Category Archives: Temple football

02.04.24
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Deep Dive into an upgraded position

Nothing is certain in the world of college football recruiting these days, but the signs are there that one thing Temple football had trouble doing the last few years is in the rear-view mirror.

That thing is getting a yard on third-and-short.

Yes, the Owls dabbled in the Eagles’ “Brotherly Shove” but that was a hit-and-miss proposition and not the money in the bank the Eagles cashed every time they needed a first down.

All indicators are Antwain Littleton II could be that needed ATM.

As a 6-foot-1, 265-pound running back for St. John’s High School in D.C., Littleton was his own personal Brotherly Shove.

The website “Sharpe Sports” went into a deep dive on the talent of Littleton (see above video), who made an impact at Maryland over the last two seasons. The only thing he did not do there was nail down the running back position all by himself.

That figures to change at Temple where he could be “The Man.” Littleton is now down to 235 pounds with the same amount of power and a little more speed and with him and quarterback Cliffton McDowell in the backfield, the Owls have a running threat needed to set up a downfield passing game.

Antwain Littleton after scoring a touchdown in win over SMU (2022).

They tried to force a running game with a short passing game for the first two years and that didn’t work. This might.

There were few things more maddening in the first two years of the Stan Drayton Regime than the inability of the Owls to get a yard when they needed one. With 1 minute, 48 seconds left and a 46-42 lead over bowl-bound East Carolina two years ago, the Owls had so little confidence in their ability to run the ball on third-and-one, that they had E.J. Warner throw for it.

Incomplete, of course.

Drayton decided to kick the ball back to ECU on fourth down and the Owls never saw the ball again but they did see a 49-46 loss.

Aggravating.

There may be more aggravating situations ahead for the Owls but knowing they have a one-man Brotherly Shove kills two birds (hopefully not Owls) with one stone.

Keeping drives alive and keeping Everett Withers’ defense off the field.

Friday: Reaction to Late Signing Day

02.02.24
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The solution to Temple’s defense is an old tune

The spell Everett Withers casts over Stan Drayton is the most puzzling one of his coaching regime.

The last great D.J. I saw at a Temple football game was a guy named Jerry Blavat, who connected with the boomers by spinning the hits of the 1950s and 60s.

RIP, Geator with The Heater.

The next D.J. was pretty good, a guy named D.J. Eliot, who turned chicken bleep into chicken salad by taking a questionably talented Temple defense in 2022 and doing some good things.

Would have rather had another Heater (Chuck) but Stan Drayton’s hire of Eliot turned out to be a solid one.

When Eliot left to be linebackers’ coach with the Philadelphia Eagles this time a year ago, Drayton rushed into getting his replacement before spring ball and hired Everett Withers on St. Patrick’s Day 2023. That day we wrote this about that.

D.J. Eliot

It probably wasn’t the worst decision made on St. Patty’s Day in Philadelphia history–thinking about bar-hopping in Center City and driving home to the suburbs might be worse (not me)–but Drayton at least made the second-worst SPD decision in Philly history.

His DC hire, old friend Everett Withers, came off a recent DC job (FIU, 2021), where he averaged giving up 40 points-per-game (OK, 39.7 but we’re rounding it off).

Withers piggybacked that with giving up almost the same amount of ppgs for Temple in 2023.

In the 140-year-old history of Temple football, there was only one worse defense (2005, Bobby Wallace).

Two historically bad defenses, one in Miami, one in Philadelphia. Presided over by the same guy, Everett Withers.

There’s a clue somewhere in there.

After the season was over, Drayton promised the assembled press that he would re-evaluate everything (“including the coaches”) and, for some unknown reason, he gave a pass to a DC who allowed an obscene 40 ppg but fired some lower-level staffers.

That was essentially telling Temple football fans, “yeah, we couldn’t stop anybody but we evaluated ourselves and we did nothing wrong.”

Now that the Eagles have hired another LB coach and Eliot is out of a job, the logical thing to do is for Drayton to offer Eliot is old job back. Drayton doesn’t even have to fire Withers to do it. He can shuffle the staff and move Withers to another spot.

This prediction predicated on Withers nailed the 2023 Temple football season.

Like everything Drayton and Withers’ related, though, all we have is radio silence from Temple out of the Edberg-Olson Complex.

Looks like Drayton is sticking with his buddy and, in essence, going down with the ship when he could have objectively thrown himself a life raft.

