Category Archives: Temple football,

10.18.16
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The Path Forward

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=3a0WqEnbzTI

Thanks to Paul Palmer for the audio file and Ricky Swalm for the YouTube work.

For someone who never used a drug harder than an occasional Coors Light and never understood the power of drugs or addiction, I’ve been overdosing on a couple of things over the last 48 hours.

Strawberry (I call them Cherry) Twizzlers and the 32-second drive.

I can’t get enough, eating the Twizzlers and snorting the video below. There are a couple of things worth noting in the video, the smarts and sheer courage of Ventell Bryant in both getting out of bounds and getting up and staggering to the line of scrimmage before the final play and the presence of mind of his teammates to get him lined up. If Bryant stays down, a 10-second runoff happens and the Owls lose. Also, P.J. Walker made four great throws and the last one under a significant amount of duress and, of course, the Keith Kirkwood great catch. Also, Anthony Russo’s participation in the celebration is noteworthy. One whiff of any of those things creates a significant high combined with the munchie Twizzlers.

My addiction, though, is harmless. If the team and the coaches have not moved on from Saturday night’s high, going to rehab will be a necessary trip on the way to a six-win season. What the victory on Saturday purchased in currency was very valuable, their own destiny, with regard to an American Athletic Conference championship and a possible double-digit-win season. They need not rely on anyone else but themselves to win the title. If they had lost, they would have needed help.

That cannot be understated because of what is ahead of them in the very next game.

South Florida will come into Lincoln Financial Field on Friday not only as the preseason favorite to take the AAC East title, but as six-point favorites over the Owls. If the Owls can somehow make one more play than USF, like they did against UCF on Saturday night, the path to an AAC title opens as wide as a six-lane highway in rural Montana. USF is the toughest game left and the teams after USF, like Cincinnati and UConn, have serious flaws than USF doesn’t have. If the Owls can somehow win out—and there are only five games left—they will LIKELY host the AAC title game in Philadelphia. (West contenders Houston, Navy and Memphis could not each other out of hosting the game.)

Houston, which was ceded the title by most a few weeks ago, does not seem so unbeatable anymore. Navy beat the Cougars two weeks ago and Tulsa—a team that struggled against SMU—probably should have beaten them on Saturday night.

The Owls’ defense appears to be coming around, shutting out a UCF offense over the last two quarters (19-0) that scored 47 on ECU.

Anything is possible if the Owls focus on Friday and stay away from the munchies and that anything might be a championship.

Thursday: Game Preview

Saturday: Game Analysis

10.13.16
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Owls Turn To Boomer Sooner Than Expected

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lNQzMAarHM

Aaron Boumerhi now unexpectedly gets forced into the spotlight.

At opposite ends of the Commonwealth (yes, it’s a Commonwealth and not a state) of Pennsylvania reside the worst and best names for a starting kicker in the long and storied history of college football.

Pitt has a guy named Chris Blewitt (pronounced BLEW IT) as its placekicker.

Temple now has a guy named Aaron Boumerhi and it is the very best kicking name in the country because it is pronounced BOOMER-EYE.

boumerhi

                               Aaron Boumerhi’s community duty included helping his fellow students move into the dorms.

After starting kicker Austin Jones was the victim of a cheap shot in the middle of the field at Memphis (not called), he is out for the season and Boomer is your new kicker. All we know about Aaron is that he stroked one right down the middle for an extra point. While at Philipsburg-Osceola High, he did not have many chances for field goals but he later became a camp warrior, going to numerous kicking camps and scoring high enough to earn a shot at Temple.

Owls’ coach Matt Rhule speaks highly of him, saying at one time that he considered using Boomer as his kickoff guy this season because he has a “Brandon McManus” leg on kickoffs. We all know McManus, err, boomed many of this kickoffs not only through the end zone but once or twice into the seats in his four years at Temple and now is a NFL star.  Rhule “ruled” against it because he wanted to preserve Boumerhi’s redshirt so he could kick through the 2020 season.

The best-laid plans often go astray due to things coaches cannot control like cheap shots.

The bottom line on Boomer is that he’s got a good leg, but is he as accurate as Jones was? Probably not since Jones hit a NCAA-best 17 in a row before missing two at Memphis and, in reality, we don’t know if he’ll perform at a high level. His extra point was fine and, if the Owls can rely on him in that area and the short field goals that Jones made routinely, that is really all they can expect.

