Category Archives: Temple football

12.24.17
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TEN REASONS NOT TO BUILD TEMPLE STADIUM

faustadiumday

AECOM built the FAU stadium and will be one of the two architects for this one.

 Editor’s Note: Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub checks in with his thoughts on the stadium. He’s against it. I’m ambivalent. If no stadium means a permanent move to Franklin Field, I’m for the stadium. If we can extend the lease at the Linc, that’s the preferable option. Ironically, Fizzy played all of his home games in  a place called Temple Stadium.

By: Dave (Fizzy) Weinraub

  1. NEIGHBORHOOD DOESN’T WANT IT
  1. TEMPLE DOESN’T NEED IT – It needs the Eagles to give Temple the same deal the Rooneys give the University of Pittsburgh – Pitt just pays expenses and gets half the net from the concessions. A blue ribbon committee should meet personally with Jeffrey Lurie.
  1. IT CLOSES OFF 15TH STREET – Disrupting southbound traffic
  1. PARKING WILL BE SCATTERED AROUND CAMPUS – Making it very difficult for older fans to walk to the stadium.
  1. THERE WILL BE NO COMMON TAILGATE AREA WITH ACCESSIBILITY TO

FAN’S CARS FOR FOOD AND BEVERAGES – Temple says the open space for tailgating is the quad, but you can’t drive your car there.

  1. TRAFFIC WILL BE HORRENDOUS – Broad Street has lights at almost every corner.  The number streets have either lights or stop signs at every corner.
  1. DON’T SAY TAKE THE SUBWAY  – Most older fans are not going to take the subway. Drive or take the subway to a night game; HA! HA!
  1. THE LINC HAS EASY ACCESSIBILITY FROM SOUTH JERSEY, ROUTE 95, THE AIRPORT AND DELAWARE, AND THE SCHUYLKILL EXPRESSWAY.  That’s why it was built there.  How will fans from all those suburbs possibly drive to campus?  There will be gigantic traffic jams at Broad & Vine.
  1. TEMPLE WILL LOSE A LARGE PERCENTAGE OF THEIR OLDER FANS AND SOME OF THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS – Most of the season ticket holders are older folks, forty to eighty tears old.  Most of the big givers to the university are from this age bracket. Given the problems listed above, many will not purchase season tickets and lose allegiance to Temple.
  1. AS PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN THE INQUIRER, A FINANCIAL ANALYSIS OF SCHOOLS NOT IN THE POWER FIVE FOOTBALL CONFERENCES WHO BUILT NEW STADIUMS, ARE CARRYING LARGE, UNNECESSARY DEBT.

Even the Egyptians have stopped building pyramids.

Tomorrow: Merry Christmas!!!

Wednesday: Season Analysis

Friday: Recruiting

 

12.22.17
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Bowl Win: Christmas Gift Nicely Wrapped

One of the many bowl watch parties across the city of Philadelphia had a pretty creative title.

The “I’m-Too-Poor-To-Go-To-The-Gasparilla-Bowl” party was held at an establishment better known for indoor simulated golf on Delaware Avenue.

I had planned to attend but SEPTA strongly advised people coming into town late Thursday to avoid the Regional Rail—my favorite mode of travel—due to a power failure earlier in the day.

tailgate

So it was off to my neighborhood taproom within a couple of blocks from my house.

Once there, I was surrounded by a group of St. Joseph’s University fans who “hated Temple because they want to displace all the residents to build a stadium” and actively rooted against the Owls.

Never mind that they had all their facts wrong. People who talk about the stadium usually do.

It was with smug satisfaction that I saw that group of haters leaving with their heads between their legs when the Owls built a 21-3 lead in the fourth quarter.

The 28-3 win was a nice Christmas gift for a group of Temple fans who were disillusioned by the results of the last two seasons. It was a long bus ride home from last year for me, but I watched with satisfaction after an agonizingly slow start last night.