Not subjectively, objectively.

Comparing the Temple defense of 2022 and 2023, Eliot did a significantly better job in 2022 than Withers did in 2023.

If Drayton doesn’t rehire him, Arthur Johnson will have to ask why in his Stan Drayton Exit interview of 2024 because I can’t see this defense surviving another Everett Withers’ experience.

“Because we’re buddies” won’t be a good-enough answer.

Monday: A Deep Dive

01.29.24
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NIL and Transfer Portal: A matter of right and wrong

Recently saw a back-and-forth on social media about Temple athletics and one guy answered another guy with something to the effect that if Temple doesn’t get a rich benefactor to contribute to the NIL nonsense that there won’t be sports at the school in five years.

There is a kernel of truth to that.

Still, if the NIL and transfer portal are right for college sports in general and Temple specifically, I want to be wrong.

It’ll be OK with me for Temple to pack up the balls and the goal posts and get out of the sports business because the essence of sports is everyone starting at the same spot.

What you have now in men’s college football and basketball is the Power 5 starting at the 40-yard-line, while the Group of Five is way back at the goal line and that’s not fair.

The guy holding the starter’s pistol doesn’t seem to notice or looks the other way. What used to be a major infraction in the NCAA (see SMU football death penalty, 1987) is now accepted practice.

We won’t see it change unless the Power 5 itself notices and there are certain indicators that might be happening.

Less than a year ago, Nick Saban expressed the problem with the NIL and the transfer portal together in the above two-minute answer and it gave an insight into why he might not be coaching anymore.

Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh left for the pros and any coach who has an option between the NFL and college football going forward probably will pick the former.

Others, like Saban and New Mexico State’s Jerry Kill, have said they no longer want to be a college head coach in this era where the first question a recruit asks them is “how much money do you have?”

Can’t blame him or them.

The schools with the most oil millionaires will always beat the schools with the people who had to work two jobs just to get through four years of college.

The schools with the large number of students living on campus will always beat the schools who were built on commuting, like Temple.

On a level playing field, Temple offers plenty to a recruit. It’s the sixth-largest educator of professionals in the country, located in a vibrant city with ample employment opportunities and networking after graduation. It has a great academic reputation and its degree is worth something.

That used to matter.

Stan Drayton had the best week of his Temple career a week ago, but the overall picture is grim because how many Big 10 players or FCS All-Americans can he recruit under this current system?

Not many.

How many JUCO-dominated Temple teams will be able to compete with million-dollar transfer portal guys?

None.

So if Temple is caught in a downward spiral of perpetual 3-9 seasons, count me out.

Maybe the best hope for Temple is to get with a similar G5 group and get out of the business of trying to compete with the P5 for things like playoff spots.

When the first question a recruit asks is how big is that bag of cash, that’s not quite why college sports was created in the first place so there should be no tears shed if they come to an end eventually at a lot of schools.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for a rich Temple benefactor to save the Owls nor should I be expected to.

Friday: An Old Spin on a New Problem

Monday: A Deep Dive

01.22.24
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Branding and Temple University

Coach John Chaney, who would have been 91 yesterday, was a big proponent on changing the name of Temple to Philadelphia University.

In the grand scheme of things that hold Temple football back, branding is about 147th on the list but it came to the forefront for a minute while watching the school’s basketball team play SMU the other day.

Sometimes you’ve got to give credit to the other guy and the Mustangs deserve credit for hitching their wagons to the city of Dallas.

They have “Dallas” on their uniforms both in football and basketball and, in part, rode that association to a P5 invite. (It also helps to have about 10x more millionaire alumni than Temple does.)

John Chaney would have been 91 on Sunday but both he and his president at the time, Peter J. Liacouras gently floated the idea that Temple change the name of the school to Philadelphia University.

It never got any traction because so many of us have gotten used to the name “Temple” that old habits would have been hard to break.

Honestly, though, that ship has probably sailed because there is no stomach among the current members of the Board of Trustees to change anything.

With Liacouras and Chaney, though, Temple had back then what it doesn’t have now in strong, local, leadership. Liacouras was a lifelong Philadelphian and graduate of Drexel. Chaney was the Philadelphia Public League’s Player of the Year in 1950. The Catholic League POY that season? A guy named Tom Gola.

Philadelphia remains the fourth-largest TV market (and sixth-largest city) in the country and the largest market without a Power 5 college football team. Philadelphia is highly regarded as a city across the country, if not within the city limits.

