Category Archives: Temple football

09.09.11
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MAC blogger roundtable: Week 2

It’s not even one-tenth into the Mid-American Conference season and, so far, all indicatons are that this is going to be a very good year.
Last year, New Hampshire beat Ball State on the road.
This year, Toledo hammered New Hampshire, 58-22, at home and Ball State beat rival Indiana.

Last year, Temple and Villanova were tooth and nail until the final seconds.
This year, Temple built a 42-0 lead and won, 42-7.
Eastern Michigan won and Western Michigan played well at The Big House.
Ohio scored 44 points with a win in New Mexico.
Miami played Missouri tough.
If this trend continues, that can be only good for MAC fans.
This week, it was my turn to host the MAC Blogger Roundtable.
What follows is five questions and we’ll pick the responses of Bull Run’s Tim Riordan (because he answered first) here, followed by the other MAC bloggers’ responses listed below.

My questions, followed by Tim’s answers and then followed by links to the answers from the other MAC bloggers. It’s the middle of the night Friday morning, so I’m posting the responses I’ve received to this point while watching the all-night coverage of the disastrous flooding in Eastern Pennsylvania on the local tube.

TFF: 9-1 against the spread
TFF was 9-1 against the spread in Week 1 and 8-2 straight up.
Our only loss against the spread was Missouri’s 17-6 win over Miami (we had Missouri cover the 17). We also picked the Ball State upset of Indiana against the spread, but not straight up.
We realize we set a high standard, but we’re going after it in Week 2.
Our picks:
Temple 38, Akron 7 _ Owls easily cover the 14 despite the fact that Akron doesn’t wear Villanova across the chests.
Western Michigan 43, Nicholls State 12 (no line, so no comment).
Ohio 44, Gardner-Webb 7 _ Gardner-Freakin’-Webb beat Arkon by a point last year. It will find out that Ohio is not Akron fast (NL).
Bowling Green 35, Morgan State 7 (no line).
Ball State 21, University of South Florida 20 (in a ballsy move, I’m going for an upset of the minus 23 line and a straight up win for the David Lettermans).
Lousiania Lafeyette 24, Kent State 20 _ even though KSU is a 6 1/2-point favorite in this oone, I’m going with LL both straight up and against the spread.
Ohio State 23, Toledo 17 _ The spread of 22 in this game is way too high. Easier money was never made.
Buffalo 31, Stony Brook 0 (NL) _ Stony Brook? Stony Brook? Are you serious, Buffalo?
Northern Illinois 21, Kansas 7 _ The class of the MAC so far handles a middle-of-the-road BCS team and covers the 7.
Season record: 8-2
Against the spread: 9-1

1) What was the most surprising result of the week and why?

BSU Beating Indiana:

I feel a bit dirty for calling out a Ball State game as the highlight but there it is. A win over an instate Big-10 Member something a lot of MAC teams would sell their mother for. Even if it is only Indiana!

I still think the cards may be in Bottom half of the west at but it shows how good the west is this season. This was a great emotional win for the program and could move them towards a 6+ win season. Ball State ran the ball down the Hosiers throats a lot of MAC teams will ahve to take notice of that.

2) What was the most expected result of the week and why?

NIU Beating up on Army:

The six point spread Vegas was giving to that game shows how ridiculously out of touch people are when it comes to the Huskies and the Mid American conference in general. NIU Returns so much talent but all people unfamiliar with the program see is the loss of Spann.

He may have been a big loss but last years Offensive player of the year had an amazing a line that could propel even an old fat guy like me to 3 or more yards per carry. There is real reason to think that the Huskies can give Wisconsin a run for the money this season, maybe they won’t have enough to close it but it should be one heck of a game.

3) Are you satisfied with the quality of reception and reliability of the current MAC online TV access of its games?

No! ESPN3 is not television coverage no matter how you brand it. I’m fine with it being used and the exposure on the weekends when everyone’s plate is full but when the mid week games roll around having them on the Tres is a slap in the face. Somehow we went from weeknight games on national TV to “Boy I hope we are on ESPN3 this week”

The announcers also tend to act like they drew the short straw. During the UB game the announcers were awful, they could have hired a fan from each school and gotten more things right. Factual errors, calling players the wrong name, and the overuse of old football sayings to cover up blatant ignorance.

4) Does Week 1 indicate that this is going to be the best year overall in the MAC in the last few or is that too soon?

