Category Archives: Rod Carey

10.04.21
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After Cincy, plenty of room at the top for Temple

After Temple makes a prime time appearance on ESPN Friday night at Cincinnati, the Bearcats–a longtime staple of the Owls’ football schedule–will be gone.

Maybe forever from the Temple schedule after this year given the fact that the school wants an early departure from the American Athletic Conference.

That’s sad because Cincy was a longtime regional rival in the next state over where the Owls have had pretty good success against.

The Owls have more to thank Cincinnati for than the wins, though.

Cincinnati showed Temple University how to get to the top of the AAC: Build a state of the art on-campus stadium (Nippert Stadium is basically a new stadium on an old site) and compile four-straight top-level recruiting classes composed of players who want to experience college life in an urban environment, not in the middle of nowhere. Mix in a popular players coach who wants to stay a few years and not jump for the first P5 offer like most of his league mates, stir, and come up with a top 10 team.

In the G5, a top 10 team is reaching the pinnacle.

Philadelphia has arguably more to offer than Cincy as a city.

Temple, as a program, needs to, err, Cherry pick the other ingredients of success–getting a popular players’ coach and stringing together a few top-rated recruiting classes.

Owls on ESPN after winning the AAC title in 2016.

Can the Owls do it?

Sure.

In Al Golden and Matt Rhule, the Owls had popular players’ coaches and top recruiting classes. In a league where everyone but Navy was running an RPO, they established a unique offensive style that featured establishing the run first. Only when that happened, which was pretty much always, the Owls faked it into the belly of a big-time running back (Bernard Pierce, Jahad Thomas and Ryquell Armstead come to mind) and that mere fake led to wide open Temple receivers running through the secondary for explosive plays in the downfield passing game. Special teams were not only locked down but the Owls routinely got big punt returns on their end and blocked punts on the other end.

What happened?

Temple beat Cincinnati four-straight times and the only recent loss to the Bearcats came on a blocked extra point that was taken back for two points in 2019. Under Rod Carey, the Owls don’t lock down special teams. Hell, they often leave the keys on top of the vehicle so the carjackers don’t have to do any work. Returning a kick for touchdown? Not allowed. Blocking a punt? Out of the question. You know how to take a punt to the house? Put Trey Blair back there. He has plenty of experience doing just that in a great high school league. You know how to block a punt? Have your tallest player (Ronnie Stevenson?) with a good wingspan and vertical leap come straight up the middle and stick his paw up. When Steve Addazio needed to block a field goal at UConn, he put 6-6 wide receiver Deon Miller in the game and gave him the job. It got done. Temple won, 17-14, when Brandon McManus kicked the game-winning field goal with no time left.

“I wanted to put the ball in the middle of the field and give the best kicker in the country a chance to win it and that’s just what he did,” Daz said.

Over at Cincy, special teams are the same third of the game they were at Temple under the Golden Rhule.

Now Cincy is on top of the AAC hierarchy and a lot of things will have to go right for the 28-point underdog Owls to shock the world on Friday.

Whatever happens, Cincy has now taken over the league for however much time they have left in it. Before leaving, they have shown the Temple administration how to get back on top. It’s not rocket science and it’s doable.

Football is the front porch of a major university and Cincy has the best porch in the AAC neighborhood now.

Good blueprints make for good porches. Now that the rich folks are leaving the neighborhood, we will find out soon enough if the Owls are the neighbors who invest enough coin to move on up to the East Side.

Friday: Cincinnati Preview

09.17.21
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BC-Temple: So many story lines, so little time

Saturday’s big question will be if Kraft’s feet can actually leave the ground on a BC touchdown

If you are walking around Lot K tomorrow, like I will be, you can be excused about having the feeling of de ja vu.

Shooting the breeze with Pat Kraft about football?

Check.

Walking around the Lot and seeing the affable family and friends of Khris Banks and Isaiah Graham-Mobley?

Check.

Shaking hands before the game with Boomer (Aaron Boumerhi)?

Check.

Been there, done that.

The last time many thousands of Temple fans saw the team this was the collective look after a 55-13 loss to an ACC team. Maybe these Owls can produce a smile around 3:15 p.m. Saturday.

Except for them being the good guys, they are now the bad guys.

How did the world ever turn upside down?