It was nice that the Owls followed our advice of putting a nice target on NFL prospect Alex McGough (pronounced MA-GOO, even though we initially though it was pronounced MA-GOW). They hit him hard enough early to knock him out. If you hit quarterbacks hard enough, a lot of good things can happen and those things are usually fumbles, sacks and interceptions. You never hope for someone to hurt and I really would have liked to seen the Owls win with McGough in the game. Alex, we hardly knew ye and I felt bad for the kid when he pounded the turf and left the field for his final time in the first half.

You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to figure out this this game would have been a whole lot closer with McGough in there, and that was too bad for FIU. Nobody felt sorry for the Owls when they missed six starters in a 31-28 overtime loss at Army, so they were due for some breaks in those areas.

Finishing 7-6 and returning a bowl MVP quarterback certainly is a whole lot better than finishing 6-7. Head coach Geoff Collins would have had a lot of explaining to do about greatness not quitting but finishing 6-7 or #TheStandard being a losing one in the offseason.

Now the Owls can say they are winners for three years in a row and bowl winners for the first time since 2011.

The future looks good for the Owls, although I wasn’t buying the Cotton Bowl narrative the announcers said Geoff Collins was selling.

In my mind, the Owls have no more than an outside shot at winning the AAC but the game day coaching and the offensive scheme are among the things that need to be addressed in the off-season.

Monday: Fizzy’s Thoughts On Stadium

Wednesday: Season Analysis

Friday: The Early Haul

 

12.20.17
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Temple-FIU: The Best Pass Defense is ….

mcgough

Temple needs to put this guy on his backside early and often.

The last time Temple head coach Geoff Collins faced a one-dimensional team, the game plan was OK for all but 1 minute and 15 seconds.

That was when Army ditched its triple-option attack and passed the ball downfield for the last 75 yards with the Owls holding a 28-21 lead.

It should have never happened because the Owls should have known the Cadets had one time out to negotiate those 75 yards. They should have eschewed the prevent defense for an all-out assault on a backup quarterback not used to throwing the ball.

Temple should have not made him comfortable back there.

youngbruce

                                                                             “I say this from being an ex-quarterback.The best pass defense is putting the quarterback on his backside”_ Bruce Arians, 1988

But it did, and it was another of many first-year mistakes for a first-year head coach and allowed Army to tie the game with one second left and force overtime in an ingnomious 31-28 overtime defeat.

Florida International, the bowl opponent tomorrow night, is one-dimensional but the dimension is passing, not running. Alex McGough, its quarterback, is 6-foot-2, 187 pounds and has thrown for 17 touchdowns against eight interceptions while racking up 2,791 yards. Head coach Butch Davis calls him the best quarterback he has ever coached on any level.

What the Owls should have done is what they should do tomorrow night (8 p.m., ESPN). Bruce Arians once said his pass defense never got good until he figured out by late in his career at Temple was that the best defense was to put the opposing quarterback on his backside.

The lesson, he said, was learned in a 35-30 win at Rutgers—the same Rutgers’ team that had beaten Penn State earlier that year. With about as much time left and as much distance to cover as Army did this season, a quarterback named Scott Erney passed the Scarlet Knights from his own 20 to the Owls’ 30 with three quick throws against a prevent defense. Arians called a timeout, and rather heatedly discussed what the Owls should do with then defensive coordinator Nick Rapone.

“I told Nick to go jailbreak (eight-man rush),” Arians said. “I decided if I was going to go down, it would be with my guns blazing.”

saintpete

Tailgating weather should be nice

The Owls had Erney in their sights the next three plays and found himself on his backside for the each time and the game ended way back on the Rutgers’ 41 with a defensive lineman named Swift Burch sitting on top of him.

“I say this from being an ex-quarterback,” Arians said. “The best pass defense is putting the quarterback on his backside. If you can’t get to him with four, send five. If you can’t get to him with five, send six. We had to send eight but we got it done and that’s the bottom line.”

If these Owls treat Mr. McGough has rudely as those Owls treated Mr. Erney, they should be hoisting a nice trophy tomorrow night.

Friday: Bowl Analysis

12.18.17
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This Week In TU Football: The Padre Pio Factor

signingday

Signing day is almost as important for the Owls as the bowl game itself.

