Category Archives: Temple football

02.17.14
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With a Caveat, I’ll pick up the tab on the new stadium

Hopefully, the new Temple Stadium doesn't have a track around it like this one does. I want the fans right on top of the action.

Hopefully, the new Temple Stadium doesn’t have a track around it like this one does. I want the fans right on top of the action.

We’ve heard this all before about this time two years ago.

“It’s a done deal.”

Back then, the Temple football recruits and their parents (fathers, mostly) were saying that Temple to the Big East was a done deal. Almost one month to the day after signing day 2012, Temple inked a pact to join the Big East for all sports.

The original Temple Stadium at Pickering and Cheltenham Aves.

The original Temple Stadium at Pickering and Cheltenham Aves.

That lasted one year for football, while the basketball team never got to play in the Big East.

Now many of the new recruits and their parents (again, fathers mostly) are saying (privately) that they have been told a new stadium is a done deal. I will give Matt Rhule a little more credit than Steve Addazio here. He’s keeping a lid on Social Media and none of the recruits are saying publicly that they’ve been told a new stadium is a done deal. We’ve heard, though, that is what they’ve been told.

Temple will have a new football stadium and it will be sooner as well as later.

I don’t know if it’s true but, if I were a betting man, I’d bet there’s at least a 60 percent chance the stadium gets done before the Lincoln Financial Field contract expires before the start of the 2018 season.

Eagles’ owner Jeff Lurie wants the Owls out and he basically wants to use a $521 million stadium for 10 games a season in addition to a concert or a soccer game or two. Since $60 million of that was state money, that doesn’t seem fair to Temple but that’s a story for another day.

The Geasey and old track field complex, rumored site for Temple Stadium

The Geasey and old track field complex, rumored site for Temple Stadium

I like playing at Lincoln Financial Field. I think there are significant advantages of playing at a $521 million palace located a 10-minute train ride from the main campus, with dedicated stops at each end. In fact, the university might consider all the alternatives and come to the conclusion that the ransom Lurie is demanding is more cost-effective than sinking $300 million into an on-campus facility likely to be delayed by legal challenges.


I like playing at Lincoln Financial Field.
I think there are significant advantages
to playing at a $521 million palace located
a 10-minute train ride from the main campus,
with dedicated stops at each end. In fact,
the university might consider the alternatives
and come to the conclusion that the ransom
Lurie is demanding is more cost-effective
than sinking $300 million into an on-campus
facility likely to be delayed by legal challenges

All that said, a new on-campus stadium could better simply because the regional rail which has a stop by the Edberg-Olson Practice Facility does not go to South Philadelphia. Any time you can open up more public transportation options to get to a Temple football game you increase the likelihood of a bigger crowd. The rumors are that the stadium will go on the present site of Geasey Field also using the former adjacent track “stadium” at 15th and Montgomery. When I went to Temple, Geasey’s claim to fame was that it was the “largest astroturf field in the World.” Temple had a stadium once–located eight miles away from the campus in Mt. Airy–and I always wondered why it was so far away. I asked one of our distinguished alums about that recently and he said the plan was to move the whole campus up there to Wyncote/Oreland/Erdenheim, lock stock and barrel, but they could not grab  sufficient land for the deal and those plans were scraped. Unfortunately, they had the stadium built before finding that out.

Not all that worried about tailgating since the games are on Saturdays when you can close off some student lots used for weekday classes just for those purposes.

New Tulane Stadium will open this fall.

New Tulane Stadium will open this fall.

I am worried about where the funding for this will come from. I don’t think the state or city or feds will contribute one dime, so it will have to come from Temple fans. Knowing Temple fans like I do, it won’t take them long to raise the money.

Unless you consider 346 years long.

I’ll tell you what: I’ll pick up the tab. Powerball on Wednesday night is $400 million. If I win, I’ll keep a measly $100 million and donate the balance to the stadium.  If 21-22-28-39-58 (06) pop up and nobody else uses those numbers, I will send Temple University a check the day after the presentation ceremony in Harrisburg. The university can consider this post a promissory note. All I want is for them to name it Temple Stadium in perpetuity, without any future sale of naming rights.

Done deal.

02.04.14
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The company you keep

Rivals.com's list of Temple commits (above and below)

Rivals.com’s list of Temple commits (above and below)

thrif

You are pretty much judged by the company you keep.

So it is with the Temple recruiting class of 2014.

By all accounts, it will be a good class. Will it be ranked  by any of the three services (Rivals, Scout or 247) as high as No. 55?