If however, he turns out to be another Brandon McManus, that will be a bonus no one expected. We should find out for sure before long.

Saturday: Game Day Preview

Sunday: Game Analysis 

09.30.16
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Sound Bites or Empty Words?

Not thrilled about the players talking about those other games as not counting.

Our only post-debate reference of the evening refers to the Donald Trump statement about Hillary Clinton’s “empty words” and “sound bites.”

By no means are we taking sides in this particularly onerous election, but the phrases reminded me of Temple football’s AAC opener on Saturday afternoon (noon) against visiting SMU.

That’s because if the words “Temple TUFF” are something other than empty words or sound bites, we should be able to discern that by 3:04 p.m. tomorrow. For the past 365 days, we’ve seen videos of Owls in the weight room, Owls doing sprints on the snow in February, even Owls toasting marshmallows in the Poconos.

sack

                       Romond Deloatch

All of this physical and mental bonding was supposed to make the Owls “Temple TUFF” which is to imply that the Owls are tougher than their AAC foes and that, by taking things into the fourth quarter, that toughness is the difference between victory and defeat.

The Owls are a little less than two-touchdown favorites and should take care of business in workmanlike fashion on Saturday. We also thought that on opening night and we were, if not shocked, surprised that things went the other way.

bulk

                                   Bulk of the rain should be gone by start of tailgate and remain that way throughout the day. Don’t be fooled by the high of 71. I froze wearing my Eagle Bank Bowl T-shirt even though last week’s high was predicted as 76.

As I see it, this team is tough enough but doesn’t play smart enough. When you lose the cerebral game, that usually falls back onto the coaches. In my mind, this team should have beaten Army and Penn State and because of a flawed game plan (Army) and some undisciplined play (Penn State), they have two losses.

The trouble aspect is that players have been quoted as saying that those games are practice games or, as one player said, tune-up games, and did not count. In college football, where you have only 12 games to show people how good you are, every game counts. It took the Owls four games to figure out that Romond Deloatch is their best rush end, but that’s something that should have been figured out by Cherry and White Day, not as the result of a sack in the fourth game of the season. Hopefully, the coaches have figured out that Nick Sharga and Brian Carter would be more helpful as full-time defensive players than part-time offenders. Maybe that will take until the sixth game of the season but, geez, we hope not.

While it would be nice to see TEMPLE SMART for a change, a heavy dose of TEMPLE TUFF should be able to get this job done.

Otherwise, Temple TUFF is nothing more than a couple of empty words or a nice soundbite.

Tomorrow Night: Game Analysis

09.21.16
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The End of An Era

Haason Reddick has got to make that play on McSorley on that long pass to the tight end. Very reminiscent of Sean Daniels’ miss of a tackle on the Fordham game-winning touchdown against Temple in 2013. This unfortunately will be (in my mind) the last game we will see Temple play against Penn State in my life or the life of any of my fellow baby boomers.

Every once in a while, a Temple fan will write something so brilliant, it deserves a wider audience than the intended one.  Such was the case with this treatise written by former Temple player Dave (Fizzy) Weinraub at the end of last season and, now, by a Temple poster named MH55—I know who he is, but we’ll let him have the same level of anonymity that he desired when he wrote this on the Penn State Blue White Illustrated Message Board:

Due to P5 separation, B10 scheduling and college football circumstances in general, I have a distinct feeling this could be my last trip to Beaver Stadium wearing the Cherry & White. I’ve been coming to PSU/Temple games for more than 20 years and noted this is my 6th trip to see the Owls there. I have a lot of fun memories, mostly outside the stadium, from trips to Happy Valley. There was the day Curtis Enis ran wild and we got shellacked 66-14 but I was able to outdrink most of the patrons in the Crow Bar later that night. There was the afternoon I saw a slob vomit after trying to eat one of the world’s biggest hamburgers at Dennys Beer Barrel Pub.. There was a pregame tailgate where everyone seemed to enjoy my novelty laugh box which I brought into the stadium only to be told by about a dozen Lion fans they would shove it uncomfortably into my rectum when Temple took an unexpected 7-0 lead in 1997. Final 52-10 Loss.