As a kid growing up in Catholic school, I was told that Padre Pio—the newly minted Saint—could be in two places at one time.

It’s easy to be both skeptical and fascinated by the possibility. Try as I might, I’ve never been able to master the art of bilocation.

Too bad Geoff Collins hasn’t, either.

Collins will only seem to be in two places at one time this week, culling a recruiting class that needs several signatures by Wednesday and then coaching a football game his university desperately needs to win on Thursday, but that’s the task he has been given.

While both are important, the No. 1 priority should be winning the bowl game for a couple of reasons.

One, the school has only won two games in its history.

Two, as important as recruiting is, the end game of that endeavor has always been to identify enough talent that can win championships and, failing that, bowl games.

To be fair, it’s also the task that faces Florida International University head coach Butch Davis but the pressure to win now is greater for Collins because he has to replace so much of the guts of not only a 6-6 Temple team, but a 10-2 one. A rather convincing argument can be made that guys like Nick Sharga, Keith Kirkwood, Adonis Jennings, Artrel Foster, Sean Chandler and Jacob Martin contributed as much to that championship as P.J. Walker, Jahad Thomas, Hassan Reddick, Avery Williams, Averee Robinson and Colin Thompson did. It’s the reason why we think this team should have won either eight or nine games, not six or seven. The schemes, especially on offense, wasted a Mother lode of talent.

The case is that the Owls will be two years removed from the guts of a championship team and those losses could be felt more severely next year than this one. A great haul on early signing day followed by the momentum of a bowl win would reassure any doubting Thomases out there but that’s a different Saint for a different day.

Wednesday: Bowl Preview

Friday: Bowl Analysis

Monday: The Early Haul

12.15.17
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Geoff Collins’ Shocking Admission

 

dunce

Go through the posts on this website and you will find several references of Temple’s offense being one where the coaches tried to fit a square peg into a round hole.

shargamilk

So you can excuse us for wondering just where Temple head football coach got this notion from when he uttered this quote at the inaugural Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl press conference.

“I think we were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole on offense,” Collins said. “Once we got a good taste of who our personnel was on offense, it kind of took off.”

Collins could have saved a whole lot of time and heartache by reading what was posted here in September.

Maybe he did.

This is what we wrote in a post on Sept. 22, after a 43-7 loss to USF:

“Ask any Temple fan who followed the team over the last 40 years (I will raise my hand here) who the best set of receivers are in Temple history and that fan will probably say the current group of Ventell Bryant, Adonis Jennings, Keith Kirkwood and Isaiah Wright. Any offense that has those four guys on it is not rebuilding, it should be reloading.

Emphasis on “should be” because the coaching is the X-factor here. Temple won the past two seasons because it catered an offense to suit the talents of its players, and did not try to force fit a square peg (spread offense) into a round hole (play-action offense). A good head coach tailors a scheme to the talent he has, not the talent he wants.”

Better late than never, but putting the square pegs into the square holes and the round ones should have been something that was figured out by August, not by the end of October. The real sad thing is that Collins seemed to be onto it at the season ticket holder party when one season-ticket holder asked him to “never take Nick Sharga out of the game” and Collins responded by saying that he would not and, if anything, Sharga’s role as a lead-blocker in a play-action-oriented offense would be greater than it was a year ago. For reasons only Collins knows, he lied. Maybe he allowed offensive coordinator Dave Patenaude to have too much input.


At least Collins dictated a heavy dose of play action over the final six games of the year and that saved their season. That was the personnel they had all along.


“Temple won the past two
seasons because it catered
an offense to suit the
talents of its players,
and did not try to force
fit a square peg (spread offense)
into a round hole (play-action offense)”
_ Temple Football Forever, Sept. 22, 2017

“I think we were trying to kind
of fit a square peg in a round
hole on offense. Once we got
a really good taste of who
our personnel was,
it kind of took off.”
_ Geoff Collins, Dec. 6, 2017


The Owls took way too long to figure out that they never needed a “running” quarterback as much as they needed a guy with a big enough arm to get the ball to their most talented players on offense, their wide receivers. They figured out too late that many of the “drops” they suffered in September were the result of these same receivers circling back on poorly thrown balls. When they inserted the guy with the big arm, those receivers caught balls in stride and away they went, usually into the end zone.