It was a huge bargaining chip when the Owls made consecutive AAC championship football games in 2015 and 2016. It no longer is that now.

But branding with the city by putting “Philadelphia” like SMU does with”Dallas” on the uniforms–if not changing the name of the school itself–is something that Temple can control and should do.

It probably won’t get Reese Poffenbarger here or a dozen other badly needed FCS starters who can upgrade the football team but getting the city on the uniforms won’t cost any NIL money and that swag won’t hit the transfer portal in a year or two.

Heck, maybe if Temple sports gets respectable again, someone in the ACC will put two and two together while watching the Owls and notice that there is one big TV market out there left to grab.

It couldn’t hurt.

Friday: Better Late Than Never

Monday: Wrong and Right

01.19.24
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Temple and The Eagles

My favorite media question of the week resulted in a reverse jam dunk by a Temple University product, Todd Bowles, that illustrated a couple of things:

One, the class act of a guy I knew and loved while covering the Temple football Owls for the Calkins Newspaper group back in the 1980s remained the class act of an NFL coach in the 2020s;

Two, the way he let her down gently;

Three, the current state of sports media where they let anyone without a football background ask a question;

I’m sure this person got up in the morning and jotted down her question for the presser thinking beforehand it was a brilliant question nobody else would ask the Tampa Bay head coach prior to a divisional round game at Detroit.

She was half right.

Yes, it was a question no one else would ask.

Former New York Jets’ head coach Todd Bowles rocks the Temple swag on a Jets’ pre-game show.

No, not a brilliant question. Actually, the opposite.

How the bleep would anyone who knew anything about football ask a weather question about the Detroit Lions without knowing as a base the Lions don’t play outside?

Ugh.

The question got me pondering the deeper meaning of Tampa Bay eliminating the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night.

The Eagles were eliminated by a defensive guru who applied for the Temple head coaching job who learned his football at the feet of a former Temple coach, Bruce Arians.

What was Arians’ major defensive philosophy?

“The best pass defense is to put the other guy’s quarterback on his backside,” was Arians’ favorite quote.

What did Todd do against the Eagles?

Every time Jalen Hurts checked into an empty backfield Bowles checked into a blitz.

It’s Football 101.

With no blockers back there to protect the quarterback, the QB has to do one of two things: 1) throw the ball out of bounds or 2) take a sack.

Hurts did a lot of both and, as a result, the Eagles lost, 32-9.

(The adjustment to defeat that would have been for Hurts to check into max protect and get the ball out on swing routes but that never happened and you’ve got to wonder what Sirianni and Brian Johnson and Hurts were thinking.)

How does this affect Temple?

Bowles wasn’t the only Temple connection to look good.

Ever since Sean Desai was replaced as DC, the Eagles went from a decent defense to the worst in the league. Desai, like Bowles, was a former Temple person (professor in the classroom and special teams coordinator at 10th and Diamond) who shined in North Philadelphia. Desai also once applied for the Temple head coaching job.

Maybe replacing a DC who shut out Kansas City in the second half of a 21-17 win wasn’t the best idea.

Maybe the Eagles fire Nick Sirianni. Maybe they don’t.

But, if they do, the names of Desai (future head coach) or current Eagles’ LB coach D.J. Eliot should be on both a long and a short list to help Temple football get out of its current funk.

Eliot objectively took pretty much the same Temple football players current DC Everett Withers had and performed as the 74th-best defense in the country in the 2022 season.

Withers replaced him and had the Owls rated 129th in the next season, which was tied for fourth-worst in Temple football history (with Bobby Wallace’s 2005 squad) from a ppg standpoint. Withers was two points per game away from being the DC with dubious record of leading the worst Temple defense in all of a history that dates back to 1889.

If Sirianni is let go, Eliot becomes available to slot back into his former role and make the Owls’ defense twice as good in 2024 as it was in 2023.

Does Drayton, probably Withers’ best friend, have the organizational skills to fire the guy or does he say “bleep it, me and Everett are going down with the ship?”

If the Eagles fire Nick, we will find out in day or two. If they don’t, expect Oklahoma to put a a 70-spot on the Owls because we will be stuck with Withers.

The saddest part is all of this could have been fixed a long time ago had Temple hired Temple.