Probably not, but we won’t know for sure until 3 or 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon when all of the faxes with the LOIs will be received at the E-O.

signingdaysnip

Click over the black image above for a TV link to coverage of the faxes coming in starting at 7 a.m.

Fifty-five is a magical number, because that’s how high Steve Addazio’s 2012 recruiting class was ranked and that was the highest-ever in the history of Temple. Addazio was able to put that class together even after a few great  recruiting classes by Al Golden, who had three straight recruiting classes ranked No. 1 in the MAC.

Of course, current head coach Matt Rhule was part of putting together those classes and now he appears to have put together a good one.

More than whether the class is ranked No. 55 or better is really not as important as how many guys Temple signed who were “offered by” BCS schools and not “received interest by.” When the bios start coming in, that’s a thing to pay special attention to before judging.

If Temple beats out a guy who was offered by say, Stony Brook and Kent State, that’s not as impressive as  Penn State and Rutgers.

If Temple gets a late commit who turned down a Sun Belt school to take a Temple scholarship, that’s not as impressive as Temple beating out a Big 12 school (as it did when a West Virginia commit flipped at the last minute two years ago).

There will be those who say “trust the coaches” but I say “trust, by verify.” If more successful coaches than 2-10 coaches like our recruits, I will be impressed.

Let’s hope that’s the case once the faxes start rolling in and Temple gets guys who can play anywhere. We should know by this time Wednesday night.

01.22.14
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McNair Would Be A Great Addition to Rhule’s staff

Todd McNair, coaching the Cleveland Browns, has Temple running through his blood.

Todd McNair, coaching the Cleveland Browns, has Temple running through his blood.

A little over a year ago, then Temple athletic director Bill Bradshaw walked into a room full of Temple football players and told them their head coach at the time, Steve Addazio, was leaving for Boston College.

Partly out of courtesy, partly out of curiosity, Bradshaw asked the team what they thought he should do.  The players shouted out one thing: “Hire Matt Rhule.” Bradshaw had other ideas, even mentioning to several fans that it was his desire this time to get a guy with winning head coaching experience.

Paul Darragh finished his first season as head coach at Bloomsburg with a 10-2 record.

Paul Darragh finished his first season as head coach at Bloomsburg with a 10-2 record.

As it turned out, though, what the players had to say carried an awful lot of weight when Bradshaw was weeding through the interview process. Like a couple of years before, Rhule interviewed well and was liked by more than just the players. The parents also liked him, as did some key administrators who remembered Rhule’s time as an assistant coach for both Addazio and the guy before him, Al Golden.

In the end, Rhule’s knowledge of the program and the kids and that support won Bradshaw over. That, and the fact at least one other key target was coaching his team in a bowl game and did not want to give that up to get to Temple early enough to secure a shaky recruiting class.

Rhule had a rough first year, going 2-10, but he has secured a couple of decent recruiting classes and one of the only things left for him to do is to hire a guy or two with Temple connections as a key position coach. It’s one thing to have Temple-made guys like former quarterback Adam DiMichele and former safety Kevin Kroboth as grad assistants, but it might be helpful to get a guy from Temple as a position coach as well.

I think the next step for a guy like Matt Rhule is to hire an assistant coach with Temple ties to a winning past, a guy like Paul Darragh or Todd McNair. Darragh finished the season as a 10-2 head coach at Bloomsburg University and McNair was one the offensive coordinator for powerhouse USC under Pete Carroll. McNair, a NFL running back, was also an assistant coach with the Cleveland Browns. Other coaches with Temple backgrounds include (but are not limited to) Dick Beck, the North Penn High School head coach and Rich Drayton, the Central High School head coach.

Even the Florida Gators once feared Todd McNair.

Even the Florida Gators once feared Todd McNair.

I thought about Todd the other day when  he posted that he was happy with the addition of Elijah Robinson to the Temple staff. I thought, “Why not Todd?” Todd is a great guy and a great coach who has a National Championship under his belt at USC and, while at Temple, played in a game against defending national champion BYU in front of 52,945 at Veterans Stadium. (Temple lost that game, 26-24.)

Why not indeed? He would be a great role model for the present-day Temple kids.

You can never have too many good coaches on the staff, especially guys with “Temple-made” stamped on their farheads.

01.02.14
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Recruiting: Embrace it or Fail

Arguably, the jewel of this recruiting class is cornerback Anthony Davis of Gateway and probably not arguable is that cornerback is the one position where Temple needs immediate help.