Collins followed the outline of the advice, although we would have liked to seen more running from guys like Ryquell Armstead and David Hood behind a guy like Nick Sharga.

Maybe next year with those two behind a guy who goes by the nickname of Nitro, opening passing lanes for a guy who goes by the name Juice.

Let’s hope a second-year coach isn’t as slow on the uptake as the first-year one was. One of the fastest ways to fix a problem is to recognize it and, with that one quote, Collins showed there is hope for a better future plan.

Monday: The Padre Pio Factor

Wednesday: Bowl Preview

Friday: Bowl Analysis

Christmas: Season Analysis

12.13.17
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FIU-Temple: No Distractions This Time

gameday

For the third-straight year, Temple will enter its bowl game as a favorite.

When the Owls take the field in a week and a night at Tropicana Stadium (8 p.m., ESPN), they will be a touchdown favorite over a Florida International team that has two more wins than they do.

Last year, the Owls were 14.5 favorites over Wake Forest (and lost by eight) and two years ago they were 1.5 favorites over Toledo and lost, 32-17.

One name got in the way of the Owls hoisting a bowl trophy at the end of each season and he did not even play in either game.

Matt Rhule.

The first loss, which Rhule took blame for, came as a result of going easy on his team, the expense of giving them a “reward” for a 10-win season. After that game, Rhule said he would not pull back the reins if he had another bowl chance. That could be a long time coming given his 1-11 year at Baylor and the sanctions he faces there going forward.

The second loss, which he did not take blame for, resulted from Rhule’s decision to recruit for Baylor and take most of the guts of the Temple staff with him. While that staff was on the field for the 34-26 loss to Wake, their hearts and minds were in Waco. The defensive coaches alone missed eight practices and that had to contribute to Wake’s 31-7 halftime lead.

Now this is the first “distraction-free” bowl for the Owls if new coach Geoff Collins has learned from Rhule’s first bowl experience. Vegas, which is seldom wrong, has the Owls as a solid seven-point favorite this time and, all things being equal, it should be the Owls hoisting that trophy to end the season.

Are all things equal, though?

Kirk Herbstreit picked FIU and mentioned Butch Davis as a reason on ESPN’s Game Day on Saturday. He might have something there.

In Davis, the Panthers (8-4) have a master tactician who was good enough with a clipboard in his hands to win a national championship at Miami. Will he be able to fill in enough X’s and O’s to tic-tack-toe a first-year coach who many feel is still feeling his way?

The answer comes in eight days.

Friday: A Shocking Admission

Monday: The Padre Pio Factor

Wednesday: Bowl Preview

Friday: Bowl Analysis

Christmas: Season Analysis

 

12.11.17
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FIU-Temple: A Test of The Hiring Method

butch

There is no written hiring test when evaluating future Temple football head coaches, post-Geoff Collins Era, only an outline of “types” in this current convoluted system, a copy of which should be emailed to every Group of 5 athletic director.

Even the person who sees things through Cherry and White glasses know Collins could not be long for Temple, hopefully for the right reasons, but at least a measure of stability could be achieved with a different hiring model going forward.

For the time being, as long as only the Power 5 can have the coaches they want, the G5 schools that include Temple will be left to pick among these three types:

THE HOT COORDINATOR–Collins himself falls into this category. This is the high-risk, high-reward method. Since the “hot coordinator” usually has never been a head coach, no one knows how he will react once he has a clipboard in his hands. Temple has tried this route with its last three head coaches and that has turned the coaching door at the E-O into a revolving one. Maybe it needs to re-evaluate that thinking in the future.

