Category Archives: ESPN college football preview

03.23.11
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Practice? Yeah, we’re talking about practice

There’s a saying in the deep south about the three biggest sports seasons being college football No. 1, NASCAR No. 2 and college football spring practice No. 3.
I have no doubt that’s true in places like Alabama and Georgia and, maybe, Florida.
Baseball and basketball have yet to make inroads into that Holy Trinity.
Up here, not so much.
I doubt very many people in Philadelphia realize Temple football spring practice officially begins today.

I do.
Now you do, too.

Somebody please find that sheet and burn it once and for all.

I say officially because being a big-time college football player in today’s world is really a 365-day-a-year job.
Steve Addazio, the new Temple football coach, will talk to the media after practice today.
Expect him to talk intangibles, rather than X’s and O’s.
He’ll talk about developing a toughness, a work ethic, a pride, all of those things that Al Golden pretty much took care of in his four years.
Truth be told, he’s got no choice.
His starting quarterback (Clinton Granger, maybe) is not here yet, nor are we totally 100 percent sure he will be. (For the record, I think he will.)
So is the quarterback “competition” really that much of a story now?
I don’t think so.
My storyline this spring revolves not around the quarterback position so much as the running back position.
I’ve said this until I’m blue in the face and, trust me, I’m blue in the face:
TEMPLE NEEDS TO DEVELOP A VIABLE BACKUP TO BERNARD PIERCE SHOULD BERNARD PIERCE GO DOWN.
This was true last year.

Temple fans know this sequence all too well (thanks, Owlified)

It is even more true this year.
Look, the preferable route is to pray to God that Bernard stays healthy for 13 games and puts up the kinds of numbers I know deep down in my heart he can: 2,000 yards, 20 touchdowns, more importantly, leading to a 12-1 (or better) record.
I know he can do it.
I also know that it’s never smart to put all your eggs in one basket, especially this close to Easter.
Quite frankly, if the last two games proved anything last season, Matt Brown wasn’t a viable backup to Bernard Pierce. His tank ran on fumes the final two games and the Temple offense sputtered and grinded to a halt as result. Hopefully, Addazio will utilize Brown for what he is: The Best Third Down Back in the MAC, not Pierce’s backup. That way, he’ll be fresh for the final two games and can do some damage teamed with Pierce on third-down situations.
I’m more interested in developing a backup to Pierce  with what Addazio calls “explosives” than a quarterback. Note Addazio uses the word “explosives” and not explosiveness. Pierce has what I would call H-Bomb type explosives. We have no A-Bomb to back him up.
I don’t think there’s a talent in the program even close right now.
Does Myron Ross have explosives? Does Ahkeem Smith have explosives? Does incoming recruit Spencer Reid have explosives?
Based on what they’ve done so far (high school and limited college), I have serious doubts about all three.
I know incoming recruit Nate Smith has explosives, but they have him listed as a linebacker. I hope they think outside the box and make him a running back again. At least for this year.
So the challenge this spring is finding that “other” Bernard Pierce  egg and, in the process, destroying that playbook or whatever Matt Rhule called it.
My good friend, Dave Gerson, wrote appropriately that Temple, post-BP, had five plays in its offensive arsenal and kept calling the five plays in sequence over and over again. He said it with a hint of tongue-in-cheek but, to Temple fans, there was a lot of a sad truth to the critique.
I have a lot of confidence that new offensive coordinator Scot Loeffler is going to bring a different approach to moving the football and I’m excited to see what it will be.
Addazio said his offensive philosophy will be tailored to Temple’s personnel so, if that’s true, this is what I want to see:
Hand the ball left, right and up the middle to Pierce behind a 320-pound offensive line. Create so much fear in the running game that play-action off it results in receivers running free through opposing secondaries and the Lincoln Financial Field scoreboard being turned into an adding machine.
It’s a simple but time-tested philosophy but you have to have a great running back to execute it.
Temple’s got at least one of those.
The trick this spring is to find some more of that dynamite.

11.17.09
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Temple Fans: Cherry Out The Linc Saturday

Loyal Temple fans need to bring at least one other fan to the game.



Weather, SEPTA, Phillies … no excuses on Saturday. Be there.

By Mike Gibson
A quick search of Ticketmaster’s data base revealed some very good news yesterday.
At least 10 rows of end zone tickets were sold in a matter of hours on Monday morning alone.
That’s more tickets on one day that any other day this fall and it came on what usually is the slowest day of the week.
Who knows what moved that many tickets in one day?
Let’s hope the trend continues to go upward the rest of the week.
Maybe it’s the winning, maybe it’s the head coach’s tireless efforts promoting the program.
Probably a little bit of both.
I’ve always been a strong proponent that word-of-mouth is the best advertising.
It’s been that way since the caveman found out that rubbing two sticks together could start a fire.
So Al Golden’s radio appearance combined that word-of-mouth advertising with mass media.

