No matter what you call it, the “Town Hall” being held tomorrow night (6:30) at Mitten Hall has all the potential to be either a public relations disaster or a bonanza  for Temple University.

I’m not betting on Hos Cartwright here, though.

Television cameras from all four local stations will be there with the express purpose of finding some sound and fury that would make for good fodder for the 11 p.m. newscast.

If Temple fans who want the stadium show up and dominate the session with applause and support for the ideas presented, that segment would probably find a way to the cutting room floor. If, say, for every 10 people who attend, one voice is against it and nine are for it, the narrative will be “there were some opposed and some in favor” and they will find one voice in favor and one opposed, even if there are more fans for it than against. That’s the way the drive-by media works these days. If no fans show up and only “community” members expressing opposition are there, it will be the top news story of the night.

I think we are going to be somewhere in between those two extremes, though.

It was pretty ingenious for the university to set this town hall up at a time when the students are gone. Most of the “Stadium Stompers” among the students are from relatively far-flung places like Allentown, Lancaster and Scranton and their activism on the topic probably only extends to the time they have to be in North Philly. It’s hard to imagine them giving up a spring break visit to Florida or time home with their Penn State friends for idealism. At least when idealism is not convenient.

President Dick Englert did not even address the stadium when he talked at the recruiting “celebration” on Feb. 7 so to me, the forum presents an opportunity to answer some hard questions that were not even broached then. Here are five of them:

Yulman: Rejected by ESPN

How did the stadium shrink?

Two months ago, when the plans were officially released, the minimum seating was going to be 35,000. Now, we’re hearing “between 30-35 thousand (see above video).” Not good. Why is this important? Because 30,000 will make the stadium look like Tulane’s Yulman Stadium and, by most accounts, that stadium was obsolete the day it opened. All of the Temple fans who I talked to and have been there hated it.  It’s nothing more than a glorified high school stadium and the league told Tulane the TV sightlines and lighting almost made it impossible for ESPN to schedule a night game there. Temple should go bigger (at least 35K) or go home, making the stadium look more like successful ventures like Houston, Cincinnati and Florida Atlantic. Moody Nolan needs to come clean. Will this look more like Tulane or more like FAU?

What, exactly, will go into the retail outlet?

What kind of retail will be considered or will the university build five empty franchises and hope that the market dictates the tenant? Some kind of smaller version of Xfinity Live would work, maybe a WAWA. I wouldn’t put another student bookstore or pizza shop in there, though. When I lived in Doylestown, we desperately needed a grocery store in the center of town. Instead, we got five coffee shops that mostly went out of business because wives of the rich guys who lived there always had the fantasy of opening coffee shops. Build what the students and community will need and support.

Where will the traditional tailgating be held?

We all know that the university is planning to put the thousands of students who now take up a large portion of Lot K into Polett and Liacouras Walks and that’s a terrific idea. SMU has shown how successful that concept can be. Still, how many of the university’s 11 outside parking lots be set aside for more traditional tailgating on Saturdays or are the days of the traditional smaller tailgates over?

What is the timeline?

The university should set a timeline that it expects to meet. City Council approvals by this summer, next summer or the summer after or somewhere in between? At what point does this project cross the Rubicon of no return and what are the options other than Franklin Field if it is abandoned? Temple cannot allow the endless speculation on this to continue and must set some realistic parameters for getting this done.

Does the University Have the Stomach to Play Hardball?

We’re not talking about restoring the baseball program here, although you could probably configure the stadium for those purposes if needed. If the City of Philadelphia does not give the necessary permissions, can the architects reconfigure a stadium that would not require 15th Street to be shut down? That’s what is going to have to happen for the uni to pursue legal action to get this done. An argument can be made that if places like Maryland, Rutgers and Georgia Tech have the legal right to build whatever it wants on property owned by them so, too, should Temple.  Hardball–threatening to move the uni out of Philadelphia–is what ultimately got the LC built and the uni might have to play some sort of hardball to get this done as well. Pete Liacouras had that stomach. Does the current BOT?

Wednesday: Eye on Atlanta

Friday: Reflections From Mitten Hall

Snails have crossed the continental United States faster than Temple University has moved to build a football stadium since the first “done deal” was uttered by a member of the Board of Trustees to a follower in March of 2012.

That was the day that Temple beat North Carolina State in the NCAA basketball tournament. The listener was a long-time fan who made numerous road trips to support his alma mater in both basketball and football. The speaker was presumably well-connected with the powers-that-be at Temple.

