Category Archives: Temple football

03.11.24
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The perfect guy to give the pre-game prayer

Nick Sharga (far right) will try to save souls like he did with the Temple program nearly a decade ago.

Most national observers will tell you what Temple head football coach Stan Drayton did in replenishing the roster amounted to a Hail Mary.

Nick Sharga’s (4) block sprung Ryquell Armstead (farthest Owl on the black line) for a long touchdown here against USF.

Maybe that’s a good way to describe the state of the program which desperately needed an infusion of not only talent but big bodies.

Now we know who can deliver the pre-game prayer.

It’s the same guy who, in my mind, was almost as responsible for double-digit winning seasons in 2015 and 2016 as P.J. Walker, Tyler Matakevich and Matt Rhule.

Nick Sharga.

Sharga was named to the Priesthood last week. Looks like Nick will remain relatively close by as he will be stationed at Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, on Franklin Street in North Philly.

While the starting fullback for the Owls, Sharga opened gaping holes for both Jahad Thomas and Ryquell Armstead and epitomized Temple TUFF. He also played half the game at defense (linebacker) in a 34-12 win over Memphis.

This is classic Temple TUFF football, with a fullback at the goal line.

At Rhule’s Baylor press conference, he gave much of the credit for Temple’s success to Sharga, saying “we ditched the spread offense and went with an old pro style offense because we had an NFL fullback.”

Rhule said the Owls were successful using that system not just because of Sharga but because it was a scheme that chewed up the clock, and kept the ball out of the hands of the other offense. He also said that it was a perfect system for Temple because with a fullback and two tight ends no one else in college football was doing that and it was just as difficult to get ready for a Temple game week as it was for big-time teams getting ready for a triple-option service academy team.

Father Nick (4) was always in the middle of Temple TUFF, pushing that pile into the end zone.

Sometimes, something as simple as a scheme can be a great equalizer when there is a talent imbalance.

Temple benefited from that scheme and won a lot of games.

We can only pray the lightbulb comes on in the E-O again and the Owls’ braintrust realizes now what the coaches in that same building realized then.

Now we have the perfect guy to lead us in prayer.

03.08.24
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What Temple can learn from the women

Women celebrate AAC championship on the floor of the Liacouras Center Wednesday.

If this were baseball, Temple University athletic director Arthur Johnson would have a pretty good batting average in major head coaching hires.

Home run with the women’s basketball hire, and two strikeouts (so far) with the other two people.

That’s a .333 average.

This really stinks that Temple is being looked at in this manner. Arthur Johnson and Adam Fisher have to be on top of this and investigate. A Boston College point shaving scandal was covered in the movie Goodfellas. Temple does not want to be the 2024 version of St. Joe’s 1961 basketball squad.

Baseball, a great average. Athletic directing, no so much.

Still, there are lessons in those three hires.

The two strikeouts came here as never leading a program as a head coach.

The home run, Diane Richardson, was an already established successful head coach in the same Mid-Atlantic region.

Richardson led her basketball women to an AAC championship in a couple of short years. Drayton has had two years of failure (3-9) and there are major questions about Adam Fisher and the men’s basketball program after it gave a clinic in matador defense on Thursday night in a 100-72 loss to visiting UAB. The lack of effort on defense was so appalling major questions were raised nationally.

The lesson is simply this.

If Drayton is not able to pull rabbit out of his hat in the form of a winning season, Johnson will have to look for the male version of Richardson: A successful coach with a history of knowing how to be a winning CEO elsewhere BEFORE coming to Temple. Also in that resume is an ability to successfully recruit the footprint–a 250-mile radius around Temple.

Looking at the North Texas film, the same could be said about the Temple football defense in 2023. Worst tackling I’ve ever seen in a Temple game.

That’s one big part of the job.

The other big part is not having to learn on it.

When you have to learn to be a head coach while on the job, the guinea pig is Temple. That means the players and the fans.

Temple is paying for the on-the-job training and, if you are successful here, the likely beneficiary is another school who gets to hire the guy away from Temple. If you fail, Temple pays the price and no one benefits.