Honor the Seniors:

Longest winning streaks
Florida 20
Texas 14
TCU 12
Cincinnati 10
Alabama 10
Boise State 10
Temple 8
Georgia Tech 8

Golden’s 20-minute appearance on an Eagles’ pre-game radio show (97.5, The Fan) certainly didn’t hurt and may have helped a lot. Give coach a lot of credit for making his way across the bridge and into South Jersey to do that for Temple football and the university.
He didn’t have to and could have easily begged out.
The show, hosted by Temple grad Harry Mayes, has upwards of 200,000 listeners every Sunday so Golden spreading the Temple gospel had to have an impact.
We should all follow the Temple head coach’s lead. Not all of us can get on the radio, but every single one of us can use word-of-mouth advertising.
If every one of Temple’s core base could bring just one other fan, we’d have a crowd approaching 30,000 on Saturday.
If every Temple fan who has been attending all year can bring two or more other fans, all the better. If the students spread the word around campus and on Facebook and Twitter and MySpace, that will help immeasurably.
The pre-game tailgates have been great and the games have been even better.
It’s a fun event that won’t be duplicated in this town until next year’s Mayor’s Cup.
All indications are that a large crowd will be seeing off Temple’s remarkable senior class for Saturday’s 1 p.m. kickoff against Kent State at Lincoln Financial Field.
But it won’t be the happening it should unless YOU do YOUR part.
Don’t wait for someone else to do it or hope somebody else does it.
Temple has a football team that has won eight straight games for the first time since 1973.
It has a team that needs to beat Kent State in order to move a step closer to clinching a championship.
It has gotten positive mentions in Sports Illustrated and ESPN in recent weeks.
All of that coverage would pale in comparison to what might happen if Lincoln Financial Field was sold out Saturday.
I know and you know it’s not going to happen, but bear with me for a second.
Temple has 260,000 alumni, 5,000 full-time employees and 33,000 full-time students.
Do the math. That’s 298,000 people still living who are being directly represented by the young men wearing Cherry and White.
Subtract 70,000 from that figure.
In a perfect world, 228,000 fans would be turned away at windows on Saturday, trying to get tickets.
I realize it’s not a perfect world, but we can all do a lot in the next few days to get as many of those seats filled with Temple fans on Saturday.
We can and we should.
Let’s make Lincoln Financial Field a solid wall of Cherry on Saturday.

09.30.08
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My soft-pretzel depression


Great photo of Temple’s terrific fans by Darryl Rule.

“For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’ “
_ American poet and author John Greenleaf Whittier …

By Mike Gibson
Like a lot of people, I eat when I’m depressed.
When Temple wins in football, and that’s not nearly enough, I practically skip out of the stadium on a natural high and can’t wait to talk about the win in the parking lot afterward.
I don’t think about eating. I don’t think about sleeping. I just think about winning.
That’s the most fulfilling feeling of all.

You now about those
victory cigars
Red Auerbach used to have?
Well, I have my defeat pretzels

After Temple loses, and that’s always too much, I saunter over to the concession stand and buy the biggest jumbo soft pretzel they have.
You know about those victory cigars Red Auerbach used to have?
Well, I have my defeat pretzels.
I’ve been walking out of Lincoln Financial Field eating too many soft pretzels lately, thinking so much about a lot of things that I never really noticed how the pretzel tasted.
Some soft-pretzel thoughts:
CHESTER STEWART _ I’m sure he’s a good kid and a nice guy, but he’s just not ready to lead a Division I football team to a win. After he overthrew a ton of guys in the Penn State game, I chalked it up to first-game jitters. After he mastered the art of overthrowing open guys by 10 feet in the Homecoming Game against Western Michigan, I said enough is enough. “I thought I did all right,” Stewart said after the game. Sorry, Chester. Three points is not all right. Twenty-one points is all right. Fourteen points would have been acceptable but three points is abysmal. Ridiculously not all right.
AL GOLDEN _ If he didn’t have the confidence to run a balanced offense with Chester Stewart, then he should have went with Colin Clancy or taken the redshirt off Vaughn Charlton. “I thought he did all right,” Golden said of Stewart. With all due respect, Al, what have you been smoking? THREE POINTS IS NOT ALL RIGHT. It just isn’t. It’s the quarterback’s job to put points on the board and that means touchdowns and not field goals out the wazzoo. If Chester Stewart isn’t moving the team, it’s Al Golden’s job to get someone in there who can move the team. It’s not Al Golden’s job to keep running the same guy out, failed series after failed series.
VAUGHN CHARLTON _ Obviously, the redshirt was promised to this talented young man. But, as with everything in the Al Golden Era, the team comes first. It’s the team, not the individual. Vaughn has to go into the office and volunteer to do what’s best for the team. He just has to. Don’t wait for the coach to ask.
THE FANS _ They’ve done a great job in the first two games, 17K and loud and strong in the two games. A lot of them, me included, left without being able to talk for the next two days due to cheering so loudly. The fans, like the players, left a lot on the field. There is a law of diminishing returns. Unless this team is able to string together three straight wins, don’t expect a lot of them to return for the remaining three home games.
MARK D’ONOFRIO _ What can you say about the job Temple’s defensive coordinator has done? Twelve points against UConn, seven against Western Michigan. He’s a genius. Temple is very lucky to have him, but you have to wonder if the law of diminishing returns begins to erode the performance of this defense. They leave a lot on the field, too, and get little back.
THE REFS _ In three of the four Temple losses, a ridiculous call cost the Owls the chance of winning. This time it was sideline interference on a fourth-down call. Refs are human. They’ve been in the MAC for years. They take away Temple’s only touchdown, a beautiful run by James Nixon. They don’t want a team kicked out of another conference coming in and dominating their league. They make up ridiculous stuff like that, coming at a crucial time when Temple stopped Western Michigan on a fourth-quarter third down.
Thinking about all of those people and things got me to the bottom of the Lincoln Financial Field steps. By then, the soft pretzel was gone.
The depression, brought on by lingering thoughts of what might have been, was not.