Say what you will about Matt Rhule and we haven’t been shy about saying a few thousand words about him over the last few months, the facts of life in college sports start with a head coach who excels in recruiting.

Sure, you need a little bit on the ball on game day but, if you have better players, you are usually going to make the better plays.

247Sports' AAC recruiting rankings.

247Sports’ AAC recruiting rankings.

Back to Rhule, though. The guy’s most positive trait is that he’s embraced recruiting pretty much like Al Golden did and that’s a very good development for Temple football going forward. Kids like him and he seems to like hopping aboard airplanes and trains to solidify relationships. He’s also good on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and that’s just part of the recruiting game these days. For all of those reasons, I think Rhule will hold together a pretty good recruiting class and have Temple ranked No. 3 or  No. 4 in the AAC in recruiting this season. That’s outstanding coming off a 2-10 season because a belief system that would have been there for 10-2 doesn’t exist at 2-10. At 2-10, you are asking kids to come to your school based on blind faith.

One of the reasons Bill O’Brien left Penn State was that I don’t think a whole lot of guys who spend extended time in the NFL have a zeal for recruiting. Reading between the lines of O’Brien’s comments today, it looks like he saw it as a necessary but not exciting part of the job. O’Brien also seemed miffed with the “Joe Paterno” faction of the Penn State fans.

Now he just has to concentrate on football and I think he will do a good job as head coach of the Texans.

Matt Rhule has got to get better on game day and I thought one step in that direction would have been hiring part-time CBS Sports Analyst Tom Bradley to be his new full-time defensive coordinator. That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, but Penn State defensive line coach (and great recruiter) Larry Johnson is out there and probably will be looking for a job soon and Temple so happens to have an opening for a defensive line coach. (Unless, of course, Johnson goes to the pros.)

Seems like a no-brainer to me but a lot of things seemed like no-brainers this season that turned into brainers.

12.31.13
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Junior Galette’s Return to Philadelphia

Click on photo of Eagles' fans to find five keys to the game, one involving former Temple player Junior Galette.

Click on photo of Eagles’ fans to find five keys to the game, one involving former Temple player Junior Galette.

Just like about six million other people in the tri-state area on Saturday night, I’ll be watching the Eagles vs. Saints playoff game on Saturday night.

I also hold no hopes for New Orleans’ starting defensive end Junior Galette to say “Junior Galette, Temple Owls” when he does his own introduction on NBC. That honor will be probably reserved for Spellman College, which recently eliminated all intercollegiate sports.

Damn.

Galette is returning to Philadelphia, but not “coming home.” He had to be dismissed from the team by then head coach Al Golden for a discipline issue we won’t get into here, but I’m always sad to see great talent exit Temple for any reason.

Galette’s return does make you wonder about what happened to the one vaunted Temple pass rush, though. Consider the guys who have been through here: Galette, Muhammad Wilkerson and Adrian Robinson. Of the three, although “Big Mo” is the all-pro, Robinson was the best pass rusher in college. I always told his dad he was playing out of position (I thought the Owls should have used him as an OLB with pass-rushing responsibilities, ala Lawrence Taylor with the Giants) but I could see Golden’s point in that the Owls needed to play him as a down lineman.

Hopefully, Matt Rhule brings in Galette, Wilkerson and Robinson type talent in with this class. Pass defense becomes a lot easier when the bad guy’s quarterback is on his ass all the time.

Greatest Punt Block Ever:

12.26.13
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Five Bowl Games TU Fans Should Watch

Hooter and Stella will be kicking back on the couch watching these five games and wishing the football Owls get their shot to do the same in a year.

Hooter and Stella will be kicking back on the couch watching these five games and wishing the football Owls get their shot to go to a bowl game in a year.

If there is one thing the bowl season best illustrates, it’s the schism between the haves and the have-nots in college football.

For the second year in a row, fan of the Temple Owls are on the outside of the bowl window with their noses pressed against it longing for the not-so-distant days when they were part of the haves. The program had a nice little run that saw the team bowl eligible for three-straight years, including the first bowl win in over 30 years, but the Owls have missed badly over the last two years. There had been some hope that first-year head coach Matt Rhule would improve the team from a four-win season in 2012 to a six-win season in 2013, but things imploded badly with embarrassing losses to Fordham and Idaho.

There is some good news, though, in that quarterback P.J. Walker was named to the freshman All-American team and that the team returns most of the players who gave AAC champion Central Florida  one of its toughest league tests for the season. In linebacker Tyler Matakevich, the team has a junior-to-be linebacker who led the country in tackles and will no doubt be on the Dick Butkus Award Watch List as the top player at his position next year.