Welcome to college football, 2021.

In a perfect world, the good guys would stay the good guys and the bad guys would stay the bad ones.

Whatever you feel about Kraft, the current AD at Boston College and the former one at Temple, I don’t remember a single athletic director not named Gavin White who you could walk up to and get an HONEST opinion about the game of football from.

This exchange between me and Pat in Lot K circa Geoff Collins and Dave Patenaude comes to mind:

Me: “Pat, you’re going to have to talk to Geoff about Patenaude. I have no idea what he’s doing.”

Pat: “Mike, you and me both. He’s got me scratching my head every week.”

Most athletic directors would shrug their shoulders and say that’s the head coaches bailiwick.

This guy was an honest, good, man. He still is.

For the first time in two years, this beautiful tradition returns tomorrow.

When Kraft hired Manny Diaz to replace Collins at Temple, I screamed bloody murder in this space. I wrote then that Diaz, who was the son of the ex-Mayor of Miami, would be gone as soon as Mark Richt left.

I thought it would be a year or so.

Little did I know it would be 18 days.

Kraft never held it against me. He respected my opinion.

Now seeing what Diaz has done with Miami talent, I know Temple has dodged a huge bullet.

When he hired Rod Carey, I wrote that I thought Buffalo’s Lance Leipold or Eastern Michigan’s Chris Creighton might have been a better choice but, if Rod beats Boston College on Saturday (and I pray he will), Kraft might ironically be responsible for an embarrassing BC loss. I was for Leipold and Creighton because they did more with less than Carey did but Carey beating’s BC’s butt will prove my sorry ass wrong.

And, ironically, Pat Kraft right.

Geez, I hope so.

Hope doesn’t get me the AAC title or even a bowl game so I think BC will win this one and the 16-point spread sounds about right. The last time we saw Carey coach against an ACC team turned into a 55-13 loss and a lot of Temple fans walking out of the stadium disgusted.

The caveat there is we saw some life with the Owls last week.

The Owls showed a pulse and a lot of Temple TUFF in a 45-24 win over Akron. They got a good pass rush from their Power 5 transfers and an ESPN highlight reel play from Wake Forest portal guy Manny Walker. Temple needs a big pass rush, solid run stoppage and the kind of turnover-free football from Justin Lynch they got last week. Keep D’Wan Mathis on the bench and have him regain his swag against Wagner next week. That’s my vote. Have Justin play four games and save his redshirt unless he Wally Pipps Mathis in a big win over BC.

Put it this way: Temple had five turnovers in a 61-14 Week One loss and zero turnovers in a 45-24 win a week ago.

Football ain’t rocket science. It never was. Protect the football, rush the bad guys’ quarterback, win the damn game.

Whatever happens, it will be good to see Temple fans cheering the Owls and singing “T for Temple U” after every touchdown again. Temple drew 69,176 fans for its 2015 home opener, 35,004 fans or its 2016 opener and 35,117 for its 2017 home opener. It won two of those three games and attendance for the rest of the season suffered because of its shocking home opening loss to Army in 2016 and soared after wins the other two opening games. Win this one and the fans will keep coming back.

For once, it would be nice if the good guys would show the bad guys they made the wrong choice.

Picks this week: TULANE plus 14.5 at Ole Miss (Tulane gave Oklahoma all it wanted and Okie is better than Ole Miss); WYOMING -6.5 vs. Ball State; NORTHWESTERN -2.5 at Duke; TULSA +27.5 at The Ohio State; PURDUE +7.5 at Notre Dame (Purdue is considerably better than the Toledo and FSU teams ND beat and already has a win over a decent Oregon State squad); MICHIGAN STATE +6.5 at Miami. I think Purdue not only covers but wins the game outright, something on the order of 24-21.

9/21 update: Tulane let me down, but Wyoming easily covered, Northwestern lost, Tulsa covered, Purdue lost and Michigan State not only covered but won outright. So so far for the season 7-4-1 against the spread.

9/17 Update: Last week, predicted Pitt by five (it won by 7), Purdue 51-0 (it won 49-0), NIU by 4 (it lost by seven, a push) Nebraska by four (it won by 25), App. State by 3 (it lost by two) and BYU by one (it both won and covered).