I think so, no team gave away a game they should have won and the teams that did lose all made a decent showing for themselves. This is the first year in a long time with no inexplicable week one losses. No close calls, and no upsets by an FCS team.

This may be the best year since before Temple joined the conference. I expect Temple and Northern Illinois to flirt with the top 25 at some point this year. Toledo and OU have an outside shot if they run the table in conference.

5) Rank ’em, FIRST to worst:

# Team Change Comment

1 NIU – Many had this as a “Close” Game (Don’t ask me why). NIU should have fewer doubters this week after destroying the Black Knights

2 Toledo – Great showing by Toledo, UNH is a decent program and the Rockets punished them all game long. The score was far less lopsided then the game.

3 Temple 2 Nova is no longer one of the best teams in the FCS, but the Owls looked great and have a coach who knows how to use Pierce to set up the pass.

4 Ohio – Solid win over a team they should have beaten. The fact it’s on the road and at a pretty good elevation has them hold their spot

5 Miami -2 They have a huge number of very real chances to beat a ranked team but made too many mistakes in the first half. Still they walk away with a D that held Missouri to just 17 points.

6 WMU – A missed FG nad a red zone pick in the first half ended what was an impressive showing

7 BSU 3 IU is a low quality AQ team but they are an AQ Team

8 BGSU 1 Nice win but Idaho’s starting lineup belongs in a MASH unit right now

9 CMU -2 Yes they played a very good FCS team but they still should have played better on offense.

10 Kent -2 Not so much because they lost but because BSU and Bowling Green looked good. Kent played Alabama about as tight as any MAC school would.

11 EMU – Looked a bit hairy for EMU but they got it together and took down a lesser foe.

12 Buffalo – Definitely signs of life but still too much sloppy play. Dropped passes and a bad pick kept UB from really pushing the Panthers late.

13 Akron – Given some of the folks out at OSU I thought they would at least score a field goal

Around the league (we’ve only gotten a total of four responses, so we’ll add more by later Friday):
Bowling Green:
Bowling Green
Eastern Michigan:
Eastern Michigan
Toledo:
Toledo

08.16.11
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Practice? We’re talking about practice


Steve Addazio talkin’ about practice. Note the young man with the heavily marked up depth chart holding the tape recorder to the left. Kudos to him for coming to the interview prepared.


There’s nothing like holding a newspaper in your hands and flipping through the sports section.
I thought about that on Sunday when I was able to grab a copy of the Pocono Record, which is one of my local papers in the summertime.
Reading through Page 3 of the sports section, the top two stories above the fold were about various football practices.
In one of them, Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly talked of the quarterback duel between Dayne Crist and Tommy  Rees and said the position was “too close to call at this point.”
The story to the right of that talked about Steelers’ coach Mike Tomlin “being unhappy with the Steelers’ lifeless play.”
That got me to thinking about Steve Addazio saying pretty much the same thing over the past week as the Temple camp unfolded.
The quarterback position is too close to call and he was relatively unhappy with the first couple of practices.
I feel a little better now.
If Addazio lets the QB position play out, that will give him a better read before pulling the trigger on the starter. If he’s unhappy with the practice tempo now, the Owls will rachet that up for him before long.
It’s all part of the process at this point and nothing specific to Temple.
So talking about practice makes me a little uneasy.
It’s a necessary, not evil, but means to my end and that’s the fun of the games themselves.

Adam DiMichele and…
I want a demanding perfectionist as my head coach and Addazio’s comments were the first hints to me that we have one.

I don’t remember Al Golden saying  the same thing at this time last season.
Also, I’ve been through what seems to be a hundred years of Temple players performing well in practices but not so well in the games.
I watched as a quarterback named Mike McGann lit it up in practice after practice one year, only to lead the nation in interceptions (with 22) a few months later.
I watched as Vaughn Charlton, wearing an orange jersey (for no contact) complete 11 for 11 in a seven-on-seven drill in practice and reminded me a lot of Peyton Manning that day.

… Hunter Pence … separated at birth.

