor and Matt Rhule, for what that’s worth.  If the Owls can pull this off, it will be their most prestigious bowl win since beating California, 28-17, in the 1979 Garden State Bowl so there is plenty at stake.

If Temple controls the clock behind Ryquell Armstead and Russo is effective in the short passing game, Jones won’t be able to do too much damage.

Friday: Game Analysis

Monday: Infante Impact

 

12.24.18
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Christmas: Best Gift Could Arrive Two Days Late

Love the way coach Foley cracks up Christina Applegate here. 🙂

If Christmas comes two days late for Temple in the form of some valuable hardware, the Owls will have to send text messages in the direction of Detroit.

They will have one guy to thank for it and it was a guy who came under a lot of criticism in this space over the last two years.

Geoff Collins.

buckethats

Give credit where credit is (or will be) due this game week.

“When I got the (Temple) job, I saw a lot of guys coming and going,” Collins said at his inaugural Georgia Tech press conference. “The one thing I made sure to say the last day I talked to the team was that this wasn’t going to happen now. I told all of the (assistant coaches) to stay in Philadelphia and concentrate on winning the bowl game. I felt I owed the Temple kids that much.”


Collins can do Temple
another solid by taking
Dave Patenaude’s fate out
of Manny Diaz’s hands and
offering him a GT job. That
way, we can get back to
the Temple football all
Owl fans know and love–a
pro set with a heavy run
package with plenty of
play-action designed to
accentuate explosive downfield
plays in the passing game
and one that is perfectly
suited to Anthony Russo’s talents

Collins will be in Detroit for Georgia Tech game against Minnesota the night before in the Quick Lane Bowl. Mix in a trophy ceremony after that game and chances are that Collins is still in the stadium late  and to expect him to make flight connections for a 1:30 start in Shreveport the same day is a little unrealistic. He won’t be coaching GT–legendary Paul Johnson will finish up–but he will be there to press the flesh with Yellowjacket fans just like he did in Annapolis with Temple fans two years ago.

Wherever he is, though, the Owls will owe him some thanks because Matt Rhule put Ed Foley behind the eight ball for the 2016 Military Bowl against Wake Forest. While Wake head coach Dave Clawson had a complete group of well-paid Power 5 professionals  Temple really only had Ed Foley and offensive line coach Chris Wisenhan as constants. Pretty much the entire Rhule staff spent the time recruiting for Baylor and making a bare minimum of Temple practices. Foley had no choice but to assign grad assistants to run eight Temple defensive practices.

ourpoll

Our Oct. 19th poll

It showed in Temple, a 14.5-point favorite, falling behind, 31-6, at halftime. The offense made a gallant enough run, but the Owls fell, 34-26.

Temple’s only a four-point favorite this time and Foley said he’s learned a few things this time. That, and having a full complement of assistants should be enough. Diaz has the best special teams’ coach in the nation in Foley and, after Ed hoists the bowl trophy, he deserves to stay right here.

Collins can do Temple another solid by taking Dave Patenaude’s fate out of Manny Diaz’s hands and offering him a GT job. That way, we can get back to the Temple football all Owl fans know and love–a pro set with a heavy run package with plenty of play-action designed to accentuate explosive downfield plays in the passing game and one that is perfectly suited to Anthony Russo’s talents. If the nightmare scenario happens where Collins is gone and Patenaude stays, Russo remains a read-option quarterback and he’s no more of a read-option quarterback than Tom Brady is.

If Collins’ departure means Patenaude is gone and Diaz finds a pro set coordinator, that’s a net plus for the good guys who remain.

Wednesday: Bowl Preview

Friday: Bowl Analysis

12.21.18
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Recruiting: About as good as expected

next

 

Roughly a year ago at this time, Geoff Collins was on the beach sitting on a chair by a table with signatures of 24 commits all while prepping for a bowl game.

What a difference a year makes.

Coaching changes always cause upheaval so that’s probably one of about 99 good reasons why Temple needs to fix the revolving coaching door office at the Edberg-Olson Complex.

Just about every story coming out of AAC schools on Wednesday, including Temple, talk about how happy everyone was with the early signing day.

That’s great, but as an ex-President once said: “Trust, but verify.”

This is where Temple stands nationally, according to Rivals.com this morning:

rivals

This is where Temple stands where it counts, among its fellow AAC members, according to Scout.com:

scoutIf Temple is really going to be pleased with this recruiting haul, it should come in February, not December, this year because, while Collins just about nailed every target by now, new head coach Manny Diaz is going to have to use some of his Power 5 coaching connections to flush out the remaining eight scholarship recipients. If Diaz can bring in a lot of guys who have Power 5 offers between now and then, the Temple rankings go up considerably. Temple hasn’t had the No. 1 recruiting ranking in any league its played in since Rivals.com ranked the Owls’ 2012 recruiting class No. 1 in the MAC.

