Category Archives: Mike and the Mad Dog

11.29.08
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So much for the MAC "experts"

Temple players, in a classy move, thank the fans after the final game.

By Mike Gibson
I dreaded going into the final two games with a loss to lowly Kent State because there’s really nothing satisfying to me about finishing with a losing record.
You can say that five wins this year, compared to four last year, is progress but I never really saw it that way.
I expected a win and wanted to taste a win, but I didn’t expect to be satisfied walking out of the stadium in a season that has been, to me, mostly disheartening.
Satisfaction is what I got, though.
Not with the season, but with the 27-6 win over Akron. This was a Zips’ team which won at Syracuse, 42-28, and lost to Big East power Cincinnati, 17-15.
For the first time since Bruce Arians, the Owls scored more points in a season than they got scored upon them.
For the first time since Jerry Berndt, they won as many as five games.



Muhammed Wilkerson does what the Owls should have done to Drew Willy at Buffalo on the last play: Get in the QB’s face.
(Akron Beacon-Journal photo)

The part of me who was disheartened with the season was also heartened by watching the Owls celebrate afterward.
They stood and participated in a raucous rendition of “T for Temple U” only to see Bruce Francis, in my estimation the greatest Temple receiver of all time, sent in the direction of a ladder in front of the band by coach Al Golden.
Francis then climbed to the top rung of the ladder and directed the band for a “T For Temple U” encore.
The team and the thousands of Temple fans who remained afterward to soak it all in went nuts.
I couldn’t help but thinking then that these kids deserved much more than 5-7 and played much better, much better, than any 5-7 team in the country. Had their braintrust showed a little better on-the-fly decision-making skills, these team could have been 9-3.
That’s all that was needed.
Not luck. Not Devine intervention. Just good, sensible, late-game, decision-making.
I chalk it up to Golden learning on the job.
He’s a smart-enough guy that he won’t make those same mistakes a second time.
But they came at a hard price for these wonderful kids who represented Temple University so well.
So the win was satisfying for in some respects but nowhere near as satisfying as this:
Almost all of the MAC so-called experts picked Temple to finish fifth in the MAC East.
No one picked Temple to finish second, but that’s just where the Owls finished in the final Mid-American Conference standings, in a second-place tie with Bowling Green.
That, to me, was satisfying.
Not as satisfying as a winning season would have been, but satisfying.
Don’t expect any of these “experts” to pick Temple to finish above fourth place next year, though. All but one of the MAC beat writers who participated in a pre-season poll picked Temple to finish fifth in the MAC East. (Seems like they were all copying off the other’s guys paper.)
Their blinding loyalty to the “old-line” MAC teams and their hatred of newcomer Temple obscures anything close to journalistic integrity.
The fact that they have been exposed as frauds today is, well, satisfying.
There’s no other word for it.

07.22.08
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No reason Owls can’t win seven or eight

By Mike Gibson
I have to laugh when I hear mostly sports talk radio types go down a potential football schedule and say, “Well, that’s a win.” Then, “Well, that’s a loss.”
The incredibly boring Glen Macnow, who is as uninteresting as both Mike and the Mad Dog (WFAN, New York) are entertaining, loves this style of sports talkdom.
It’s almost always an exercise in futility.
Take the Eagles’ schedule of two years ago.
The Birds had an incredibly tough stretch run of three division games on the road at the end of the season.
“They better get to to 10 before then,” Macnow said. “They ain’t winning any of those.”
Well, they got a hot quarterback, a guy named Jeff Garcia, and won all three.
Garcia isn’t an Adam DiMichele clone (it’s more the other way around) but Adam DiMichele’s game reminds me so much of Jeff Garcia’s it isn’t funny.
Good arm, but better heart, determination and moxie.
The town of Philadelphia fell in love with Jeff Garcia.
By December, it will fall in love with Adam DiMichele.

None of those four
are unbeatable
and a heavily-pro Temple
crowd in the opener could turn
the UConn game into a rout.

With DiMichele, there is no reason the Owls can’t win seven or eight of these games.
NO reason at all.
I won’t go down the following list and say well this is a win and that’s a loss because I believe to get to eight some “wins” will be “losses” and some losses will be wins.
Let me say this right now: There is not one (1) game on the schedule the Owls can’t win and there is not one (1) game on the schedule the Owls can’t lose.
Yes, that includes Penn State.
It’s almost never the eight you or I think it is but here, on July 22, are the “qualified” wins:
Army, Navy, Buffalo, Western Michigan, Kent State, Eastern Michigan, Ohio, Akron.
The “qualified” losses are:
UConn, Penn State, Central Michigan and Miami.
None of those four are unbeatable and a heavily-pro Temple crowd in the opener could turn the UConn game into a rout. Based on the Navy opener of last year, where the Middies brought a disappointing 2,000 fans while the rest of the stadium (28,000 fans) were wearing Cherry and White, I fully expect a pro-Temple crowd. If the crowd is 32K, my guess is UConn will bring up to 12,000 fans. Temple will bring at least 20,000. If it’s 30K, UConn will bring 10K and Temple 20K.
It’s going to be a one-sided Temple crowd in any event, especially given the revenge motive.
But there’s no reason, right now, you can’t get eight wins out of this schedule.
My eight might not be your eight but, in any case, eight would be great and nine would be just fine if you add UConn into this volatile and always dangerous speculative mix.

2008 TEMPLE OWLS FOOTBALL SCHEDULE

Day Date Opponent Time TV
Fri. Aug. 29 at Army 7:00 p.m. (ESPN Classic)
Sat. Sept. 6 Connecticut Noon (ESPNU)
Sat. Sept. 13 at Buffalo Noon (ESPN Regional)
Sat. Sept. 20 at Penn State Noon (Big Ten Network)
Sat. Sept. 27 Western Michigan 2:00 p.m. Homecoming
Sat. Oct. 4 at Miami-Ohio 3:30 p.m. (ONN)
Sat. Oct. 11 at Central Michigan 4:00 p.m.
Tue. Oct. 21 Ohio 8:00 p.m. (ESPN2)
Sat. Nov. 1 at Navy 3:30 p.m. (CSTV)
Wed. Nov. 12 at Kent State 8:00 p.m. (ESPN2 or ESPN360)
Sat. Nov. 22 Eastern Michigan 1:00 p.m.
Fri. Nov. 28 Akron 1:00 p.m.
Sat. Dec. 5 MAC Championship Game 8:00 p.m. ESPN2

07.15.08
by

"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.