When he got into games and the rush came near him, he reminded me of Mike McGann.
I saw a guy named Adam DiMichele (who looks a LOT like the Phillies Hunter Pence) SOMETIMES struggle in practice but shine when the bright lights went on during the games. He welcomed the rush. That’s when he made big play after big play, by ducking out of it and completing third-down passes and running for 9 yards on seemingly every third-and-8.
I watched practice the last couple of years when Chester Stewart seemed to separate himself from the rest of the pack, only to hold the ball like a loaf of bread during games when he looked like Randall Cunningham but ran like Sonny Jurgesen. I then watched the Penn State game when he threw three interceptions right into the hands of Penn State players who were not even near the intended Temple receivers. I watched Chester drop back to see a Rod Streater (who beat a Northern Illinois defender by 15 yards) only to overthrow him by 25 yards. By then, I had it up to here with Chester. It took a pick 6 for a TD by a Bowling Green defender for Al Golden to feel the same way.
So, if Chester wins the job outright during practice the next couple of weeks it might cheer Addazio but it will be Groundhog Day for me.
A lot of the Steve Addazio supporters will say he knows better than I and I will agree with that but it won’t make me more comfortable with him out there.
I know people like Mike Gerardi, Rod Streater, Joey Jones, Bernard Pierce, Evan Rodriguez, Alex Jackson and Matty Brown can move the sticks pretty regularly against anyone. That mix works for me. If you can work in Chester, Juice Granger and Chris Coyer after that (not necessarily in that order), more power to them.
And us.
That’s the mix I’m hoping to see on 9/1.
But Addazio only has practice to go on before he makes that decision.
Hopefully, his gut will steer him in the right direction.

07.13.11
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Steve Addazio needs $2 million in two weeks

Addazio poses with the greatest helmet
in the history of college football.

One of the disappointing things about not being in a position to be a big-dollar donor to the Temple University football program is that I don’t get a lot of the correspondence asking for money.
That might seem odd t to you but, as I’ve said before many times, if I had disposable income (like millions), I’d spend a good portion of it on the Temple football Owls.
Sadly, I don’t so I didn’t get the latest letter Steve Addazio penned a variety of big-ticket donors.

In it, he reportedly said that the uni was in the process of raising $8.5 million for expansion to the E-O and needed “$2 million in contributions by Aug. 1 to greenlight the project.”
Knowing Temple fans like I do, that deadline, to be kind, seems a tad ambitious.
You don’t go through 30 years of losing and post two winning seasons and expect $2 million in contributions in a month of the offseason.
Just doesn’t happen. The belief system is just not in place.
Yet.
I do my part in small ways, like this blog.
I had a haircut in Center City Philadelphia last Wednesday and proudly wore my “Temple Owls Football” T-Shirt and had a few thousand people take notice of it as I walked 20 blocks from the Inquirer building to the Barber Shop.


Temple vs. PSU single-game tickets
on sale now:



Hopefully, the advertising was subliminal.

Today, I stopped at the Lehighton Walmart wearing the same shirt (washed, of course) and a guy came up to me and said, “Temple. Go Owls.”
He was wearing full Phillies gear.
Lehighton is in the middle of Penn State territory (actually, anyplace north of Allentown is).
“This is the year we finally beat Penn State,” I said.
“God, I hope so,” the man said.
That’s what it will take to raise $2 million in less than one month, not a letter from a popular new head coach.
I hope I’m wrong, but 30 years of observing this fan base tells me otherwise.
If you have an extra $2 million or even $2,000 to contribute, please contact bill.bradshaw@temple.edu and I’m sure he will be able to give you further info on this project or direct you to someone who will.
If you do have $2 million, please make the payment contingent upon Addazio keeping the TEMPLE helmet.

06.08.11
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TU recruiting: Nothing to get excited about (yet)

Ben Onett’s recruiting video is impressive.