What the Richardson hiring proved, Towson paid for the on-the-job training and Temple was the beneficiary. That has always been my preference for the football program. Other schools, preferably nearby, should have paid for the training for a ready-made football head coach so no learning on the job was required.

That’s Athletic Directing 101 but since Johnson is also learning on the job, we can only pray the lessons are being absorbed and applied to future hires.

Monday: Speaking of Praying

03.04.24
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Spring football’s Newest Trend: Hitting

It’s not often a third-year head coach can learn from a rookie one but maybe Fran Brown is onto something here.

Brown, the new Syracuse head coach, promised “hitting” as a requisite of his first spring practice and it makes sense for Temple for a couple of reasons:

A) Temple, at least on the defensive side, played the entire three months of the fall season as though that end of the sport was anathema.

Fran Brown while he was at Temple.

B) The Owls were so short of bodies last spring that they avoided hitting at all costs.

Brown has a history to rely upon. During Matt Rhule’s first year, he said he wanted the Owls to “learn the system” and went less with hitting and more with the fundamentals during spring.

A year later, Rhule changed philosophies in order to “re-establish the Temple TUFF” culture and the Owls practices–according to many players–were tougher than the games.

Brown was an assistant during those days (and later under Steve Addazio) and that’s all he knew at Temple. Then he went to Rutgers, which cut back on the physicality, and onto Georgia where the hitting was pretty much like Temple days due to the depth the Bulldogs had.

So Brown is firmly in the hitting camp.

Things got so bad at Temple under Rod Carey that one “Cherry and White” Game featured no more than running drills through foam rubber obsticles.

Certainly not football.

My guess is that the Syracuse spring game on April 20 will look more like a real football game than any Cherry and White Game has looked since Addazio. Back then, the Owls were hitting from the time spring ball started in March until the last game of the season.

If Stan Drayton beats Brown to the punch by a week (the Owls’ spring game is April 13), that could be just what this team needs.

03.01.24
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With winter over, hope springs eternal

Meteorological winter ended on Thursday while astronomical winter ends in about 20 days, so for the purposes of this space, we are acknowledging the former.

For Temple football fans like myself, hope springs eternal today.

Brandon McManus beats UConn with this OT field goal in 2012. The Huskies return to the schedule this season.

On the last day of meteorological summer, Temple will be playing at Oklahoma. That seemed like a good idea back on Halloween of 2015 when the Owls were trading blows with a then better team, Notre Dame.

Not so much nine years later due to a couple of things that didn’t exist then, the NIL and the transfer portal.

Because of largely those two things, Oklahoma will be playing downhill that day while Temple plays uphill.

There are reasons to believe, though, that the Temple season will will really start the next week during meteorological fall could be successful.

Since the Temple football schedule came out a couple of days ago, we can now go with our way-too-early projections.

Here they are:

Oklahoma 66, Temple 7 _ The Sooners recruit high school All-Americans and get the best out of the portal. The Owls recruit JUCOs and maybe lower end FCS and FBS players. Our guess is that Temple quarterback Clifton McDowell will avoid a hellacious rush and hit Dante Wright with a touchdown pass after Everett Withers’ defense gets predictably torched. 0-1.

Matt Rhule hugs Tyler Matakevich during his first win as a head coach. Rhule beat Army after an 0-6 start to his career.

Temple 34, Navy 16 _ If the dysfunctional Owls of 2023 could beat Navy by that score (and they did), it is only logical that a more functional team can duplicate the same feat. 1-1.

Coastal Carolina 31, Temple 19 _ Coastal has been a much better G5 program than Temple the last three seasons and not enough has changed for the Owls to catch up. 1-2.

Temple 34, Utah State 31 _ Utah State barely beat UConn and Temple was better than UConn at least last year based on the one comparable opponent. 2-2.

Temple 28, Army 24 _ Going with the hunch here that Temple wins a home game much like the 0-6 Owls of Matt Rhule’s first season beat visiting Army. Likely a Homecoming Game and Army doesn’t bring a big crowd. 3-2.