Obviously, I’ve seen Temple closer to home. I went to Giants Stadium in 1996 and 1994’s affair at Franklin Field, both unusual and unfortunately, losing experiences. I’ve also seen Penn State at Lincoln Financial Field where frankly, we should have won in 2011 with a roster full of NFL talent and NCAA capable players. Sadly, we had the cowardly Steve Adazzio at the helm who views the forward pass and an attack offense with more disdain than Johnny Depp has for Amber Heard. Still, I was finally able to soak in and enjoy last year’s trouncing as a culmination of all the frustration we’ve had in my 25+ years of following the travails of the Owls in college football as well as versus Penn State University.

_MH55

That was just part of the post, a bravo and well-done tribute to the Temple-Penn State series and a lot of unfulfilled trips to Beaver Stadium. Mark goes on and says that he emptied his bank account on the nine points the Owls were getting. While we’re happy he made a whole lot of money on the Owls, we wish they could have come up with one more point where the good guys would have outscored the bad guys and been a disciplined enough team to come away with 60 or so yards less in penalties, not 120. My memories are similar to his, and I will never forget holding a copy of the Centre Daily Time at the iconic Rathskeller one Friday night  in 1979 and noting Temple was a 3.5-point favorite. I said to a Penn State friend that we might never see Temple favored against Penn State again. (The Owls were upset, 22-7, before a then-record crowd at Beaver Stadium.)

My friend, Mark, had more recent experiences but I am sure he feels the same sense of loss with the end of this series. I had a nice talk with former Temple AD Gavin White, the quarterback in the 1950 game, who told me that the Owls would have won the 7-7 tie had he been allowed to throw the ball more. I still believe him because I know what a good and honest man he is. The PSU assistant coach (they had only two) in that game was a rookie named Joe Paterno.

Back to MH55, though. He’s right about another thing: Temple will never play Penn State again, at least in many of our lifetimes. Even in a bowl game, both parties have to agree and I do not see Penn State agreeing to play the Owls. It’s been a nice series in the modern era that started with the 1975 game. Just wish it had been more competitive and that the college football world had not disintegrated into this money-grubbing mess we have now. College football without the regional games of the not-so-distant past is a very sad thing, indeed.

Friday: A “Meh” Homecoming

09.19.16
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Recalibrating Expectations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ACx-bQnS5Q

Matt Rhule says the Owls can regroup and make a run for the AAC title. I pray he’s right and we’re wrong.

Just when they lost me, they reeled me back in on Saturday.

No, not the Temple Owls, who lost a game they should have won that day, but two groups of guys who played later in the day who might have proven Temple is a little better than I expected.

The Army West Point Knights and the Stony Brook Seawolves, who opened some eyes with pretty shocking performances a few hours after most Owl fans were bummed by the result in State College. They indicated that Temple might have played two very good teams before a subpar effort against PSU.

Army won at UTEP, 66-19, while Stony Brook took down No. 2 FCS Richmond, 42-14. Both were impressive wins for a number of reasons. Army was unstoppable on the road at a FBS team that won by 15 over another FBS team, New Mexico State, two weeks ago. Stony Brook, a team that was shut out by Temple, scored 42 points on a team that beat Power 5 Virginia, 37-20, in the first week of the season on the road. (UConn beat Virginia by a field goal on Saturday.)

So any recalibration of TEMPLE expectations has to include the total body of work, including the Army and Stony Brook games. There is also the distinct possibility that Penn State, Stony Brook and Army all finish with very good years so that has to be factored into a Temple recalibration.

unfinished

First the bad news because going into this season, I wrote that this was the team that had the best chance of breaking the Temple school record of 10 wins and finish with 11 wins. I wrote that expectation should be the MINIMUM expectation, with the maximum expectation that the team achieve its own stated goal of “Unfinished Business” which, to them, meant winning the overall AAC title.

I don’t think that is going to happen, not just based on the first three Temple games but because Houston has separated itself from the rest of the league. For Temple to get to 11 wins, it would have to win out and I also do not think that is going to happen, either.

Now, the good news because this season can still be a  success if the Owls can get to 10 wins again including a bowl win over a P5 team and that remains a realistic possibility. Hell, if that P5 team is Penn State,  I will sign for that game now.

Here’s how I see the rest of the season playing out:

Saturday: Temple 48, Charlotte 7. Charlotte is not only worse than Stony Brook, it is much worse. Charlotte allowed 70 points to Louisville and, while that is no disgrace, being beaten by Eastern Michigan, 37-19, is.

10/1: Temple 35, SMU 21. The Mustangs struggled to beat Jerry Falwell’s school, Liberty, on Saturday. No amount of praying will help them against Temple. 3-2.