I usually don’t write about Temple football recruiting for a couple of reasons:
1) The NCAA rules involved in what is considered a college “booster” or “supporter” are pretty vague and it’s just good judgment for me not to be involved in the process.
2) The NCAA rules about “verbals” and “soft verbals” are screwed up. Al Golden had a great idea about an “early signing period” meaning that the kids who commit within a certain time frame (say, the ones who already committed) cannot be contacted by other schools without a major penalty involved. That would reward hard-working staffs, like Golden’s and presumably Addazio’s, for making solid early calls and protect them against a BCS team swooping in and taking their recruits.
So I wait until the signatures are signed on the dotted line to talk about the kids.
Generally speaking, I think Temple University (or really any other) football recruiting is really nothing to get excited about until the first Wednesday of every February.
It’s good to see that new head coach Steve Addazio is targeting what he feels is a quarterback with the “it” factor in Benjamin Onett of St. John’s (D.C). He recently added a couple of defensive backs, Archbishop Wood running back Brandon Peoples, a punter and a backup placekicker.
All good, solid kids.
I’m playing the waiting game with Addazio, though, because, quite frankly, I was underwhelmed with his first class. Compared to the hastily recruited first class of Bruce Arians (Heisman Trophy runner up Paul Palmer, NFL pro bowler Tre Johnson, among others) it falls even short for a guy who had a month to put together a group.
I’ll give Steve the benefit of the doubt, but I don’t think we’ll get a Heisman Trophy runner up or an NFL pro bowler from this past February’s group. Just a hunch.
We had a three-time first-time all-state running back (Owen J. Roberts’ Ryan Brumfield) who WANTED to come to Temple passed over and a RB schollie given to a guy who is about the same size and a full tenth of a second slower in the 40 (Spencer Reid) who was an unimpressive honorable mention third-team All Central League player.
That was a WTF moment for me.
Everything I’ve heard, though, is that this guy is a great recruiter.
I hope the best is yet to come and, on signing day, we’re talking about a guy who is down to Alabama or Temple. Or Penn State or Temple.
Then he pulls out the Penn State hat, replaces it with a TU hat and says: “I’ve decided to take my talents to Temple University.”
I fully expect given everything I’ve heard, such a moment will happen soon with Steve Addazio.
At least that’s a fervent hope.
Congrats to all of the kids who have so far had the wisdom to pick the Owls, but I’m not excited about TU recruiting.
Yet.

05.31.11
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Happy Birthday, Steve Addazio

Upgrades at DC with Chuck Heater and OC with Scot Loeffler
mean Addazio could be in a better position to succeed than AG was.

Tomorrow is Steve Addazio’s 52d birthday.
June 1, 1959 was the day he came into this world.

You might think the first gift he received was last week’s commitment of promising Washington, D.C. quarterback Benjamin Onett.
I don’t think so.
To me, the gift came a few days earlier and was this terrific statistical analysis of Al Golden’s work at Temple.

Make no mistake, Golden set the bar high for Addazio.
To me, with this kind of talent Golden has left here, Addazio will have to go at least 10-2.
That would represent both an improvement of each of the last two seasons and a MAC championship.
But it would not mean wins over Penn State and Maryland (although those would be nice). He can do it by running the MAC table.
The statistical analysis seems to indicate that the bar is not all that high for Addazio, although the Owls can’t afford to stub their toe like they did in losses at the end of the season to Ohio and Miami.
What it doesn’t address is the lack of imagination in Golden’s offensive schemes and his failure to stop the read option of Frank Solich’s Ohio teams in each of the last two seasons.
Does Scot Loeffler inject that imagination in the offense?
Does Chuck Heater, who comes with a far more impressive resume as a DC than Mark D’Onofrio ever had, have a handle on the read option?
Is Addazio a better overall motivator and CEO than Golden was?

We’ll have a good idea about five minutes after the Villanova game.
If it is a gut-wrencher, like the last two were, it’s going to be a long season.
My money is on the Owls to cover that night and a short and brilliant season to follow.
Happy birthday, Steve.

05.18.11
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Temple football has a horse in the Preakness


Congie DeVito video tribute.
You hear it all the time when someone is claiming to be neutral while making a point:
“I don’t have a dog in this fight” or “I don’t have a horse in this race.”
Well, the Preakness is Saturday and I have a horse in this race.
So do you.
His name is King Congie.
Mike Jensen wrote a terrific story on this subject earlier this week in The Philadelphia Inquirer and it is linked in the paragraph below.
Congie DeVito was just a nameless poster on Owlscoop.com who I got to meet at a couple of tailgates over the years. He passed away, like many Temple fans seem to do (Dan Glammer, Steve Bumm and Shane Artim come to mind but the list is too long to mention here), at way too young ages.
He, like I, shared a common love: Temple football. We both liked Bruce Arians and thought he got a raw deal at Temple.



King Congie: Temple football’s horse

 His extended to Temple basketball.
I like Temple basketball. I love Temple football.
(In fact, I think he was a Temple basketball fan first.)
I’m scheduled to get a haircut on Saturday in Center City.
I usually don’t bet on horseracing because I know nothing about it but, on this day, I will make an exception.
Afterward, I will walk to the OTB near City Hall on the way to work and place a couple of sheckles on King Congie, a 30 to 1 shot.
If King Congie wins, we all do.