Our expectation is that Everett Withers clocks in at 9 a.m. and clocks out at 5 p.m. on non game days and that’s probably not enough to get Temple to improve from a 38.7 ppg defense to even a 30 ppg one but would love to see him prove us wrong.

Temple 37, UConn 30 _ UConn is finding out how difficult it is to recruit playing an independent schedule. If the Owls can beat Utah State, they must be able to beat UConn. 4-2.

Temple 31, Tulsa 21 _ Tulsa has much of the same recruiting problems as Temple and its student population. The Owls embarrassed themselves at Tulsa last year. They must turn that around. 5-2.

Temple 10, East Carolina 6 _ East Carolina might have been worse than Temple last year. If Withers holds them to a couple of field goals it will be his best job since a 1985 shutout of Louisville. 6-2.

Tulane 42, Temple 14 _ Jon Sumrall is a flat-out better head coach than Stan Drayton and will prove it on this day. 6-3.

FAU 35, Temple 14 _ Same for Tom Herman vs. Stan Drayton. 6-4.

UTSA 59, Temple 24 _ E.J. Warner put up 34 points on UTSA a year ago but that was at Temple’s Homecoming where the Owls typically overperform. On the road, McDowell puts up 24 but UTSA’s team speed embarrasses Withers’ defense again. 6-5.

UNT 45, Temple 34 _ McDowell does a decent job against a porous Mean Green defense but Withers does the same job he did a year ago against the Mean Green offense. Temple finishes 6-6, makes a bowl, but a four-game losing streak puts a damper on an otherwise good season.

The postscript of this season will be what might have been had Drayton made for the rest of the world was an easy business decision (but for him a difficult personal one) to replace Withers at the end of the 2023 season.

That’s our story and we’re sticking to it. We will revisit this prediction no later than December.

Eating crow after an 8-4 season or better would be our hope that day but the more likely scenario is that we’re probably overly optimistic.

Spring can do that to a psyche.

Monday: The Newest Trend

02.25.24
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Temple sports: Winning means everything

Monica Malpass reports that Temple applications surged to an all-time high after the football team beat PSU.

Debated whether to do my usual two-hour bike ride on Sunday or watch the Temple men’s basketball game live.

Decided on going for the bike ride, listen to the game live, and watch the replay only if Temple won.

As a result, I watched my first Temple basketball game of the season and thoroughly enjoyed it because there wasn’t any angst involved in the end result.

The lesson of the day was winning means everything.

This blog started pretty much around the firing of Bobby Wallace (technically, his contract wasn’t renewed) and the hiring of Al Golden. In between there was an anti-football president (David Adamany) who tried to get the sport axed but cooler heads prevailed.

Hopefully, Stan Drayton is paying attention.

The result was a 20-game losing streak ended, the Owls made their first bowl game in 30 years (and won their next bowl game), beat Penn State, hosted College Game Day, had the highest-rated college football game ever in the Philadelphia market and won a championship.

Pretty good stuff.

Since then, though, it’s been a program swimming upstream in a river polluted by the NIL and the Transfer Portal. (I didn’t think Temple would win a championship every year but I thought it could at least remain in the top 80 of teams who made bowl games.)

Will Temple ever return to those heady days when it beats a Penn State, gets an ESPN Game Day and breaks its own TV ratings record in the largest market that currently doesn’t have a P5 team?

Doubtful since the gap between the G5 and the P5 will widen. Temple opens with Oklahoma in six months and plays Penn State in 2026 and, while Temple didn’t recruit in the same world with Penn State and Notre Dame in 2015, it doesn’t recruit in the same solar system with those schools now. By 2026, it might be a different galaxy.

Still, though, I’m convinced with the right schemes and coaching, the Owls can win an AAC championship in the next couple of years and that’s certainly a better outcome for the program than the Adamany Alternative floated in 2005.

The Owls better win soon, though, and by soon we mean this fall.

If they lose more than they win for the fifth-straight season, I don’t know if the BOT can hold off a purge of the program like they did in 2005. Already, the BOT has laid some clues in that direction by deciding to cut back on spending the money to paint the field over the last three seasons.