Five months of March have come and gone and there has been no public announcement of the “done deals” so many of us have heard for five years. So call me skeptical that this thing will ever get built.

BOT meetings have come and gone and several of the last few have had “rumors” that the stadium would be discussed. Meeting agendas were released and no first “shovel in the ground date” could be found even in the fine print.

There are 10 lots that will be mostly empty for tailgating on Saturday, plus a couple of garages for those who do not plan to tailgate.

An argument could be made both for and against a stadium and former Temple player Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub made such an argument against in this space a couple of weeks ago. My feelings have simply been this: If the university has reached the point where it feels it can no longer deal in good faith with the Philadelphia Eagles, then build the stadium. If it has created the conflict with the intent of going ahead and doing what it wanted to do in the first place, that would be a sad pretense on which to build.

It may have already reached one of those two crossroads. Five years of due diligence could be coming to an end and, hopefully, the university is doing what it has to do and not building it because it just wants to do it.

If it can cut a deal with the Eagles similar to what the Pittsburgh Steelers have with Pitt, then there is no reason to build. The alternative–Franklin Field–is not acceptable. Temple would have to have stadium control on Saturdays for television purposes and Penn, with its $6.9 billion endowment, could not be enticed to give that up to a school with a $579 million endowment.

Fizzy says the “neighborhood does not want it” but maybe if the neighborhood could get assurances that none of their houses would be torn down–and they won’t–and that local high schools like Engineering and Science can play their football games there and that stadium jobs would be available to immediate residents first, then something could be worked out.

Fizzy’s second point was that “Temple doesn’t need it.” If it wants to be a program that gets on television, and LFF’s rent is too high, that point could be disabused.

Fizzy’s third point was that “it closes off 15th Street” but 13th Street was closed for most of my four years at Temple due to various building projects between then Columbia Avenue and Norris and nobody died because they had to use Broad Street to travel Northbound.

Student tailgate central

No. 4: “Parking Will Be Scattered Around Campus making it very difficult for older fans to walk to the stadium.” It’s not asking much to walk from, say, the No. 10 Lot at 11th and Norris to 15th and Norris but, I’m sure the university could provide a mode of transportation, maybe golf carts, for those who don’t feel they can make it. Owlclub members will probably get preferential parking in the McGonigle Hall outside lot, so that’s an option.

No. 5 is “there will be no common tailgating area” but that’s really not needed. Really, is the tailgating “one common experience” or is it smaller groups scattered throughout Lot K now? To me, it’s smaller groups who tailgate together and go in separately. Plus, students who take up a large part of Lot K now will be funneled to Liacouras Walk for their own tailgates. The official alumni tailgates now conducted under a large tent closer to the Linc entrance can be moved to the Bell Tower.

No. 6 “traffic will be horrendous” doesn’t really apply to football because fans usually don’t get there five minutes before a game. Their arrival is scattered starting with the opening of the lots five hours before the game, not five minutes, with groups filtering in four, three and two hours before the game. Traffic won’t be great, but it won’t be horrendous, either.

No. 7 “don’t take the subway” doesn’t really come into play, either because there is a perfectly good regional rail station located right on Temple’s campus that provides the kind of transportation option fans do not have going to LFF now. In fact, if the new stadium is built, my days of taking the subway to the Temple games–which I have done for 15 years–are over. I will hop on the Regional Rail and be at Temple in 20 minutes.

No. 8 “the Linc has easy accessibility” is true, but a football game is an event lasting from the start of tailgates to the end of the game and that’s an all-day deal.  Again, I don’t see all the traffic arriving at the same time. If you want to drive, get off the Roosevelt Boulevard extension and make your way down Broad Street.

No. 9 “Temple will lose a large percentage of its older fans” and some of their contributions. I’m an older fan. They won’t lose me but the point is that the university has 40,000 students now and must cultivate that fan base which really has not been tapped into seriously. This stadium could create the kind of experience for them that binds them to the university for decades to come.

No. 10 “Temple will incur a large unnecessary debt” could be true, but the bean counters running the university say it will be more than offset by combining the money they pay for rent now with revenue gained from parking and concessions and the retail element of the stadium.