Season to date: 4-2 straight up, 4-1-1 ATS

Sunday: Game Analysis

Monday: The Temple Curse

09.10.21
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How important is Temple at Akron?

How important is the Temple at Akron football game?

Important, and also not important at all.

If you are Rod Carey, it’s very important.

A loss continues a decline in his performance as head coach and puts him on the road to inevitable dismissal at the end of this or next season. A convincing win combined with a highly unlikely win over Boston College next week makes him 2-1 and might turn around the clubhouse to set it on the path to five or six wins, but realistically no more.

If you are a hardcore and objective Temple football fan like me, really not important at all. We’ve been saying in this space since February that the apparent “plan” for Carey as the program’s CEO was to largely rely on the backups to the players who were most responsible for a 1-6 season in 2020 to turn around fortunes in 2021.

Look at these five blocks. THAT’S Temple TUFF.

That was a recipe, in our minds, for a 2-10 season and that’s only if you beat Akron (3:30 p.m., Saturday, ESPN+).

A respected poster here, KJ, says 1-11 and doesn’t think there’s a chance to beat Akron.

We will see.

Put it this way. The Akron team the Owls are a 6.5-point favorite over beat Bowling Green, 31-3, last year to close out the season. Bowling Green is pretty bad but lost to Tennessee last week by a similar score (38-6). Akron lost to Auburn by pretty much the same score Temple lost to Rutgers and most college football fans will tell you without hesitation that Auburn is better than Rutgers.

When 13 mostly impact players leave, it’s your job as the CEO to bring in 13 better players from P5 programs. The best Carey could do is six P5 players and their impact is largely suspect. He didn’t do his job in the offseason and, as a result, might have dug his own grave.

That photo in the middle of this post tells you all you need to know about how far Temple has fallen in the last decade. In 2011, with an all-out commitment to the run, Temple hammered host Akron, 41-3. Look at those five blocks in that photo. Pretty much pancakes.

That’s the definition of Temple TUFF.

That’s a football identity. Knock people off their feet, establish the run, and then make big plays in the play-action passing game. Catch the ball and advance it on special teams and make big plays off the returns. Don’t be afraid to both return or block kicks. Under Rod Carey, a secured fair catch is considered a successful special teams’ play. Blocking a punt or a field goal? Out of the question.

That’s not Temple TUFF.

Temple really has no identity pretty much since Matt Rhule left. The Owls try to fool people with the RPO (run/pass/option) and end up fooling no one but themselves.

John Chaney once said “winning is an attitude” but so is losing and that’s why this quote from one Temple player after a 61-14 loss is so disturbing: “Rutgers wanted it more than we did.”

If you go 1-6 and your next chance to prove that 1-6 was bogus is almost a year away, you should want something a lot more than a 3-6 team did. There’s no reason anyone else should want something more.

Rutgers, at least in that sense, was a lot more important than Akron and the Owls might have showed us who we thought they were that day.

Unless they go out and beat Akron, 61-14. I’m hoping that’s the case but not counting or even expecting it. A 13-10 win elicits a “meh” but certainly is more acceptable than a 13-10 loss. I’m tired of hearing excuses about “playing hard” and correcting “fixable errors” like having two of the same numbers on the field at the same time. Do you think on one of those two bus trips to Rutgers someone, anyone, would have mentioned out loud that we have two No. 39s on an 81-man travel roster? That’s the kind of stuff that should be taken care of before the fact, not after. Losing programs make mental errors like that. Winning programs don’t. Winning is the only important thing.

I hold Temple football to the standard Al Golden and Matt Rhule established and nothing else is important to me at all.

If the Temple University administration has a pulse, it would have a similar definition of important.

Sunday: Game Analysis

Monday: Not Like That

Picks this week: Pitt 35, Tennessee 30 (Pitt favored by 3), Northern Illinois 24, Wyoming 20 (Wyoming favored by 7),

Purdue 51, UConn 0 (Purdue favored by 34), Nebraska 21, Buffalo 17 (Nebraska favored by 14), Appalachian State 17, Miami 14 (Miami favored by 14) and BYU 17, UTAH 16 (Utah favored by 7).

Season to date: 0-0 against the spread, 0-0 straight up.