Plus, Rhule is in the final stages of securing what many consider the best recruiting class in school history. Whether the returning players and the recruits put the Owls over the top remains to be seen and so are five bowl games that should hold a particular appeal for their fans. Of course, Steve Addazio turned a 2-10 team into a 7-5 team  and you-know-who turned a 4-7 team into a 2-10 team. For those interested, Daz’s game vs. Arizona is 12:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. Does Daz go 2-10 with this Temple team? Hell no. His relentless commitment to the run would have avoiding the uni the embarrassment of Fordham and Idaho.  I still think Rhule is a better long-term option for the program than Daz, particularly if he finds the gonads to fire Phil Snow in the next few weeks. I don’t think he has the gonads, though.

Andrew Weber-USA TODAY Sports

Andrew Weber-USA TODAY Sports

5. Bowling Green vs. Pittsburgh

In the Little Caesar Pizza Bowl in Detroit on Thursday night, these are two old conference rivals of Temple’s and Owl fans can see what the Falcons have done with less talent and better coaching. According to one national recruiting website, Scout.com, Bowling Green’s 2010 recruiting class was ranked No. 85 in the country, while Temple’s was ranked No. 75 in the same year. Also, Temple had the No. 55-ranked recruiting class in 2012, well ahead of BGSU’s No. 82-ranked class the same year. The only year the Falcons out -recruited Temple was 2011, when their class ranked No. 84 to TU’s No. 95. Pitt was an old Big East foe of Temple.

Andrew Weber-USA TODAY Sports

Andrew Weber-USA TODAY Sports

4. Northern Illinois vs. Utah State

In the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego also on Thursday night, the Owls get to see what another former conference foe has done with “lesser” rated talent as Temple out recruited NIU in two of the three years from 2010 through 2012. The only time a Temple class was rated behind NIU was in 2011, when the Huskies pulled a No. 90 nationally to Temple’s No. 95. The Huskies have a program-changer in Jordan Lynch, while the Owls feel they also have a program-changer in freshman All-American quarterback P.J. Walker.

Brendan Maloney-USA TODAY Sports

Brendan Maloney-USA TODAY Sports

3. Marshall vs. Maryland

In the Military Bowl Friday, Owl fans get to see former defensive coordinator Chuck Heater lead the rejuvenated defense against a Maryland team that was on Temple’s schedule in both 2011 and 2012. Heater had the 2011 Owls ranked No. 3 in the nation in scoring defense and the Owls had consecutive shutouts that season. He now has Marshall ranked No. 33 in the nation in scoring defense. His replacement at Temple, Phil Snow, has the Owls ranked No. 82 in the country in scoring defense. The last time Heater faced a Randy Edsall coached-team on Maryland soil, he held the Terrapins to seven points in a 38-7 win.

John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

2. Louisville vs. Miami (Fla.)

On Saturday in the Russell Athletic Bowl, The Cardinals of the AAC get to go against a couple of familiar faces in Miami head coach Al Golden and defensive coordinator Mark D’Onofrio. Both held the same positions at Temple as recently as 2010. No doubt Owl fans will be rooting for Golden, who brought respect to the Temple program. D’Onofrio was a runner up for the Temple job that went to Rhule a year ago.

Randy Sartin-USA TODAY Sports

Randy Sartin-USA TODAY Sports

1. Vanderbilt vs. Houston

On Jan. 4 in the Compass Bowl, a game holding the most interest for Temple fans is next year’s opening opponent, the Commodores, who will be playing Owl conference foe Houston. Temple dropped a 22-13 game to the Cougars earlier this year and this game will provide a barometer for how far the Owls must improve to compete against an upper-tier SEC team. Vandy head coach James Franklin is from the Philadelphia area, having played quarterback for suburban powerhouse Neshaminy High School in 1989.

12.05.13
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Throwback Thursday: Henry Burris talks Temple

Watching P.J. Walker play this season, I am reminded of one Temple quarterback: Henry Burris.

Henry Burris as an Owl.

Henry Burris as an Owl.

Hank was a great Temple Owl and he remains a great Temple Owl to this day and will go down as one of the greatest quarterbacks in Canadian Football League history.

The one regret I have about Henry’s career at Temple is that Ron Dickerson did not recruit enough Henry Burrises at the other positions so that the Owls would have bowl games and championships under Henry’s watch.