10/6: Temple 21, Memphis 14. I had this as a win prior to the season, as a loss after Penn State and now as a win after the Army and Stony Brook results, but it is not going to be easy on the road. Memphis beat Kansas, which is probably a whole lot worse than Penn State and Army. 4-2.

10/15: Temple 28, UCF 19. This won’t be the blowout it was against an 0-12 UCF team last year, but if UCF can go from 0-12 to beat a 10-win Temple team, the Owls have got more problems than I think they do. 5-2.

10/21: South Florida 31, Temple 27. South Florida is, quite simply, a better team than Penn State and Phil Snow has two blind spots in his rear view mirror—the triple option and the dual-threat quarterback. Unless he spies Champ Chandler on Quinton Flowers, he is about to move into that left lane and get clobbered by that Mack Truck. Since Snow never follows our advice, mark USF down as a loss and no AAC title game this year. 5-3. (USF beat Syracuse by 22 and a poor NIU team, 48-17.)

10/29: Temple 24, Cincinnati 17.  Tommy Tuberville is beginning to show his coaching age with some strange calls on the field. The Owls will take this into the fourth quarter and finish him off. 6-3. (Cincy beat Purdue, but was hammered by Houston, 40-16.)

11/4: Temple 36, UConn 10: Temple beat Stony Brook, 38-0, which beat Richmond, 42-14. Richmond beat Virginia, 37-20. UConn beat Virginia, 13-10. While you usually cannot go on comparative scores, those margins are so stark they show there is a huge talent and speed gap between the Owls and the Huskies. UConn also barely beat a Maine team (in OT) that lost to Toledo, 45-3. 7-3. (UConn also lost to Navy in a close one.)

11/19: Temple 10, Tulane 3: Unless the Owls party hard on Bourbon Street, the defense shuts the Green Wave down.  8-3. (Tulane lost to Navy, 21-14.)

11/26: Temple 24, East Carolina 21: Not easy, but the Owls finish strong. 9-3. (East Carolina beat North Carolina State and lost to South Carolina.)

Since I do not think it will be good enough to even get in the championship game, the best the Owls can do is win the bowl game they are assigned to—they probably will not get a choice—and finish with consecutive 10-win season.

I hope they prove me wrong and run the table, and at least host the AAC title game, but concerns on the offensive and defensive lines make me doubt they will ever finish the Unfinished Business they had in mind when they thought of that slogan.

Wednesday: The End of An Era

Friday: A Meh Homecoming

 

09.16.16
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Only One Thing Needs To Be Done

No respect for the Owls by the scruffy guy and the young guy.

A real rivalry is like a delicious cake in that it needs a few basic ingredients to be meet the minimum taste standards.

Geography, animosity (at least with the fan bases, but it would also help with the coaching staffs) and arrogance from one or the other parties makes for a good college football rivalry.  This used to be a rivalry in the 1930s and 1940s. Even an old headline in a newspaper (see inset) acknowledged that.

defeats

Note “rivals” in headline

Years of Temple futility followed and ended the rivalry and fostered a decades-long lack of respect for the Owls. All of those ingredients are there for Temple and Penn State except one: Respect. The PSU fan base and even their own “experts” are predicting a beating of Temple similar to what PSU did to a very poor Kent State team.

If they think another version of Kent State is coming to town, they will be in for a huge surprise on Saturday (noon, Big 10 Network). Temple is in another stratosphere than Kent State.

Only one thing needs to be done to get that respect and the Owls know what it is: Win at Penn State and win for the second year in a row.

You would think the Owls would have earned at least that with a 27-10 win last year, but instead all they have received is a lot of excuses. “If James Franklin had coached a better game” or “if Saquon Barkley got the ball more” the Nittany Lions would have won. From my seat at Lincoln Financial Field, Franklin had nothing to do with his offensive line getting boatraced by the Owls’ defensive line.  Barkley’s one carry was for minus-1 yard. After that, maybe an objective observer can see why Franklin did not have a whole lot of confidence in giving the ball to Barkley again.

In my lifetime, Temple has only had three real rivalries—Delaware, Rutgers and Villanova—and, while Penn State always met the geographic requirement, the other rivalries always had it over anything Penn State-Temple. There was a real dislike between the coaching staffs at Delaware and Temple when Tubby Raymond coached one team and Wayne Hardin the other. Temple was where Delaware was when Hardin was hired. Hardin took the Owls to the “big time” and Raymond always resented it. That made for a good rivalry.