To me, there is a larger issue involved that goes beyond signage on the field or comfort in the stands. In my lifetime, I have never experienced a real home-field advantage following the Owls except for maybe the Tulane game in 2015 when all 35,000 fans were screaming their heads off for Temple. Getting 35,000 fans in a defined space on top of the field and making so much noise that the bad guys’ quarterback has to use hand signals to snap the ball is something I’d like to see before I leave this earth. It hasn’t worked for the beautiful new on-campus basketball facility, but maybe football is another animal.

The university needs to end five years of constipation on this issue and bleep or get off the pot.

Friday: The G5-P5 Conundrum

Monday: A Book That Needs To Be Written 

Georgia State will take over Turner Field  and configure it for football (below).

If you accept the premise, as I have, that this whole stadium deal will be long and dragged out, then it becomes acceptable to look at long-term stadium solutions that do not involve an on-campus facility.

Someone two weeks ago mentioned Chester and then Dave last week mentioned Camden and those are bad options, and not entirely because they are crime-ridden towns that start with the letter C.  There really are no good public transportation options that get fans from the campus to either Chester or Camden or get those same fans back to campus after a night game.

So both of those places are out, but if the Philadelphia Phillies were to do what the Atlanta Braves did—get rid of a perfectly good modern stadium for a more perfect and modern stadium—than a Citizens Bank Park reconfigured for football would be a perfect backup plan.

Georgia State is moving into Turner is not crazy to suggest that one day Temple might move into Citizens Bank Park because the Owls have transportation options there and it does offer the relative size range (42-45K) they are looking for. Plus, if they buy CBP, they could keep the concessions and the parking and still offer their fans a great game day experience. That all depends on the Phillies moving out, though, probably not likely.

Did anyone, though, see the Braves leaving Turner Field even seven years ago? Probably not.

Turner Field, a perfectly good modern stadium that was opened in 1996, will be abandoned by the Braves next season for a new $600 million stadium in Cobb County. It opened seven years before Citizens Bank Park opened and, just maybe, seven years down the road, the Phillies could be in the market for a new stadium—and maybe one of the affluent suburban counties will give the Phillies the same kind of sweetheart deal Cobb County gave the Braves.

With all of the red tape Temple has to face with an on-campus stadium, waiting seven years to take over CBP might not be the worst option of all.

Thursday: An Open Letter to Gov. Wolf

On the eve of the Toledo game, I wrote that the Owls were walking into an ambush and I did not have a good feeling about that outcome.

I have had a similar feeling in the pit of my stomach for a long time about the proposed new stadium. I kept hoping it was heartburn and it would go away, but now I am more convinced than ever it is not after hearing City Council President Darrell Clarke say this the other day: “I don’t know even five people who are in favor of it.” If he were really considering approving this, his comments at this point would open the door slightly for interpretation by saying things like “we’re going to review this” but the “I don’t know five people” comment is effectively slamming the door shut.

(He must be ignoring the hundreds of Temple students who voted in favor it it in the Temple News poll. Either that, or they don’t count as people in Clarke’s world.)

Not counted among those five is Mayor Kenney,  who has been against it from the beginning, thinking that it was nothing more than a Temple ploy to bring down the rent. Temple President Neil D. Theobald debunked that notion while speaking to the student government by saying that the school is committed to building a new stadium for long-term reasons and despite any concessions it gets from the Eagles.

Kenney has also been adamant that this is Clarke’s baby and, if he doesn’t want it, Kenney is going to put the full weight of the city’s political machine against it. I’m particularly not buying the belief of many Temple people that the city wants a handout before they give the go-ahead. I don’t think this falls into the same category as the Liacouras Center. The city is really dead set against this.

I don’t see Temple having the stomach to rage against that machine. That’s too bad because I feel, if push comes to shove, the city would stand a good chance in a more friendly state supreme court if it decided to sue the city for the right to build the stadium. (The state hates the city anyway.) Temple can simply state it has as much right to build a stadium on its property as any other university building (citing no city opposition to Morgan Hall, the Library or the Student Activities Center). It can further point out that similar universities, like Penn State and Rutgers and Maryland have stadiums on their campus and that the city barring Temple from building puts the school at a competitive disadvantage.

The top three administrators at Temple are all Indiana Hoosiers, who could be so shocked by how city politics operates they decide to say bleep it, let’s continue to play at LFF. It all comes down if they decide this is worth the fight.

This is the same bad gut feeling I had before Toledo, and no amount of Alka-Seltzer or arguments to the contrary is going to make me think differently.

Monday: 2017 Mock Temple Draft

Wednesday: For Pete’s Sake

Friday: Spoiling Joe’s 50th