houston

THE PROVEN FBS HEAD COACH–FIU’s Butch Davis falls into that category.  Coming off 5-7 and 4-8 seasons, Davis’ first year as FIU coach is an impressive one. He turned 5-7 and 4-8 talent into eight-win talent. Compare that to Collins turning a solid core from a 10-win team into a six-win team, and you have evidence that this could be the way to go for Temple in the future. Davis did not have to learn how to be a head coach on the job; he already was a championship coach at Miami and knows how to push the right buttons. He has already seen what life is like chasing the big bucks in the NFL and college football and is more likely to stay and build something than the first type.

cignetti

THE FCS CHICKEN SALAD MAKER–This is a guy who does more with FCS talent than the current Temple coach does with Temple talent. There are a few of those guys out there who can turn “chicken shit into chicken salad.” For brevity purposes, we will mention two here: JMU’s Mike Houston and Elon’s Curt Cignetti. Last year, Houston led JMU to a 14-1 record and the national championship. At the Citadel, he led that team to a Southern Conference championship and, before that, led Lenoir-Rhyne to three first-place finishes. This guy has winner stamped on his farhead. This year, Houston has JMU ranked No. 1 in the nation and his team beat ECU and Villanova worse than Temple did. At Elon, Cignetti–a former Temple assistant–also had a more comfortable win over Villanova than Temple did. In his first year as head coach there, he turned what had been a 2-9 team in 2016 into an 8-4 team this year.

So one of the questions to be answered in a little over a week is if Temple hired the right type. Winning or losing that one game should give Pat Kraft a very large insight into if he made the right choice or not.

Wednesday: A Closer Look at FIU

12.08.17
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FIU: Looking In The Mirror

fiustadium

FIU fans have seen a stadium rendering;  (most) Temple fans have not.

If Florida International’s football program looks familiar in the Gasparilla Bowl on  Dec. 21, Temple fans might be onto something.

In many ways, it will be like looking into a mirror.

Here are 5 similarities:

  1. Both the Owls and the Panthers are located in major cities and have similar missions, educating the poor and middle class and paving the way for upward mobility.

2. Both teams have stadiums at least on the drawing board. Only major contributors have seen artist renderings of the proposed new Temple Football 35,000-seat stadium, while everyone in Miami has seen the plans for the new FIU stadium (artist rendering above), a 25,000-seat expansion of the current Raymond Silva Stadium on campus.

fiucollins

Collins getting his FIU swag on

3. The last time FIU hoisted a bowl-winning trophy Geoff Collins was on the field. Collins was the defensive coordinator of a FIU team that won the 2010 Beef O’Brady Bowl. (Hopefully, that happenstance will not be repeated this year.) Seeing Collins in that FIU uniform is just another reminder that his family is used to more moves than an Army officer’s family and that he probably won’t be here for long either.

4. Both programs play second-, third- and fourth-fiddle to other football programs in the same market. For FIU, the Panthers have to struggle for space in the newspaper with two Miamis (Hurricanes and Dolphins). For the Owls, it usually page nine of a Sunday paper that only seems to have eight pages of Eagles’ coverage.

5. Both teams have beaten and lost to the same opponent this year.  Central Florida crushed the Panthers (61-17) and the Owls (46-19); Panthers beat UMass (61-33) as did the Owls (29-21).

Monday: The Year In FIU football

12.02.17
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Bowl Scenarios: It comes down to Florida

There are two thoughts that come to mind when thinking about Temple’s bowl destination:

1)  Beggars can’t be chosers

2) What difference does it make?

We won’t know for sure, but my gut is telling me that Temple’s bowl destination will be Boca Raton again.

Process of elimination.

Because Temple just scraped into being bowl eligible, it falls into the beggars’ category when it comes to the AAC pecking order. That means the more appealing bowls–at least to me–like the Birmingham Bowl and the Cure Bowl–will go elsewhere.

templebowls

To me, the Birmingham Bowl would be the ideal destination for Temple because the Owls’ football brand is best advanced by beating a Power 5 team. The only possible Power 5 opponent would come in either two bowls, Birmingham or Military.

That’s where the “what difference does it make?” phrase comes into play. If the Owls are not going to play a Power 5 team–and it looks like they are not—what difference does it make if they play either a Marshall, a Georgia State, a FIU or an Appalachian State?