Rutgers always thought it was better than Temple, but it never proved it on the field over the long haul as the series is basically even. The Rutgers’ fan base is New York arrogant and, after Temple beat Rutgers four-straight times, it was Rutgers who was retained by the Big East and not Temple and that made for a lot of resentment. That was a great rivalry.

Villanova kept Temple out of the Big East and Temple resented it and, when Steve Addazio beat Villanova, 42-7, and 42-10, in back-to-back years, that was extra satisfying for Temple.

Since this is the last meeting between Penn State and Temple and the Penn State fan base seems to have learned little from the beating they received last year, the only thing to cement this as a rivalry in the minds of a lot of people is for Temple to go out by winning two in a row.

That would be extra sweet Karma on a day that the Penn State community broadcasts its tone-deafness by honoring Joe Paterno. Beating Penn State up there would earn the Owls a measure of respect that even 27 unanswered points a year ago has not yielded. Maybe, just maybe, that is the only ingredient  needed now for a real rivalry.

The Owls know what needs to be done and they need to do it.

Saturday: Game Analysis

08.12.16
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Beyond Unfinished Business

The linebacker corps is in good hands with 3 returning starters.

The bad news for all but one of the 127 teams is that nobody is going to win the national football championship like our neighbors, who shall remain nameless, won the national basketball title.

All but that one team, of course, and, at this point, it doesn’t look like it will be Temple. (However, if you want a nice $10,000 return on a measly $10 investment and believe in the Owls, sportsbook is taking bets.)

When the Owls made “Unfinished Business” their team slogan this year, they probably did not mean winning the national championship but the good news today is there is a whole list of ancillary goals that would finish the business.

tieins

AAC bowl tie-ins this season.

It starts with the American Athletic Conference championship, which is well within reach. All the Owls have to do to secure home field, presumably against Houston, is to run the table in their seven home games and not be upset on the road. They will probably be favored at Memphis and at UConn, two of their tougher road games. They can even afford a loss at Penn State and still achieve that goal. Home field should beget a win over USF (hey, it did in 2012) and a crowd of 40,000-plus rabid Temple fans in the AAC championship game could be the difference.

What about Beyond Unfinished Business?

Even if the Owls do not reach their No. 1 goal, there are a number of ways the business conducted this season could be better than the work done last year. Winning a school-record 11 games is within reach and that’s some nice work. Beyond that, though, the AAC has seven bowl tie-ins and the team’s (and especially the administration’s) goal has to be to get the Owls in a bowl game against a Power 5 team. Last year, Owls Daily editor Shawn Pastor reported that the administration was offered the Birmingham Bowl against Auburn and a bowl in Louisiana against Virginia Tech, but turned down both offers to play near a large alumni fan base in Florida.

Big mistake.

This year, “Unfinished Business” also means taking care of business once those offers are on the table. That means no “turning down” any of these three bowls should the Owls be offered one:

Birmingham Bowl Dec. 29, 2016

Birmingham, Ala. – vs. SEC

St. Petersburg Bowl Dec. 26, 2016

St. Petersburg, Fla. – vs. ACC

Military Bowl presented by Northrop Grumman Dec. 29, 2016

Annapolis, Md. – vs. ACC

The other bowl tie-ins are the Miami Beach Bowl and Bahamas Bowl (both versus MAC foes),  and the Boca Raton Bowl vs. Conference USA. Thanks, but no thanks. Been there, done that.

While winning the national championship would be nice, and winning the AAC the real deal, getting those 11 wins and beating a Power 5 team in a bowl would also qualify for Unfinished Business and be more than acceptable consolation prizes.

It all begins in a little over two weeks against Army and the focus then and every week hence is going to have to be laser-sharp, but  this is a business deal that should be profitable.

Monday: The Next Big Red One

07.25.16
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The Unwashed Masses

USATSI_8907498_149008644_lowres

Sean Chandler could get a lot of interceptions playing safety.

When it comes to expectations or lack thereof about Temple football’s 2016 season, there is a loud murmur going around on the internet about “Temple not being as good because of all the graduation losses.”

Usually, you find those remarks on other fan message boards like Rutgers, Penn State and Pitt, people who think they know more about Temple football than they really do.

e

Avery Williams, one of three returning starting linebackers.