Monday: Ships sailing and learning curve Friday:

Friday: Temple’s No. 1 foe

Monday: If this is wrong, I don’t want to be right

01.14.24
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Some stat numbers for winners

Temple probably could get Reese Poffenbarger to flip from Miami to Temple without a NIL deal with Puffs.

Statistics are for losers, the old saying goes, but that depends upon your perspective.

The only numbers that really matter are wins and losses but often the numbers behind that bottom line have to be impressive.

Stan Drayton might not know who Reese Poffenbarger is but Reese Poffenbarger now knows who Stan Drayton is.

Temple has a situation right now that is best illustrated by numbers.

Quarterback A’s best college football season: 79 completions in 137 attempts for 777 yards, four touchdowns and six interceptions.

Quarterback B’s best college football season: 36 touchdowns, 14 interceptions, 3,614 yards out of 296 completions in 471 attempts.

Guess which one Temple has?

Quarterback A, Evan Simon, last year’s backup quarterback at Rutgers who put up his “best” year in 2022. The one where he had more interceptions than touchdown passes.

Until Saturday, Temple had no shot of getting Quarterback B but now at least has a realistic chance.

The question is does Temple even know it?

If the Owls do, we should know the answer in a few days.

If not, we might never know.

Reese Poffenbarger, the former Albany quarterback who put up those impressive stats, is Quarterback B.

Bernie Madoff, the King of Ponzi Schemes, had a rule for his subscribers: You are not allowed to ask questions. Just sit back and give him as much cash as you can gather, make a little money at the outset, and watch everything crash at the end.

If, in fact, Temple head coach Stan Drayton never even tries to go after Poffenbarger, the question that needs to be asked is why. Judging from the outlets who cover Temple football, that question will never be asked.

Malachi Nelson went from USC to Boise State last week. Tate Rodemaker went from Florida State to Southern Mississippi.

Poffenbarger, who suffered the indignity of being recruited over a day after he committed to Miami, now has options.

One of them should be Temple. Going from Albany to Temple–you can’t say Miami to Temple because Poffenbarger never enrolled in Coral Cables– would be a significant upgrade for Reese and something that would benefit both parties. Like Rodemaker and Nelson, Poffenbarger to Temple would be a wise decision because he can slot in as a starter without the threat of Drayton recruiting over him.

Add the numbers of both Quarterback A and B to the Temple quarterback room and there is a good chance the numbers that really matter (wins over losses) will add up for Poffenbarger, Drayton and Temple.

Friday: The Eagles and Temple

Monday: Learning from an AAC foe

01.12.24
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The two best portal decisions so far

One of the best Youtube channels (Mattbegreat) is reading my mind.

Playing the long game is an actual thing not specifically (in a sports sense) tied to the game of golf.

It also means a lot to at least two college football players who, at least in our mind, made the best decisions of the 3,639 college football who at one time or another this cycle entered the transfer portal.

As of 1:19 a.m. on Friday, Jan. 12, 1,132 players have made decisions according to the official NCAA transfer portal website. That leaves a lot of good players who won’t get NIL money and will be losing scholarships because of this misguided Ponzi Scheme that benefits only the top 10 percent of players at the expense of the other 90 percent.

That’s a lot of good players who can help Temple win an AAC title in 2024 but that’s a story for another day.

Only about two–at least from the high-profile cases I know of–made the most sensible call and those two are Tate Rodemaker of Florida State and Malachi Nelson of USC.

Both were highly rated quarterback recruits out of high school. Both landed at high-profile P5 programs. Both looked at their situations honestly and came to the conclusion that moving from the P5 to the G5 would be best for the long game.

Rodemaker started and beat Florida for Florida State, helping the Seminoles finish the regular season unbeaten. He opted out before the Seminoles’ bowl game with Georgia when it became apparent they were recruiting other quarterbacks. Then he signed with Southern Mississippi, a bottom tier G5 team, this offseason.

Nelson, the No. 1 overall recruit in the class of 2022, decided to leave USC for Boise State, a G5 program. Nelson was a 5*.

Five stars don’t usually end up at G5 schools.

Until now.

“Unless I’m highly misinformed,” Matt be great said, “I don’t think Boise State is big in the NIL department.”

They may be a little more deep-pocketed than Temple, but Southern Mississippi is in the same small NIL boat (more like a kayak) and still got a guy who beat Florida wire-to-wire as a starting quarterback.

They were both playing the long game.