07.15.08
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"How’s Temple going to do this year?"

By Mike Gibson
One of my New York friends, a guy who loves the Yankees named Frank, asked me what is turning into a yearly question the other day.
He usually asks “How’s Temple going to do” but this year phrased it differently.
“How many wins is Temple going to have this year?” Frank asked.
“Seven,” I said.
“SEVEN?” he asked, incredulously. “They haven’t had seven wins total in the last seven years combined!”
(That’s not quite true but it’s what Frank and so many fans believe.)
“Seven,” I said again. “Check back with me in December.”
Now Frank is a very good sports fan, a Giants’ fan as well as a Yankee fanatic.
Strangely, he’s adopted Temple football over the years and has become a closet Owl follower. He went to Pace University and his wife went to Temple.
He pretty much knows everything about every baseball team.
He’ll tell me how many homers Ryan Howard, one of his fantasy players, needs to hit this week so that his team can advance.
On the front porch of his summer place near mine in the Poconos he has a sign that says “Mickey Mantle Way.”
A good, solid, sports fan with impeccable credentials. Yet he shook his head when I said seven.
I meant eight, but I said seven because I didn’t want to hear him follow me in his golf cart yelling while I was jogging and trying to listen to Mike and the Mad Dog at the same time.
Eight, I’m saying now.
I’d love to get greedy and have nine, 10 or 11, but I’ll settle for eight and consider seven OK.
As I turned the bend and rounded the road in the direction of the Blue Ridge Country Club, I thought Frank was pretty typical of the informed sports fan around the country, the kind of guy who just can’t picture Temple winning seven games.
Well, for the first time in nearly a generation, some informed fans and pundits are picking Temple to win seven games. One ESPN insider wrote as much. Athlon’s College football preview also predicted the Owls to win seven games.
Bright, intelligent, objective, people.
They could have chose any team to win seven games.
They chose Temple.
And they don’t see the world through Cherry and White-colored glasses.
You really have to know college football to pick the Owls to win seven games. In fact, you’d really have to be a hardcore college football junkie.

    Here are my simple reasons:

  • 1. Temple really won five games last year. The loss to Big East co-champ Connecticut was a well-documented travesty. Only some UConn fans really believe the myth perpetuated by some that Bruce Francis was juggling the ball. In fact, MAC officials used the side angle those same UConn fans claim showed Francis juggled it to support their apology to the Owls saying their officials got it wrong.
    The MAC officials viewed the play from every conceivable angle, including the Hartford TV station reverse angle, and came to the inescapable conclusion that BF had both the ball and possession. In fact, the ball clung to Francis’ hands so snugly that some claimed he must have had a sticky, glue-like, substance on those gloves.
    Bobble my ass.
    Period, end of story.
  • 2. Temple played the second half of the season without its MVP, quarterback Adam DiMichele. He’s back and better than ever. Check out the scrolling quote of the day on the sidebar of this blog. With DiMichele, the Owls beat UConn and later won three straight games, including a one-touchdown win over a Miami team that beat Syracuse, which beat Louisville (who also, by the way, beat UConn but that’s another travesty for another day). Temple led, 24-7, and physically manhandled Miami before the Redhawks came back to make the score respectable.
    You really have to know
    college football
    to pick the Owls
    to win seven games.
    In fact,
    you’d really have to be
    a hardcore college football
    junkie.
  • 3. Temple won those five games with just 64 scholarship players. This class brings the Owls up to NCAA norms.
  • 4. Temple recruited the best class in the MAC for the third straight year. It’s going to show up on the field. It has to.
  • 5. Temple is now strong in areas where it was weak last season (running back, offensive line) and stronger in areas where it was strongest last season. Remarkably, over the last few days, the Owls picked up a BC recruit, Eric Reynolds, who was considered the No. 1 high school running back in Pennsylvania last season. He might not be good enough to start and I’m serious because in Joe Jones, a kid from Florida who had to sit out a year with an injury, the Owls may have a future pro.
  • 6. Temple had the No. 1 overall defense in the MAC last season. Temple had the No. 1 red zone defense in the country last season. No. 1. Everybody is back from that defense.

I told Frank seven wins because he’s a doubting Thomas for now.
Much like the rest of the unwashed college football country.
That’s OK, though.
It’s going to make those of us who don’t doubt look all that much better once we get a helluva Christmas present under that tree.
Two tickets to a bowl game.
It’s going to happen.
At Temple.