We who follow the team more closely know better. Just what are these “graduation losses” anyway? The Owls lost linebacker Tyler Matakevich, the national defensive player of the year, but they lost someone at a position where they already are strong because three linebackers—Jared Alwan, Stephaun Marshall and Avery Williams—return with 41 college football starts under their belts. They also lose a great tackle in Matt Ioannidis and a really good corner in Tavon Young, but the trade off is a four-star recruit Alabama wanted (Karamo Dioubate, who took a phone call from Nick Saban minutes before committing to TU) so the upside is there. It’s a question of how quick the learning curve is. With guys like Averee Robinson and Freddy Booth-Lloyd, the Owls have enough bodies in the middle to get by. As far as corner, the Owls have a few guys earned a lot of playing time (Artrel Foster and Nate Hairston) and, if either one of them falter, they can always move Sean Chandler back to corner. I think Chandler is primed for a big season of interceptions playing in the middle of the field. On offense, losses of talent like Robby Anderson and Kyle Friend can be mitigated by experience returning at both positions.

So maybe “all of those graduation losses” will not have a significant impact on the record.

As someone once said more than 2,000 years ago, “Father forgive them for they not know what they say”. Call them the “unwashed masses.”

People who know this team know it is going to be very good this season. The only thing debatable is how good. The lowest bar among those in the know is 8-4, while the highest one is the sky’s the limit. How high is the sky? I think this team has a real shot at the school record of wins, especially with the 126th-rated FBS schedule. Of course, winning the championship should be the goal.

Wednesday: The Washed Masses

Friday: New Site For Spring Game?

Monday: What the Eff?

Wednesday (8/3): Temple’s No. 1 Foe Is Not on Schedule

Friday (8/5): Thoughts on Summer Camp Opening

 

 

07.22.16
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Temple Wins The Internet

templetweet

According to SI, the most popular team in Pennsylvania is .. Temple

We are now just about a few hours removed from the resolution of the strangest mid-summer controversy in the history of Temple University, the ouster of President Neil D. Theobald.

A couple of things came out of that settlement, one was that the Chairman of the Board, Patrick J. O’Connor, said the forward momentum of the university would keep moving forward in this letter to the Temple community (not to be confused with the North Philadelphia community):

letter

Not in the letter, but something O’Connor made clear to Mike Jensen of the Philadelphia Inquirer, was that the stadium project will move forward and Theobald being gone won’t impede progress in that area.

That’s interesting because Temple has had momentum recently, with a hard-fought win on the field against Penn State. The football team also “beat” Penn State in the offseason, winning a Sports Illustrated mention as the most popular team in Pennsylvania.

Keeping that momentum will require another win in State College this fall but, as of now, it was nice to see Temple dominating that state map.

Monday: The Unwashed Masses

Wednesday: The Washed Masses

Friday: New Site For Spring Game?

07.18.16
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Englert: The Andres Blanco of Temple

englert

Richard M. Englert usually can be found in the middle of Temple crowds.

If the BOT moves at the same glacial pace to replace President Neil D. Theobald as it did when the subject of the stadium was given the “done deal” tag five years ago, Temple University should have a new President by, oh, say, July 20th, 2025.

So get to know Richard M. Englert, the Andres Blanco of Temple.

If the name sounds familiar, it should. Like Blanco with the Philadelphia Phillies,  when the lead guy goes down and Temple needs a capable fill-in guy, Englert seems to do the job. The last time Englert did the job—bridging the gap between Ann Weaver Hart and Theobald in 2012—the university was so impressed it gave Englert the title of Chancellor.

volleyball

Dick Englert

That title is not dispensed casually as only Peter J. Liacouras and (surprise) David Adamany have been named Chancellors in the long history of Temple. A very good President, Marvin Wachman, wasn’t nor was any of his predecessors.

Englert is probably highly thought of because he has in the past implemented the outline the Board of Trustees gave him. From a sports standpoint, he is pro-stadium and pro-football and seems to have a good relationship with Matt Rhule. One thing he has in common with Theobald is that he does not seem to have the connections in City Council or the community to get the stadium project done. Maybe the next President will (hint, hint).

As far as minor sports, do not expect volleyball to be cut during his tenure. He is a bigger fan of Temple women’s volleyball than he is of any other Temple sport. Meanwhile, he has been here since 1976 so he should be a familiar face in the tailgating crowd. If not, get to know the face at the top of this post.

He should be here for awhile and, if he can hit like Blanco, they might decide to keep him right where he is.

Wednesday: Recharging The Batteries