Update: Predicted Pitt by five (it won by 7), Purdue 51-0 (it won 49-0), NIU by 4 (it lost by seven, a push) Nebraska by four (it won by 25), App. State by 3 (it lost by three) and BYU by one (it both won and covered).

Season to date: 4-2 straight up, 4-1-1 ATS

09.04.21
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TU football: Proving law of diminishing returns

Anyone who had Sam Wilson’s Economics 101 Class knows the law of diminishing returns all too well.

Now Rod Carey might be starting to understand it.

Temple spoiled a 130-or-so round trip to Rutgers for most of the 100 to 200 Owl fans who made the trip not necessarily by losing the game by the ignominious score a 61-14 but by what Carey has done since he arrived on campus.

Ignore one-third of the game of football.

Diminishing returns, also called law of diminishing returns or principle of diminishing marginal productivity, is an economic law stating that if one input in the production of a commodity is increased while all other inputs are held fixed, a point will eventually be reached at which additions of the input yield progressively smaller, or diminishing, increases in output.

Carey said he got rid of the best special team’s coach in the country, Ed Foley, because he wanted “an extra coach on the field on defense.” How is that coach working out after the Owls allowed 62 and 55 against UCF and UNC two years ago, 47 points to SMU and 41 points to Memphis and 61 against Rutgers today?

The commodity that was increased in this case was the perception that Temple had somehow improved from a 1-6 season by a) being able to practice more) and b) a team bonding preseason in the Bronx.

That perception was shattered on Saturday because at best the Owls’ other inputs remain fixed or were significantly decreased.

We wrote in this space many times in the offseason that the Owls lost too many good players and did not bring enough in to offset the losses. These were not malcontents who left the program. They were good, mostly local, kids stuck in an ill-fitting system and valuable starting players who never “felt” a connection with a largely midwestern staff.

My biggest fear was that the Owls would be only favored in two games–Akron and Wagner–and probably finish 2-10.

That’s looking more and more like the case now and beating Akron turned from a given to an if over the last 24 hours. Two and 10 five years removed from a 10-2 regular season would be a disaster.

If so, the university has to put the big boy pants on and do what every other university has done–eat the contract of the head coach and find a better fit.

Because this is Temple, and we all know the history of Temple all too well, that’s probably not happening. When was the last time the university fired a high-profile coach of one of its two major sports with money still on the table? That happens everywhere else.

Not here.

Temple never eats contracts.

Temple Football Forever: Feb. 11, 2021

Temple would rather lose than pay two contracts even though the administration would be better off following another Sam Wilson economic maxim: Spend money to make money. (I was a journalism major but that class was a damn good elective. I got an A. Carey would have probably gotten an F.)

So what happens?

We are left with a head football coach who completely ignores one-third of the game of football.

Special teams.

Last year we were promised special teams would get better.

They got worse.

Former Owl and Dallas Cowboy Ventell Bryant offers his three-word analysis on the game.

Al Golden said special teams are just as important as offense and defense and he had terrific punt and kickoff returners who flipped the field. On the other side of special teams, he blocked punts and field goals. That tradition continued under Matt Rhule and Geoff Collins. The one constant under all of those guys was that the special teams keys were given to Ed Foley and none of the previous head coaches had to worry about that car crashing.

This year the coaching staff said they had fixed those problems.

Don’t tell us, show us. What they’ve shown us in three years is abundantly clear.

This team doesn’t even try to return punts or kickoffs, or block kicks.

What did we see on Saturday?

A punt returner who routinely allowed the ball to bounce far behind him without advancing it and a kickoff returner who failed to secure the ball. That led to two early touchdowns by Rutgers and the rout was on after that. (Hell, we could mention this team’s penchant for kicking the ball straight to dynamite returners but we’re too depressed to do that.)

Carey said he got rid of the best special team’s coach in the country, Ed Foley, because he wanted “an extra coach on the field on defense.” How is that coach working out after the Owls allowed 62 and 55 against UCF and UNC two years ago, 47 points to SMU and 41 points to Memphis last year and 61 against Rutgers today?

Err, probably not as planned.

The loss of Foley for an “extra defensive coach on the field” is about as good a definition of diminishing returns as we’ve ever seen.

Monday: Meanwhile ….

08.23.21
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A win to a lot of wins: Tough, not impossible

Rebounding is usually a topic associated with Temple basketball, not Temple football.