05.14.11
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Winning TV sets and Temple

Steve Addazio was a big hit at the Pennsylvania High School Football Coaches
Association Convention on Friday, in State College. “There’s a buzz about Temple now,” Addazio said.

Right now, the company line at Temple is that it is “perfectly happy” in the MAC.
Don’t let the company line fool you.
At Temple, just as anywhere else, money talks and bullbleep walks.
Al Golden has handed the keys over to a nice Cherry and White brick house to Steve Addazio and it is now time for Addazio to show that house on the market by continuing to win. Golden has given Addazio players, plenty of good ones, and now it’s up to Addazio to coach these guys to a title.

Every bar in town was tuned into Temple-UCLA football

Nothing less, and maybe even a little bit more. A win at Maryland would be nice. A win over Penn State before 70,000 in the hometown would be even nicer.
Do that, and TV ratings in the hometown go through the roof and ticket sales to the remaining games soar.
Think ESPN might notice?
That’s what is at stake for the school over the next few months.
Addazio has been telling everyone for the last few months that “there is a great buzz about Temple” now and a “great vibe about that place.”
He said so again on Friday at the Pennsylvania High School Coaches Association.
That might be true now, but imagine what it would be like if the Owls had that breakthrough season many believe they can have this year?
The Owls will play a great schedule and can make a great case for advancing in the college football world and for the school’s brand as a whole.
Television networks are coming at the Big East with wads of dollars in their hands for the next national TV contract.
The Big East is holding palms extended.
TV networks are saying, “Wait a minute, here. Where is my Philadelphia market?”
While Philadelphia is the nation’s fifth-largest city, it is the nation’s fourth-largest TV market.
TV sets mean money.
The Big East merely shrugs its shoulders and says, “We’re waiting on Villanova to come up with a suitable stadium plan.”
Clearly, Villanova has no such plan.
Temple not only has a stadium plan, has got a stadium, a good one, and has that stadium locked up for the next seven years.
Temple-UCLA Eagle Bank Bowl ratings were extraordinarily high, the second-highest bowl numbers on ESPN in the 30 years of bowl games in the Philly market. People in the fourth-largest market did not tune in on a Tuesday afternoon to watch UCLA.
Temple proved it can deliver the numbers.

“The relationship has worked out really well for all parties. Expansion into the Philadelphia media market has already shown benefits with strong ratings for the MAC’s football television package.”
_ Rick Cryst,
former MAC commissioner


Temple can give the Big East those numbers and the Big East can give Temple what it wants: A home for all sports.
Temple belongs with schools like Rutgers, Pitt, Syracuse and West Virginia and not with schools like the directional Michigans and the Kents and the Akrons.
With a stadium and a quality Division I program already in place, the Big East would be foolish not to look at Temple football as really the only viable answer to lock up the largest available market.
The top five AVAILABLE markets to the BCS are:
1) Philadelphia (fourth overall)
2) Houston (10th overall)
3) Cleveland (17th overall)
4) Orlando (19th overall)
5) Baltimore (24th overall)

It’s pretty clear from that list and from Temple’s most recent bowl ratings that school has positioned itself well. Whether the TV people can convince the Big East the same now that this Villanova mess is over is another matter entirely.
To that end, winning would not hurt.
It never does.

04.12.11
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Villanova rejection: The gift that keeps on giving

I guess this is what Villanova fans look like to Villanova revisionists.

Full disclosure.
I like Villanova football.
I always have.
It was pretty much been my second-favorite college team from the time I was, oh, about 10 until just about two years ago when the Mayor’s Cup series started.
I still (secretly) root for Villanova when it plays anyone but Temple only because Villanova wins make Temple look good, especially last year when Temple won the game.
Andy Talley is one of my favorite coaches of all time. As great a coach as Andy Talley is (and he is a great coach), he’s an even better person.
But I’ve had it up to here (I’m holding one hand way over my head while typing with the other) with Villanova fans.
And because of them, with Villanova football itself.
There’s some delicious irony in this story in that Villanova blocked Temple from full all-sports admission to the Big East in 1991 and, 20 years later, Temple’s ironclad 15-year lease to Lincoln Financial Field is blocking Villanova football from admission to that same conference.
It’s a beautiful thing.
That’s why I’m not weeping for Villanova today.
They were, as Walt Frazier says in the Just For Men commercial:
REE-JECT-TED.
The Big East courted them the last few months like a girl who looks good 40 yards away.
In college, we’d call them 40-yarders.
The closer they got, the uglier they looked.
As you walked closer with two drinks in hand (one to offer her), you would veer off at the last second.