Not much.

Since Navy, despite some rumblings down there to the contrary, is probably going to host the Military Bowl and since USF made known its strong desire to play a Power 5 school, the Owls are probably going to either St. Petersburg  or Boca Raton again. The Owls have demonstrated a strong following in Boca Raton, so I think that’s where they will be slotted again. They drew a conservatively estimated 6,000 to Boca (after drawing 4,000 to New Mexico for the previous bowl), so they are a known commodity there. They might do as well or better in St. Pete, but bowl committees like a sure thing and Temple is far from a sure thing there.

The opponent is the unknown factor, but if it’s a Sun Belt or CUSA school, the reaction by “Joe Philadelphia” fans to will probably be a “meh.” Ideally, you’d like to see the Owls go against, say, an ACC team like Duke or BC in Birmingham but that chess move has been blocked by USF.

So, in my mind, it’s back to Del Boca Vista. This time, let’s hope Geoff Collins goes easy on the beach volleyball, air hockey and bowling and cracks the whip on the game prep because, while beating a CUSA or Sun Belt team won’t advance the Temple TUFF brand, losing would be worse.

Monday: Bowl Reality

Wednesday: Ridiculousness 

11.28.17
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Reversing Field: Getting Temple Football on YouTube

Today’s post was supposed to be about the LIKELY bowl destinations of the Temple Owls.

Since those likely bowl destinations are the same bowl destinations today as they were on Saturday, we’ll make that post on Thursday—when we’ve been assured by a trusty source that more will be known tomorrow and the four possible destinations could be narrowed to one or two.

So like Ryquell Armstead without Nick Sharga to follow through the hole, we will be reversing field today. Hopefully, like Rock, this post will also result in a Temple touchdown, this time a figurative one.

One of my Pet Peeves for years has been that other schools have their past games on YouTube but it’s almost impossible to find Temple football footage from past years. Temple really hasn’t had a video crew since Fran Duffy (not to be confused with Fran Dunphy) arrived on the scene with Owl Golden in 2006. Duffy is now the video coordinator with the Philadelphia Eagles. The guys who are played with Temple the last decade or so are in good shape.

1123171203a

Frank McArdle’s Ryan team less than a week ago.

It’s the other guys, the ones who played before them, we’ve always been more concerned about from a historical footage perspective.

Thanks to Archbishop Ryan head coach Frank McArdle that could all change. Little did I know I’d be watching Frank’s team from the stands on Thanksgiving Day beat Washington, 38-14, and then have him contact me a couple of nights later, but that’s exactly what happened.

Frank sent us this email out of the blue on Sunday night and we were very grateful to receive it:

Mike,

Hope all is well. I have read the blog for a few years now and have enjoyed it. I have been going to Temple games since I was a kid and consider myself a Temple fan. I writing to you to see if you wanted to pass this on to former Temple players. I was recruited to JMU  and coached by former Temple asst. Eddie Davis (Bruce era) , after college Eddie got me into coaching at Northeastern University. Eddie and I developed a very close relationship We lost Eddie in 2013. Today Eddie’s wife gave me hundreds of films and other coaching keepsakes of Eddies. Among the films are 8mm Temple Coaches films from his time with Coach Arians. I have

1985 TU vs BYU

1986 TU vs VA Tech

1987 TU vs Penn State & Akron

1988 TU vs BC & Rutgers

I am not looking to sell the films just passing this along to see if any former players wanted a copy of the games.

_  Frank McArdle

 

 

My thought process here are not just to get these to a few of the players but to get them to someone who is able to transfer them to YouTube so the entire Temple football community—fans, current players, past players—can see and enjoy them whenever they want.

I know there is a service out there that transforms old eight-millimeter film into a DVD and someone reading this surely must have the ability to transfer that to YouTube. That

If so, contact me at templefootballforever@gmail.com and I will get you in touch with Frank and we can get this process rolling.

Thanks, Frank.

Thursday: Bowl Scenarios