From the late Michael Blackshear to Donald Hodge to Kevin Lyde, the basketball Owls have had a lot of good rebounders.

Add Rod Carey to the list if he’s able to magically transform the Owls from a one-win team to a winning one.

If history is anything indication, that prospect doesn’t look good.

Owls look on in final moments of win at Wisconsin

Consider this:

In 1993, the football Owls won once. In 1994, they won twice.

In 96, they won once; in 97, they won three times.

In 95, they won once and the we know what happened in 96.

In 2003, the first year they played at Lincoln Financial Field, they won once and “only” doubled that win total the next year.

In 2006, they won once in Al Golden’s first year and won as many as four the next. Would four wins be acceptable only two years removed from an eight-win season?

Not to me.

No wonder the oddsmakers have the Owls as anything between a 2-3 win team.

History is not on their side.

You have to go back more than 30 years ago to find any semblance of hope for Temple football.

That year, Jerry Berndt’s second, the Owls went from one win to seven.

That improvement was pretty remarkable.

Consider just one of the losses.

In 1989, the Owls lost to Syracuse, 43-3. One year later they were respectable 19-9 losers.

The wins were the thing, though.

They won at Boston College, 29-10, one year after losing to the Eagles, 35-14, in Philadelphia. They beat a winning Virginia Tech team, 31-28, one year after being shut out by the Hokies, 23-0. They beat Pitt by double-digits one year after being outclassed by the Panthers, 27-3.

Hell, they even went on the road and beat a Big 10 team, Wisconsin, 24-18.

So we’re saying there’s a chance, especially if they go on the road and beat a Big 10 team again.

Vegas also offered over/unders and the 1990 Owls were listed as a two-win team then as well.

So while the great body of history is against the Owls going from one win to a winning season, they go into this season knowing another group of Owls that preceded them were able to buck those odds.

Friday: Rutgers Fans

Monday: Game Week

08.20.21
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Three names to watch in Temple camp

Absent of actually being there–and really no one in the media is these COVID days–the best way to follow the progress of the Temple football team is OwlsDaily.com.

The editor there is Shawn Pastor, an impartial observer and terrific writer of the Owls since way back in the 1990s. The difference between Shawn and the Brand X site is that he is not an employee of Temple University and therefore is free to criticize.

Without mentioning names, I don’t think you can find a single article on the archives of the “other” site where the editor there has ever hammered a Temple coach for underperforming while that said coach was also collecting a Temple paycheck.

That’s quite understandable. Don’t bite the paycheck hand that feeds you. Conflict of interest? Double-dipping? Call it what you want but I would have loved to have read just one story on that site calling for a firing of a high-profile Temple coach who wasn’t doing his job.

Never did. Probably never will.

If Rod Carey goes 2-10 this year, you are more likely to read a story about how the 2020 COVID season impacted the 2021 year rather than a call for heads to roll.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so. The proof of that pudding will come in late November if Rod Carey finishes 2-10. If Brand X comes out with a front-page post calling for the firing of Carey, you have it in writing Aug. 20 that I will apologize to them and make a FULL post praising them to the hilt.

There’s a reason that never happened after Bobby Wallace’s 0-11 season over there.

You are definitely reading a head-rolling piece here in November if that happens and, to be fair, a call for Rod to retain his job should he go 10-2. Six wins, six losses? That’s the definition of mediocre and mediocre, as Wayne Hardin said on the day he retired, is “not my cup of tea.” Nor should it ever be Temple’s.

You’ll find plenty of criticisms from Shawn about Bobby Wallace and Ron Dickerson and even Steve Addazio in his wayback machine WHILE they were employed by Temple.

That’s why if Shawn says someone is doing well I tend to listen.

Daesean Winston has earned that open starting safety spot.

Shawn has actually been to the Bronx site where the Owls practiced for the first 10 days of summer camp. The Brand X guy has been there virtually by Zoom.

The three names to watch in Temple’s camp, judging purely from the OwlsDaily.com coverage, are safety Daesean Winston, kicker Noah Botsford and 6-5 receiver Ronnie Stevenson.

Those, to me, just a guy who watched the team from afar in horror last year, didn’t really factor into the 1-6 record.