“Henry Burris is an excellent quarterback,” Penn State coach Joe Paterno said. “He has a super arm and is very, very mobile. “

Hopefully, Matt Rhule will learn from this mistake and not waste P.J.’s final three years. Temple needs at least two, hopefully three, winning seasons under P.J.’s watch and that’s the job of the coaches who are hitting the recruiting trail hard now.

Henry talks about Temple at the 8:17 time stamp of the video above.

Unfortunately, I could not find a single YouTube clip of Henry Burris playing football at Temple. If anyone has something, please send it to me: templefootballforever@gmail.com.

12.03.13
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The one-year anniversary of Daz quitting

Say what you will about Daz, this ice cold water must have felt nice while listening to the team sing "T for Temple U" in New Mexico.

Say what you will about Daz, this ice cold water must have felt nice while listening to the team sing “T for Temple U” in New Mexico.

When I worked in the sports department of the Doylestown Intelligencer, one of my colleagues, a guy I will call Adam (because that’s his name)  was a New York Mets’ fan.

He called Lenny Dykstra one nickname (Nails), I called him another (The Dude).

Amazing the same guy could be known in two large Eastern cities by two completely different nicknames.

sasnip

Click on the photo for The Philadelphia Metro’s story on Steve Addazio quitting, which appeared in the Dec. 4, 2012, edition.

I thought about that while reading the mostly positive reviews of what Steve Addazio has done at Boston College this season. Up there, he’s known by a nickname no one called him here (The Dazzler) while, down here, he was simply known as Daz. Nobody calls him Daz up there, just The Dazzler.

Today is the one-year anniversary of Steve Addazio quitting from his position as head football coach at Temple University.

I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news, in my car and headed to the gym (Abington LA Fitness, former Temple recruit Brandon Peoples knows it well). I was passing the iconic Rydal Train Station on Susquehanna Avenue when Harry Donahue came on the  KYW air at 5:45  p.m. with “breaking news in the sports world,”  and following that up with the tease, “There has been a coaching change at Temple.”

In between the long pause between that sentence and the next, I thought for once in my life my university had the balls to fire someone because he followed an 8-4 regular season with a 4-7 one.

Instead, I heard this: “Steve Addazio has resigned as the head football coach to take the same job at Boston College.”

The Rydal Train Station.

The Rydal Train Station.

That was mildly amusing because I never heard of a school hiring a guy coming off a 4-7 season. (Unfortunately, I DID hear of a uni hiring a guy coming off an 0-11 season and it was MY university and that turned out to be an unmitigated disaster circa 1989.)

Whatever the reason, I pounded the steering wheel and started cheering out loud because I knew  Temple would go nowhere with this stubborn man in charge. I thought now the university could hire someone with a winning head-coaching FBS pedigree after years of rolling the dice with unproven assistant coaches. I attended the final press conference a week earlier at Temple where Addazio uttered the famous line “the season starts Monday and it won’t be a box of chocolates for those guys” at Edberg-Olson Hall. “We have to run the football for 200 yards a game, that’s something we have to do,” Daz said.

I left that press conference thinking Daz doesn’t get it and probably never will.

Monday came and Daz went, becoming  The Dazzler, and the rest was history.

Say what you will about Daz, he probably would have beaten Fordham and Idaho by pretty substantial scores because his philosophy of running the ball on first and second downs almost to the point of exclusivity would have probably netted him first downs against those two horrible run defenses before even getting to a third down. He would have saved the uni from the embarrassment of two of five worst losses in its  history. Still, that philosophy doesn’t lend itself to multiple winning seasons in a major conference so it is overall good that he is gone.

I got to know Daz a little bit and I liked him a lot as someone to shoot the breeze with. I was in New York City for the June 12th gathering of Temple alumni and Daz in 2012 and talked with Daz. He was brutally candid. He was talking about that he “had it up to here” with a Temple player (a favorite of mine) and that he was “this close” to kicking him off the team. When the two guys I was with reminded him I write the TFF blog, Daz said, “Mike, please don’t print this.” I didn’t. I still won’t print the name (those kind of settings should be off-the-record anyway), but the guy was never kicked off the team and had a great senior year, something that pleased both me and Daz.

Got to give him credit for turning a 2-10 team into a 7-5 one, while his successor turned a 4-7 team into a 2-10 one.

Whether or not that’s an omen of things to come won’t be known until this day a year from now.

Meanwhile, Daz’s big advertising campaign up there this year is “Be a Dude.” Sounds better than “Be a Nails” but not as good as “Temple TUFF.”