There’s some delicious irony in this story in that Villanova blocked Temple from full all-sports admission to the Big East in 1991 and, 20 years later, Temple’s ironclad 15-year lease to Lincoln Financial Field is blocking Villanova football from admission to that same conference.


“Mike, that’s a dude,” my friend would say.
“Not a dude, but not as pretty as I thought she looked.”
Then we’d both veer away, drinks in hand.
Any way you slice it, that’s pretty much what the Big East football members did to Villanova on Sunday.
For Big East courting purposes, if Villanova isn’t a dude, it’s one butt-ugly girl.
No stadium.
No fans.
No hope of getting a stadium. (Temple has an ironclad exclusivity clause in its lease on Lincoln Financial Field through the 2018 season and probably well beyond that.)
No hope of getting fans.
It’s over.
Villanova is not going to the Big East for football, no matter how its Board of Trustees votes.
If it ever does vote.
Heck, the Villanova fanbase makes Temple look like Penn State by comparison.
The Mayor’s Cup figures show it.
By most objective estimates, Temple had 22K of the 27K fans for the first Mayor’s Cup.
Temple had about 25-28K of the 32K last year, maybe more.
Yet you have some crazy revisonist Villanova fans saying it was more of a 60-40 split in favor of Temple. It was, if Villanova fans were wearing Temple sweatshirts and hats and painted in Cherry and White and filling both sides of the lower bowl of the stadium.

Eigthy/20 if anything.
It’s important because if one thing Al Golden accomplished in five years, it was to make Temple Philadelphia’s No. 1 college football team in terms of interest.
Temple not only proved that in two meetings with Villanova on the field of play, it proved that in the TV ratings when the Temple-UCLA bowl numbers showed it was the highest rated bowl game on ESPN in the Philly market since the 2007 Alamo Bowl that featured Penn State.
Temple delivers hard numbers in football.
It is also the best option for delivering the nation’s fourth-largest TV market.
Those numbers only figure to get better as a team that has won 17 games over the last two years returning 14 starters is handed over to a battle-tested national championship level SEC staff.
If I was Temple, I would take that fourth-largest market and deliver it to Conference USA tomorrow. The Big East doesn’t figure to come calling and Temple should act in its own best interests if it doesn’t.
Villanova?
All I heard about was how it was “a lock” for the Big East for the past few weeks. Done deal, they said.
Done deal.
Yeah, I guess it is.
I’m enjoying seeing a lot of people wearing blue wipe egg off their faces.
Almost as much as I’m looking forward to the epic level beatdown that now becomes mandatory for Steve Addazio and company on Sept. 1.

03.28.11
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NFL lockout would not be a bad thing for "Philadelphia State"

Do you see any families in this photo? I didn’t think so.

There’s not a lot of empirical evidence out there to suggest that a prolonged NFL lockout would help Temple football.
Logically, though, it could not hurt.
First of all, Temple football would be the only game in town and that’s a “good thing, not a bad thing” to use an offhand reference by Bill Parcells.
The NFL had strikes in 1982 and 1987 and, while attendance seemed to increase at Temple home games in both those years, it was 3-4 thousand per home game, not a noticeable 10-15.
I thought about this NFL labor dispute while watching the Owls’ hoop team play San Diego State recently.
Why San Diego State?
Because I thought one of the main reasons why Temple football never captured the imagination of the “Joe Philadelphia” fan was the name Temple.
Let’s face it. Temple has been trying for years to court “families” as part of the fan base.
They haven’t responded. Temple needs to get Temple people to the games and that’s students and mostly adult male alumni. It would also help to convince Eagles’ fans to start liking the other birds in town.
We don’t need no stinkin’ families (I’m not referring to the families of Temple football players who, of course, are the greatest).
In my 30 years of following Temple football, I observed no more than five families who had no connection to players attending a game. Yet Temple promotions spends more damn money going after that group than all the other groups put together.