If the Owls are going to turn that 1-6 into a 6-1 or even a 3-2 start (which would require beating either BC or Rutgers in addition to Akron and Wagner), the guys who weren’t here for the 1-6 will probably have to be the reason for the turnaround.

That’s why the performances of Botsford, Winston and Stevenson are so encouraging.

According to OwlsDaily, Botsford–a nationally acclaimed kicker from St. Augustine Prep in Florida, has emerged not only as the top placekicker for the Owls but also could handle the punting duties.

If he’s that impressive, there’s a chance the Owls go from a laughingstock in the kicking/punting department to a solid dependable squad. From the four kicks that went out of bounds to the too many good returns by the bad guys last year was not a typical Temple football kicking year. Hell, even the 8-5 season was a horrible kicking year by Temple standards.

Winston is another interesting story. He sat out last year because of COVID and the Owls needed another safety to emerge alongside the dependable leader Amir Tyler. Winston has separated himself from everyone else. Why is that good? The Owls got really poor play opposite Tyler last year.

Finally, Stevenson.

A Western Pennsylvania legend at Montour, Stevenson gives the Owls what they seemed to lack when Branden Mack left for the NFL–a large dependable red zone target. According to OwlsDaily, Stevenson has been the surprise of the camp–every bit as good as Temple all-timers Jadan Blue and Randle Jones. (Not what Shawn said or wrote but me reading between the lines.)

If that carries over into the fall, watch out.

What does it mean to the Owls’ bottom line?

Certainly more than one win and maybe a lot more.

A month ago, I never expected, say, the kicking game and the safety position to be in good hands. If those two positions have improved, I’m looking forward to seeing how many more do.

Reading that they are exponentially better from someone I’ve learned to trust over three decades gets the juices flowing and that certainly beats the alternative.

Monday: How history factors into this season

08.15.21
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Golden’s secret sauce for success at Temple

Whatever Rod Carey was cooking at SUNY-Maritime for the last 10 days or so won’t be really tasted until Sept. 2 when the Owls visit Rutgers.

There’s the nagging feeling, at least from this point of view, that the ingredients are just not there and, at the end of the day, this won’t be a satisfying meal for Temple football fans when all is said and done. If I had my druthers, Carey would go 12-0 and keep his job but too many good players walked out the back door and not enough walked through the front one to make up for it.

It’s looking a lot more sour than sweet.

If so, Dr. Jason Wingard couldn’t go wrong in rescuing Al Golden from the obscurity of an NFL position coach come the end of the season.

Al Golden went to the tie in his fourth year.

If anyone knows the secret sauce for success at Temple, it’s Golden.

Last week, Golden spoke with Dave Lapham in a Youtube interview and much of the talk turned to Temple. His degree in sports philosophy undoubtedly helped.

” The biggest question I get at speaking engagements is, “How did you turn around Temple? How did that happen?’ I think the biggest thing was we took secondary educational philosophies and reversed them.

“So, in secondary education, you use sports confidence or different extracurricular activities to build confidence that would carry over into academics. We just did the reverse. We just said we’re going to win as many things. … we’re going to be great in the community, we’re going to compete in the class room, we’re going to compete in the weight room, we’re going to compete in the off-season program. We’re going to do all these things and, ultimately, that would become our culture and we’re going to get this thing turned and that’s what happened. That was a great experience for me, personally, and for my family. We loved being in that area as both of our families were from that area.

“Again (Temple) was kind of a leap of faith. I felt like I was ready, No. 1 and No. 2, I just felt like. I think the number to be correct is that 40 percent of the nation’s population lives between Hartford and Richmond and West of Pittsburgh and then again I don’t know if that number is that way today but, back then, it was so densely populated and I just kept saying to myself we needed about 18 guys a year and, from that, we just kind of changed the paradigm.”

Golden even talked about how it took him four years to switch from sweats on game day to ties at Temple.

“When we first got to Temple, every day felt like training camp,” he said. “We were so far from … there was 120 teams in Division One football my first year. We were 120. Literally there were times those first 18, 24 months where my hair was falling out and I was wearing just a sweat suit or sweat shirt on game day and it just felt like training camp. I’ll never forget before the fourth season my mom was the one who kind of got after my butt a bit and was like, “Hey, the game day is different. You have to look different. You have to feel different.’ So, you know, that’s the year I went with the tie and the rest is history.