Matt Rhule said a great quarterback is going for $1.5 million on the NIL market. Generously speaking, Rodemaker and Nelson couldn’t have been offered more than $500K by a fellow P5 school (if that).

The fact that they left college NIL money on the table for a shot at more NFL money screams of a wise move with the long game in mind.

If Nelson is making $100K at Boise, we think that’s a lot. If Rodemaker is even making more than cost of attendance at Southern Mississippi (usually around $5,000), that would also be unexpected.

Playing the long game for both means finding a school, often on TV, that would offer them a sure thing starting job.

Boise State and Southern Miss could do that.

So can Temple for one of the few remaining big-name quarterbacks left in the portal.

Check that, as Harry Donahue might say.

So should Temple.

If Temple does nothing on the QB transfer portal front other than signing the backup quarterback for Rutgers, Stan Drayton is sending Temple football fans a clear signal.

“I’m playing the short game.”

One putt and he’s outta here.

At least with the $2.5 million Temple is paying him he can buy a lot of drinks for Everett Withers in the 19th hole bar on the day he’s fired.

Monday: Some stat numbers

 

01.07.24
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Temple football: Too much hesitation

The playwright Joseph Addison first penned the phrase: “He who hesitates is lost.”

That wasn’t last year or two years ago but way back in 1713 in his play “Cato.”

True then. True today.

If Temple football has done anything over the last two years, it’s a lot of hesitation followed by a lot of losing.

The Owls needed a running back last season, didn’t get one worth a damn in the portal (although Liberty’s 1,000-yard back, Dae Dae Hunter, slipped through the cracks and ended up nowhere) and repeated their 130th-ranked running game in the 2023 season by going with the same backs that produced those same numbers.

It only figures that a 1,000-yard back would make your running game twice as good.

Apples to apples.

Albany quarterback Reece Poffenbarger has been in the portal since Dec. 13. That’s almost a month. This is the type of guy Temple should have swooped in on and shown love to no later than, say, Dec. 14th.

Temple needs to replace E.J. Warner and his 23 touchdown passes and Poffenbarger would bring 36 touchdown passes from this year to next year’s table.

Not very many names left in the portal, but Temple can offer an immediate starting job four upgrades from E.J. Warner and should.

That’s how you get better.

Touchdown passes are some pretty nice apples.

Instead, there is no indication that Temple went after either one of those guys and there has been a lot of hesitation and that’s a recipe for a lot of losing to follow.

Poffenbarger had not been linked to any school before last week when Miami swooped in and is pursuing him after getting turned down by Cam Ward, Kyle McCord and other P5 transfers. At Miami, Poffenbarger would have to compete with one 4* and two 3* QBs.

At Temple, all he would have to do is beat the Rutgers’ backup.

Had Stan Drayton come and and used the last 27 days to get Poffenbarger’s name on the dotted line instead of hesitating we might have our upgrade.

A couple of weeks ago we floated the idea in this space that Arthur Johnson bringing in Geoff Collins to be DC and “head coach in waiting” to upgrade the worst defense in all of college football and, instead of jumping on that idea, Temple appears to be set to go with the same DC in 2024 who produced putrid numbers in 2023, Everett Withers.

There is also an apples-to-apples comparison between those two.

Both of those guys had a one-year stint at the same place, Florida International. In Withers’ year as DC at FIU (2021), the Panthers gave up 39 points a game. That year the “lowest” point total Withers’ defense gave up to a FBS squad was 31 points in a loss at Central Michigan.

Collins is not only the best DC in FIU history (and Withers the worst), but he knows his way around the Edberg-Olson Complex. Happy Birthday to Nadia Harvin, by the way.

In Collins’ year as a DC at the same school (2010), the Panthers gave up 27.3 points per game and allowed a season-low 10 points in a 34-10 win over North Texas. At the same place, in the same job, Collins’ numbers were significantly better than Withers.

Now Collins is becoming the DC at North Carolina.

Temple might not have been able to woo Collins but getting in on him first and offering him the head coaching job in waiting might have been helpful to upgrading the overall defense and forced UNC to look in another direction.

Last year, Temple did a lot of hesitating in the offseason followed by a lot of losing in the real season. What were seeing (or not seeing) now appears to be a repeat of last offseason.

“He who hesitates is lost.”

If Joe Addison’s ghost could float into the E-0 today, he might say “I told you so” to Stan Drayton.