“While we have all come to love the name Temple,
the name Philadelphia University
would be a truer reflection of 
the school.” _ Dr. Peter J. Liacouras

So, as Celo Green says, forget them.
Temple needs to get the “hard-core” beer-drinking, “700-level” fan, the Joe Philadelphia Guy. That’s a base that has yet to be, err, tapped. That’s a rowdy base, but think of the home field advantage the Owls could have.
Even though Temple is every bit Philadelphia’s school as Pitt is Pittsburgh’s school, I thought Pitt always had inroads to a blue-collar fan base in Pittsburgh that identified with the town. Pitt has plenty more “Joe Pittsburghs” in the stands rooting for the university than Philly has “Joe Philadelphians.”
It has a lot to do with the name.
Temple president Dr. Peter J. Liacouras alluded to such in the 1980s when he suggested the school should “consider” changing its name to Philadelphia University.
“While we all have come to love the name Temple, the name Philadelphia University would be a truer reflection of the school,” Liacouras told the Rotary Club one day at the Union League.
I was there as a guest of a Rotarian and heard the speech. I walked up to Pete and told him it was a great idea.
It was never realized because a school named The Philadelphia  College of Textiles and Science adopted the name a decade later.
Damn.

Liacouras was the one guy who could have pushed through a name change and he never followed up on his own terrific idea.
A lost opportunity.
Maybe not.
“San Diego State?” I said out loud while watching the Owls play. “San Diego isn’t a state.”
“Doesn’t matter,” the guy next to me said. “San Diego University was taken. They took the next name available.”
Philadelphia State University.
I like it.
Even though you might not now, you would get used to it, too, and it couldn’t hurt attendance.
They could even keep the nickname of Owls.
Changing the name of this blog to “Philadelphia State University Football Forever” might take some getting used to, though.

02.17.11
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Golden Dome, Meet Bell Tower

Potentially, one of the more bizarre press conferences in college football history will take place today at 3 p.m. at the Fox Gittis Room, Liacouras Center.
In attendance will be John DiCarlo, Owlscoop.com; Bill Bradshaw, Temple AD; Steve Addazio, Temple football coach and Larry Dougherty, SID.
I don’t think they’ll need more seats than four, although there could be a few curious passersby standing in the background.
I’ll try to sum it up here, so none of you will have to skip work to attend:
Dougherty:  (Tapping the speakers.) Testing. One. Two. OK, we’re here to announce that Temple football is playing Notre Dame in beginning in the 2014 season. We’ll be playing in Philadelphia that year, then there the following year and playing one more game an undetermined year, as early as 2013, in South Bend. At this point, I’d like to introduce Temple AD Bill Bradshaw. Bill?

Bradshaw: Thank you all for coming. I just want to say that this is an exciting time for Temple football and announcing this game is exciting for me, personally, as well as the city of Philadelphia. This brings the Temple brand across the country for three years and we’re going to have a great crowd for our 2014 game. I’d like to announce a special deal for the 2014 game. To get a ticket to the Notre Dame-Temple game you must be a full season-ticket holder. By my estimation, we could average 70,000 tickets sold for the six home games of the 2014 season. I really feel sorry for the Notre Dame fans who won’t be able to experience the beauty of Lincoln Financial Field that day, but our goal is to fill the stadium with Temple fans and I think that’s the best way to do it.  I would like head coach Steve Addazio to say a few words.
Addazio: I echo what Bill said. In fact, I wake up the echos.

(Nervous laughter.)
Seriously, I coached at Notre Dame so I know all about the place. Notre Dame is the biggest name in college football and we want Temple to be the biggest name someday.
Bradshaw: Let’s open it up for questions.
DiCarlo: How did this come to fruition?
Bradshaw: We asked them. We wanted a home-and-home. They laughed. Then I said, OK, we’ll settle for a 2-for-1. Then they said they wanted the first two to be at Notre Dame. I said, “You didn’t think I was born yesterday, did you? You’ll just walk out on us after the second game like Navy did. Make us the middle game and you’ve got a deal.” Then we shook on it.
Dougherty: Any more questions? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?
(More nervous laughter.)
John, help me out here.
DiCarlo: No, I’m good.
Dougherty: I just want to invite all of those in the room to our meet and greet with Steve Addazio in … what time is it, Bill? …
Bradshaw: 3:07, Larry.
Dougherty: …in two hours and 23 minutes. Thanks for coming.