“We won nine games in a row and that was the most in 112 years of Temple football at that time and the first bowl game in 30 years and the third bowl game in over a century and that’s where it all started.”

(Golden could be excused for the exaggeration. The Owls won 14-straight games between 1973 and 1974, but having the second-longest winning streak in 120 years should be a point of pride.)

Golden also said it was easier to win at Temple than Miami.

“The Miami thing was harder because I was blindsided,” he said. “There was a huge investigation and we had to give up bowl games and there was probation. … we met great people and that was an unfortunate circumstance.”

Temple, though, was something he took a lot of pride in for good reason. If the wheels fall off at the end of this year, Wingard could pick a lot of guys to succeed Carey but there is only one guy out there who might take the job who has done it to a high level.

“I always felt like I was ready to take the Temple job because I had gone to Boston College with Tom O’Brien and we inherited that gambling scandal,” he said. “So that was hard. Same kind of scenario because we had to start from scratch again. I had the opportunity to do it myself at Temple with a bunch of great, great coaches and support.”

The secret sauce is already bottled and the patent belongs to one guy, even though Matt Rhule made a bundle with his copy of it. Plenty of candidates will want the job if Carey falters but there is only one guy realistically available who has proven to be able to do it.

Friday: Surprise of Camp

08.01.21
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Adam DiMichele: Sorry to see him go

Adam DiMichele’s final game as a Temple Owl.

Before too much time passed, we wanted to note here that Adam DiMichele is no longer with the Temple program and we’re sorry to hear that.

The news was official less than two weeks ago when Adam sent out a tweet saying goodbye.

Maybe someday we will hear the real story about why a guy who has been here since the beginning of the Al Golden Era left but it won’t be this year and maybe not next.

As soon as I found out, I texted someone I knew inside the E-O simply this: “What’s the deal with Adam DiMichele?”

“What do you mean?”

“He resigned 27 minutes ago.”

“Oh no. I know he wasn’t happy but I didn’t think it was that bad. I’m bummed. He’s a real good dude.”

Whatever the deal is, we simply know this. Of the four coaches Pat Kraft specifically asked Rod Carey to keep (Fran Brown, Ed Foley, Adam DiMichele and Gabe Infante), three of them are gone and Kraft isn’t here to protect a single one.

Sad, because DiMichele was a part of the turnaround from the beginning. He played for Golden and coached under three uniquely different personalities, which suggests he gets along with everyone. He was quarterback with three Philadelphia teams (Eagles, where he threw a touchdown pass in a preseason game to a guy named Gibson), Soul and Owls.

Adam’s career stats at Temple.
P.J.’s career stats at Temple.

DiMichele was one of my five favorite Temple players of all time (Paul Palmer, Joe Klecko, Tyler Matakevich and P.J. Walker were the others).

Stat-wise, DiMichele didn’t compare to Walker but there were extenuating circumstances. Because Joe Paterno never released him from his Penn State scholarship, DiMichele was eligible only three years to play at Temple, not four. Plus, he missed half a season with a broken leg.

The fourth year he would have been the quarterback of a great Temple team that finished 9-3. That team had everything but a quarterback. DiMichele would have been that quarterback and both his stats and an insanely good legacy here would have been cemented.

Would that team have gone 12-0 during the regular season with DiMichele at quarterback? I think they would have. They lost, 31-6 against Penn State with Vaughn Charlton and Chester Stewart at quarterback and they probably would have beaten UCLA in the bowl game and those were the two best teams they lost to that season.

Maybe 13-0 including the bowl (although the bowl opponent would have been better than UCLA) is a stretch but 12-1 was definitely within reach.

No way this team would have been “only” 9-3 with a quarterback like Adam DiMichele behind center.

It would have been fun to find out.

We will never know the story of how his playing career would have ended but someday I’m confident we will hear the real story of how his coaching career ended here.

Someday, but probably not soon.

Friday: Expansion Mania

Monday: Optimism abounds

07.29.21
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Temple football: Bronx Cheers?

If the Owls bond as a winning team, this is where the magic will happen.

After training camp in the 1992-93 season, Doug Moe went on record with the press as saying his Philadelphia 76ers would win 50 games.

Six months later, he was fired by General Manager Jimmy Lynam after only 19 wins.