In women’s basketball, Temple now finds itself at the top of the league in the short tenure of Diane Richardson. Stan Drayton has had the same amount of time to improve his program.

He might not have to finish in first place this season like Richardson appears on the precipice of, but he will have to show the higher-ups that 3-9 is not the new Temple football Groundhog Day.

The Temple men’s basketball team showed the university how enjoyable winning was on the main ESPN network Sunday. The Temple football team will have 10x the urgency to do the same starting not on Aug. 31, but with the offseason workouts that are happening right now.

Friday: Some Projections

02.23.24
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Could Mike Locksley be big mad at Temple?

If this is true, it wouldn’t be the first time Maryland head football coach Mike Locksley was mad at Temple.

Way back when the Owls were a winning team in the last decade, Locksley opened his Maryland career with a 79-0 win over Howard.

He followed that up with 63-20 win over No. 21 Syracuse, then lost to Temple, 20-17. The post-game handshake with then Temple coach Rod Carey was particularly unenthusiastic.

That was in 2019, though, and this is now.

Locksley was recently quoted as saying his third-string running back demanded $100,000 to not enter the portal and that third-string running back appears to be at Temple right now.

Could Antwain Littleton II have been paid $100,000 by Temple to play for the Owls?

Certainly looks that way because there were two running backs who could be considered “third-string” and only one of them was taken by another team and that’s Littleton. The other “third-string” running back, Ramon Brown, is one of the still remaining 1,000 players in the transfer portal who have not found a team and probably won’t.

So it does not appear to be that Brown ever had the leverage (or even the stats) to make such a demand but Littleton, the more accomplished Big 10 running back of the two, did.

If Temple is paying Littleton $100,000, color me shocked but there are a couple of other possibilities at play here.

One, Brown could be the guy who demanded $100K. Two, Littleton demanded $100K and didn’t get it but bet on his NFL future by taking what would almost be a sure starting job at Temple.

Three, Temple head coach Stan Drayton could have found the $100K for Littleton.

Any of the scenarios work for me because Temple now has a starting tailback battle between an accomplished Big 10 back–more like a second-teamer than a third-teamer–and a JUCO back who was named first-team All-American in Torrez Worthy.

Significant upgrades over Darvon Hubbard and Edward Saydee, the Owls best two backs of the last two years.

That’s how you get better and that’s how you win more than three games.

Even with that good news for Temple, this singular situation highlights the Mike Francesa rant at the top of this post. When everyone in college football is free to move to the next team, college football is over as we know it.

Someone not named the NCAA (hint: Congress) has to rein this in and that probably won’t happen for another five or ten years.

Meanwhile, Temple has to remain above water and pay the piper.

Even if they upset a coach 100 miles down the road.

02.18.24
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Spring Practice: Goals and Solutions

People of a certain age remember what Ricky Riccardo--the 50s TV star, not the late-night WIP radio sports talk show host--used to say to wife Lucy when she got herself in a bad situation.

People of a certain age remember what Ricky Riccardo–the 50s TV star, not the late-night WIP radio sports talk show host–used to say to wife Lucy when she got herself in a bad situation.

“You’ve got some ‘splaining to do” in that Cuban accent of his.

Both Ricky, played by Desi Arnez, and Lucy are gone but Stan Drayton is still here and, while the Temple football head coach hasn’t really adequately explained what happened last year, he needs to address the problems and outline the solutions.

Spare me the excuses and just fix the issues which have been easy to spot over the last 12 games and the fixing process should start soon or expect to see a repeat.

Spring Practice is less than a month away due to NCAA rules, the Owls are limited to the 15 sessions illustrated above.

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The foundation can be set over the course of those practices by eliminating the sources that led to losses.

In my mind, it was pretty simple. Drayton’s pass-first, run-second approach stopped the clock far too much and allowed teams with far more team speed to have more possessions than the Owls and more opportunities to put points on the scoreboard.