If recruiting rankings really mean nothing, then why are teams like Alabama, Clemson, Oklahoma, Georgia and Ohio State in the top 10 the last three years? Temple can get lucky on the Tyler Matakevichs and Muhammad Wilkersons of the world, but those are anecdotal stories and outliers to the whole recruiting process. It’s nice to get five of those type kids in every class, but it’s even nicer to get a boatload of four-star commits in the other 20 signees.

Maybe Temple shoots up the charts with a bullet in these next two months or so.

Hold the celebrations for February, though, because anything else is seeing things through Cherry and White-colored glasses.

Monday: Reasons To Be Optimistic This Game Week

12.19.18
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Temple HC Pick: A Cautionary Tale

rhulediaco

Sometimes coordinators (left) work out, sometimes (right) they don’t.

From reading the reaction all across the country about Temple’s recent hire of Manny Diaz as head coach, one might think that the deal is a slam dunk for Temple.

As New York sports talk personality Mike Francesa said on his WFAN show Monday about the New York Jets next hire, no coordinator slipping into a head coaching job is ever a slam dunk.

6155a-hardin

Wayne Hardin was the only slam dunk hire in Temple history but top 10 head coaches don’t go to G5 schools these days.

“I don’t want any more coordinators,” Francesa said. “A coordinator is never a sure thing. Really, there’s no sure thing but at least with a head coach you have a track record of what they’ve done as a head coach.”

Francesa is not always right, but his logic on coordinators taking over head coaching jobs is irrefutable and provides a cautionary tale for Temple right now.

At most … most … Temple’s hiring of Diaz can be considered a layup and layups have been missed in the past.

Really, the only “slam dunk” Temple had was Wayne Hardin and that could not have been surprising. When Hardin came to Temple, he had just come off a professional football championship with the Continental League–a league competing with the fledgling AFL–for the Philadelphia Bulldogs. Prior to that, he had Navy ranked No. 2 in the country and coached two Heisman Trophy winners.

He was the real deal.

There are no slam dunks at Temple anymore and none, really, nearby.

A head coach and a coordinator are two separate jobs. Just because someone is a great produce manager at the local supermarket does not mean he’s cut out to run the whole store.

There are plenty of examples of it not working out on the college football level, either.

In fact, you don’t have to go very far from the center of Temple’s campus to point to three missed layups. You could put a protractor in the middle of Broad Street and Montgomery Avenue and draw a 200-mile circle around it and come up with these recent examples.

WISCONSIN ATHLETIC DIRECTOR BARRY ALVAREZ ON RUTGERS HIRING CHRIS ASH:

“Chris did a great job for us at Wisconsin and has been successful at every stop he’s made as an assistant. I was always impressed with his preparation and the way he motivated his players. He’s ready to be a head coach. I think Chris is a great fit for Rutgers.”

Ash’s record at Rutgers: 7-29

NOTRE DAME LINEBACKER CARLO CALABRESE ON UCONN HIRING BOB DIACO:

“He will bring a winning attitude to the team and we will bring in winning people to the team and just all around winning mentality to the  He will do whatever it takes to that. I think he will do a great job as head coach there.”

Diaco’s head coaching record at UConn: 11-26.

FLORIDA ATHLETIC DIRECTOR JEREMY FOLEY ON MARYLAND HIRING D.J. DURKIN:

“D.J. is one of the bright young minds in the coaching profession. He is a great teacher, recruiter and has a deep passion for the game and helping young men develop both on and off the field. He did a wonderful job while here at the University of Florida. Everyone here loved working with D.J. He is a winner.”

Not so fast. Durkin exited Maryland with an 11-15 record and a bad scandal involving the death of a player.

It’s a little easier to predict success for a guy who has done it all of his life with the clipboard in his hands. Handing the reins of a program over to guys who have had terrific success with the headsets on is not a slam dunk as Rutgers, UConn and Maryland have learned.

While Temple has been lucky in hiring coordinators under two different athletic directors, expecting Temple to be successful using this same kind of formula forever is tempting fate. All Temple has to do is look at some of its neighbors. The one program that hired a successful head coach, Penn State, is thriving. The others not so much.

Right now, Diaz is ahead of the pack and looks like a layup but finishing the play will determine if he scores and the scoreboard always tells the true tale.

Ask the guys coaching schools not all that far away.

Friday: The Latest