In one of the greatest quotes ever in Philadelphia sports, Moe said he only made that 50-win claim on this basis: “We looked great practicing against ourselves. When we had to play other teams, it was different.”

That reminds me a little of both the very important upcoming two weeks in both Temple football and many Cherry and White games that tutored me in the past. The Owls looked like national champions practicing against themselves in so many of the prior Al Golden Era years I was fooled like, maybe, twice.

It never happened a third time and it won’t happen now.

Injuries are one concern; drowning might be another.

Moe is a good example only because he had a similar history to current Temple head coach Rod Carey. Before getting to the Sixers he was 609-492, which is damn close, percentagewise, to Carey’s 52-30 before he got to Temple.

The Owls will begin training camp at SUNY-Maritime in the Bronx next week and Carey is not promising 50 or even five wins in 2021.

He knows what he saw and so do I.

All he’s doing is promising a team that “will play hard and make the fans proud”, whatever that means.

Me?

I’d prefer they play soft and win 10 games.

If they play hard and win two or even four, that won’t make me proud.

The two weeks of practice in the Bronx of all places is obviously an attempt at team bonding and to avoid all of the City of Philadelphia COVID pitfalls that set Temple back in 2020.

It’s a longshot but if it works I’m down.

What I know is what I saw.

COVID schmovid, that was a shockingly uncompetitive football team I saw in 2020.

I don’t care if you lose 20 starters, a 28-3 loss at Lincoln Financial Field to an East Carolina team this program has routinely beaten like a drum is unacceptable. Calling a dump pass to a running back down two at Navy when you had a 6-6 receiver against a 5-10 corner is also shockingly incompetent from a coaching standpoint.

When every Owl fan watching on TV knows a fade in the corner will work before the fact and the staff calls a head-scratcher, that’s a red flag. Who are these guys stealing money from the university?

Now they have to earn their pay.

After two weeks in the Bronx, the Owls return for the final two weeks at 10th and Diamond before the Sept. 2 opener at Rutgers.

You can talk all you want about Bronx and North Philly, but the proof is in Piscataway.

Winning there will change the whole vibe right now. Otherwise, be prepared for a lot of “Bronx Cheers” beginning in the home opener the next week. I’d like to bet on the former but I’ve seen this play before.

Monday: Tribute to a champion

07.19.21
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What would Geoff Collins do?

According to the website coacheshotseat.com, two former Temple guys sit at Nos. 14 and 15, respectively.

While there seems to be some debate about how rosy the future is for Rod Carey at Temple, there is less debate about current Georgia Tech head coach Geoff Collins had he remained at Temple.

It would not have ended well.

Yikes …

Hell, my best guess has been since December of 2019 that it won’t end well for Carey here but Collins didn’t tee things up for Rod like Matt Rhule did for Geoff.

Carey probably has one more year, maybe two, to post a winning season at Temple or he’s out of here.

Collins would have been on a shorter leash had he remained here simply because his contract would have been up.

Collins recruited primarily from the South, eschewed local connections, and his two classes were mediocre at best.

Had he remained here would he have been able to switch gears like Carey did in the offseason, promote Gabe Infante and hire a guy like Preston Brown?

Doubtful.

So, in my mind and probably in a lot of other minds, Temple is slightly better off with Carey than Collins.

Put it this way: Carey beat Collins, 24-2, with AAC talent while Collins had the benefit of ACC recruiting classes.

Knowing Temple as I do, Carey will probably be able to survive a 2-4 win season as most of the experts expect the Owls to have. Look at it this way: Did Steve Addazio survive a four-win season at Temple?

He sure did until Boston College took the Owls off the hook.

Temple rarely fires head coaches who it owes money to and I doubt they’d start with Carey.

Collins, on the other hand, is feeling the heat in Atlanta and that comes with the Power 5 territory.

Maybe he can make a move to solidify his job by capitalizing on the new NIL rule, but that remains to be seen. The fans there are restless and a story published over the weekend illustrated why.

That’s Georgia Tech’s problem, not Temple’s. We have our own, of course, but things could have been worse.

Friday-Monday: Off the Grid (we’ll be in the Poconos this weekend and our only internet will be by phone so no stories)

Friday, July 30: Summer camp preview