This hasn’t been unique to Temple in the past and all Drayton has to do is look at game films from Matt Rhule and Al Golden specifically on how the Owls largely avoided those kinds of embarrassing losses, stay competitive into the fourth quarter and pull out wins. Simply, build an offense around a running game and a passing game built around play action.

It’s been a few months since quarterback E.J. Warner made a (at-best) lateral move to Rice University and, while Drayton has talked to the media a few times since, never addressed his feelings on the issue or offered hypotheses as to why Warner left. More surprisingly, none of the media outlets who covered Temple asked him about it. Clearing that air would be a good place to start. Also, addressing why the defense gave up nearly 40 points a game and outlining solutions might be cathartic.

The basketball version of what Temple football should do was John Chaney’s inside-out offensive philosophy. Pump the ball inside to the big men, have the defense collapse around them and move the ball around to shooters.

The football version of this is run first, pass second. Drayton brought with him an outside/inside offensive philosophy of spreading the field with the passing game and then attempting to run off of it. What might have worked at Texas has not worked here and won’t work with a strong-armed, weak-legged, quarterback. Hopefully, Drayton is a professional enough coach to come to that conclusion on his own watching Temple film for the last three months. 

The good news is that he has a relatively solid offensive line, a couple of JUCO All-American running backs (along with a Big 10 one) to at least try to establish a running game. The quarterback will probably have strong legs to go with a strong arm and that’s something different.

He has 15 practices to do that in the spring and take it into the summer. Whether he has the will to do it will determine how much “splaining” he will have to do to Temple fans who were forced to watch their team take unexpected poundings in 2023.

Friday: Big Mad

02.16.24
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Carrier, Beckwith bolster Temple football staff

As someone who was assigned to cover the best college football head coach who ever lived and the best high school head coach ever lived, one truth became apparent.

There is no sport in history where head coaching matters more than football.

When I was in college, the head coach I covered as sports editor at The Temple News was Wayne Hardin. Even before I went to Temple, I felt Hardin was the best head coach in America.

My earliest memories included watching the Army-Navy games with my dad, who was a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy.

Tyron Carrier coached on the offensive side at WVU when it scored 56 points in a single game against Oklahoma.

“Mike, this guy (Hardin) is a great coach,” my dad would say. “Anybody who can get Navy ranked No. 2 in the country with a five-year service commitment, is a a great coach.” (Back then, five-year service commitments meant the Vietnam War and no pro football until the age of 26.)

Later, I would become a Philadelphia Bulldog fan and Hardin would win a CFL pro championship with the Bulldogs at Temple stadium.

Three years later, Hardin was the head coach at Temple and I was sold on both Hardin and Temple.

While at Temple, I got to know Wayne very well.

My proudest moment was in the press box at Penn State during the 1979 Temple game when the Owls took a 7-6 halftime lead over a much more talented Nittany Lions squad.

The entire Beaver Stadium press box got real quiet and the then dean of Penn State beat writers, John Kunda, of the Allentown Morning Call, blurted out: “Hardin is outcoaching Joe again.”

(That wasn’t the first game a less-talented Temple team took a more talented PSU team to the wire, a 26-25 loss in 1976, a 31-30 loss in 1977 and a 10-7 loss in 1978 were Exhibits A through C.)

Everyone, and I mean everyone, nodded in agreement.

Never prouder. First, I was in college and my college guy was outsmarting their college guy. That meant I was in the right school.

A few years later, I met the greatest high school coach in history (at least in my mind), Mike Pettine, Sr. He took a Central Bucks West school of 1,500 students (800 boys) and dominated the state of Pennsylvania by brilliant gameday coaching and better fundamentals. Nobody got more out of teams of 5-10, 170-pound suburban kids more than Pettine, who was 364-46-2 with five state titles. Pettine said, “Mike, you know football because you are a Temple guy and Wayne gave you a crash course.” That didn’t mean I couldn’t learn more watching Pettine’s teams, who were never offside and never false started.

At Temple, lesser coaches followed but will have to give a nod to Bruce Arians (6-5 against two Top 10 schedules), Al Golden for applying CPR to a dead Temple football program and his lieutenant Matt Rhule for building on that legacy.

Stan Drayton?

Haven’t been impressed as much because of his inexperience but his heart is in the right place.

When I heard Drayton say everything would be re-evaluated at the end of a third-straight 3-9 season at Temple, including the coaches, I thought maybe the worst DC in the history of the school would be released.

That hasn’t happened.

Yet Drayton did release a couple of coaches and add a couple more and the new guys have credentials.

One of them is wide receivers’ coach Tyron Carrier, who has coached in five bowl games. In 2018, Carrier was named Football Scoop’s receiver coach of the year at West Virginia.

The other coach in defensive line guy Kevon Beckwith, who led Incarnate Word to a nation-high 43 sacks in a 12-2 2022 season.

Nobody heard of Incarnate Word before Beckwith and his fellow coaches took over there.

Temple has been pretty silent since guys like Hardin, Golden and Rhule left.

If Carrier and Beckwith make a difference, maybe the worst DC in the country’s influence can be mitigated.

It won’t mean 12-0 but it could mean 6-6 and after a steady diet of 3-9, that could taste pretty good.

Monday: Spring Practice Priorities

Friday: Big Mad

02.11.24
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Temple football: The rest of the recruiting story

Terrez Worthy is going from a field with (sometimes) no yard lines to the best stadium in the NFL.

Watching the Super Bowl on Sunday night was a study in contrasts, the old versus the new.

At least at the quarterback position.

Patrick Mahomes’ 25-22 overtime win for the Kansas City Chiefs over Brock Purdy and the San Francisco 49ers represents a win for new school football, where the quarterback who is mobile and can complete any pass beats the immobile one who can do the same.

That’s already happened in college football. The championship quarterbacks in each conference can move and throw. The middling teams don’t have that guy.

Temple will be making that same transition in the 2024 season with Clifton McDowell, a mobile quarterback who can make any pass, replacing E.J. Warner, an immobile quarterback who can do the same.

Forget what Pravda is telling you about Evan Simon winning the Temple quarterback position. That ain’t happening. Just remember you read it here first. McDowell is a poor man’s Patrick Mahomes. Simon is a homeless man’s Brock Purdy.

What about the rest of the story, though?

Temple’s cloudy kicking situation just became sunny and bright with the addition of Maddox Trujillo.

Football is a 22-man game, not a one-or-two-man one.

The small picture is that Temple improved the passing game by moving the pocket and the running game by replacing Edward Saydee and Darvon Hubbard with a pair of JUCO All-Americans and a Big 10 running back.

The rest of the story is the bigger picture.

The only known photo of a current Temple recruit blocking an extra point.

Temple bulked up both lines and increased its depth while doing so.

For a deeper dive, this is a pretty good place to start but there are a couple of players who stick out.

A high school player from New Jersey, a defensive lineman named Giakoby Hills, is 6-5, 270 with four blocked kicks. The athletic ability to block that many kicks is impressive and Temple has not blocked an important kick since a 6-5 wide receiver named Deion Miller blocked a field goal that would have given UConn a win over Temple a dozen years ago. The best kicker in the country then, Brandon McManus, then made one to give the Owls a 17-14 win.

Speaking of kickers, the days of kicking the ball out of bounds–which have been four dark years–are seemingly over with the addition of Austin Peay kicker Maddox Trujillo, who made 38 of 53 field goals and 96.2 percent of his extra points. If he does those percentages at Temple, he will be second only to Don Bitterlich in both categories and better than the best kicker in the nation in 2012, McManus.

There are plenty more “worthy” of mention but we will end this with a guy named Worthy. Terrez Worthy was the most valuable player for Maryland in the 2022 Big 33 game against Pennsylvania, giving Temple its third MVP from a Big 33 game (Adrian Robinson and Jalen Fitzpatrick were the others). Both of those guys did great things at Temple and, if Worthy, who is 5-11, 190 with breakaway speed does the same, Temple will have its best running back since Ryquell Armstead.

All good things on paper.

Now let’s see them do it on the field.

Friday: New Coaches

02.09.24
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Late Signing Day: Rolling the dice

The exacta in the eighth race at Gulfstream on Thursday paid a cool $898 for a $2 bet because a couple of 30-1 shots finished first and second.

Dot and Twirling Queen.

You have to be a pretty brave gambler to go against the chalk and pluck a $2 bill on that pair but it paid off.

The Daily Racing Form’s Youtube analysis of that race totally missed those two horses and went so chalky a bar of Coast soap might not be enough to remove all the white substance from the hands of analysts Dan Ullman and Mike Beer.

Stan Drayton and his Temple football staff rolled the dice in a similar fashion on the “real signing day” with mostly 30-1 shots while the bluebloods of the college football world were using chalk on to sign national letters-of-intent.

That was really out of necessity because Temple doesn’t have the money to compete with for 4* recruits, let alone 5* ones.

Still, they reached for the stars and got a couple and that was pretty impressive on its own.

You can really say his two chalk bets probably will help the Owls more, but there are a lot of Dots and Twirling Queens to connect with the other signees.

To me, the two chalk guys will be starters and impact players for the Owls at positions of need.

As good as E.J. Warner was, and we think he will do very well at Rice, Cliffton McDowell–in our humble opinion–will be an upgrade over the son of a Super Bowl winner. He’s a proven championship-level quarterback. Warner, for all the good things he did here, was 6-15.

Could you imagine TU putting this guy at fullback as a lead blocker for Joquez Smith and playing a shell game with the defense by handing him the ball half the time? That’s the definition of Temple TUFF.

Put it this way: I will take McDowell’s 17 touchdown passes and four interceptions at Montana (a better team than Temple) from 2023 over Warner’s 23 and 14 in the same year at Temple (duh, a worse team than Montana). I will pluck a $2 exacta bet with McDowell and incoming Big 10 running back Antwain Littleton II over the Warner/Saydee combo.

I will bet Temple makes a lot more third-and-ones in 2024 than it did in 2023.

It looks like Stan Drayton and company are making the same bet.

The AAC college football return on that exacta might not be $898 but it certainly could push the needle toward six wins and that would be enough for Drayton to keep his cushy $2.5 million job at Temple. More importantly, it will keep the BOT bean counters away from Temple football in general.

Temple needs more than McDowell and Littleton and that’s where the 30-1 shots come into play.

The Owls did this year what they should have done last year and that was to shore up both lines.

Last year, because the Owls left three scholarships on the table, they were forced to start two true freshmen on the offensive line and one true freshman on the defensive line and that’s never a good sign. As a result, Warner ran for his life on most Saturdays and was knocked out on two of them and his parents thought his chances of getting killed on a football field far exceeded his chances of being harmed anywhere near Broad and Norris.

The pesky thing about recruiting is that those other teams are improving, too, according to Scout.com

What did Drayton do Wednesday?

Overbook both lines so much that the Owls now have 92 players under scholarship when they have only 85 to give. They are booking on turnover in the age of the transfer portal and might have to Grey shirt some players to make room.

That’s OK because the Owls will not have to rely on true freshmen to start. They averaged 6-2, 265 across the offensive line last season with those two true freshmen in the mix. Now they will average 6-4, 288 across the offensive front and 6-3, 268 over the defensive front and that’s considerably more bulk. Additionally, they will have at the minimum JUCO starter experience over high school starter experience and that should show on the field.

They won’t be competitive against Oklahoma on Aug. 31, that’s a given.

BUT … and this is a big but … they were competitive with all of their flaws against a USF team that beat Syracuse 45-0 and those are the games this kind of recruiting was built to turn around. Temple lost to USF only because a player who is no longer here hit a guy out of bounds. That same USF team blew out a bowl-bound ACC team, Syracuse.

With the right players, Temple is not all that far away.

Hitting the McDowell/Littleton exacta plus finding some gems underneath for tri and super bets could mean the Owls get the bowl game they should have had a year ago.

Cashing in at the AAC football window would be a lot sweeter than anything Gulfstream or Parx has to offer.

Monday: The Rest of The Story

Friday: Coaching Additions

Monday (2/19): Spring Practice Priorities