Friday: The two best portal decisions (so far)

01.05.24
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What we once had at Temple: Fairness

A couple of years before Steve Conjar committed, Wayne Hardin put Temple football on the map.

Honestly, what Stan Drayton might see as light at the end of the tunnel some of us (raising my hand here) see an oncoming train.

Give Drayton at least some credit here.

Pretty sure the Temple job he signed up for nearly three years ago is not the same as it was back then. Hell, in three years it might be worse. Yes, there was a transfer portal back then but NIL didn’t exist and neither did tampering.

At one time none of that existed.

A story on one of the two greatest linebackers in Temple history appeared recently on social media and it was a reminder of both simpler and fairer times.

Emphasis on fairer.

Steve Conjar in my opinion was a better linebacker than Tyler Matakevich because it took him three years to compile pretty much the same number of tackles Matakevich amassed in four full years.

Loved them both because they loved Temple back.

In that story, Conjar explained that “bigger-time” schools backed off from him because of a high school injury but Temple was the one school that remained loyal and that’s why he remained loyal to Temple.

Now, nobody shows loyalty to Temple anymore with the number of great Temple players who have entered the portal.

Temple was one of only a few (and the biggest-name school) to recruit quarterback E.J. Warner. Instead of showing gratitude to Temple by honoring his commitment, Warner bolted for another school in the same conference.

Really, nobody shows loyalty to anyone anymore because even Alabama lost 12 players to the portal this week.

The two greatest linebackers in Temple history meet up post-game.

That can be a good thing because nobody in any power structure cares if the Temples of the world are getting screwed in college football but start screwing the Bamas and the Georgias and watch change come from the top down.

Change will never happen from the bottom up but there is hope from the top down.

All we have now is memories of what Temple did against other schools with bigger names when the playing field was level.

Now it’s tilted in a 180-degree direction with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

Until the system backfires on the rich, nothing will change.

At least we had the Steve Conjar and Tyler Matakevich Eras.

Monday: Apples to Apples

01.01.24
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TU’s New Year’s Resolution: Extreme urgency

TU can’t compete with Ole Miss to get P5 portal players but it certainly can get its share of FCS players.

About halfway through the disappointing 2023 football season for the Temple Owls, I found a way to drown my sorrows that did not involve alcohol.

Bet against the home team.

My reasoning was that if I was going to suffer–and, believe me, watching Temple football lose, 45-13 and 55-0 in consecutive weeks was extreme torture–I was going to get paid for it.

After the college football season ended, I adopted that philosophy for my hometown NFL team.

With Temple going 3-9 and the Eagles 1-4 after that, needless to say, it’s been a profitable few months at the betting window.

All things considered, though, I would rather lose the bets and see my teams win.

The Temple losses stung hardest, though, because no matter what happens, the Philadelphia Eagles will never go out of business. That can’t be said for the other tenant in the same stadium. Since the end of the season, the Owls have lost their best quarterback, best offensive lineman and best cornerback via the portal.

They have not accounted for any of those personnel losses and that doesn’t bode well for the bottom line in 2024.

Gotta think if Temple brought in a couple of experienced FCS pass blockers a year ago, E.J. Warner would not have had been out for two games with a concussion.

With each Temple football loss, though, the bean counters in Sullivan Hall get more ammunition to ask the question: “Are we getting any return on a significant investment?”

(Hell, does Temple have a larger investment not including the hospital than the football program? I doubt it.)

The answer for the last three years has been a resounding no. Three-straight lousy, stinking, 3-9 seasons and this last one might have been the smelliest of a rotten trifecta. This coaching staff had all last year to get a big-time running back via the portal and to load up on both lines.

They did neither.

Instead, they left three scholarships on the table when there were experienced pass protectors and pass rushers still in the portal who could have helped them better than the two freshmen starters they had. It wasn’t as though they weren’t warned. On the day Darian Varner left, we wrote in this space that this was a time to get two FCS starters better than Varner via the portal.

Being forced to play offensive linemen who weren’t ready got their franchise quarterback concussed and caused him to look elsewhere.

Their leading rusher, Edward Saydee, only had 629 yards last year. We wrote in this space that the priority was to get a 1,000-yard rusher. What did they do? Get a 247-yard rusher from FIU.

Everything they did from a personnel standpoint screamed half-measures when they needed double measures.

The No. 1 New Year’s resolution now for this coaching staff has to be extreme urgency and it has to start today because what they did last month was just not good enough.

They need to bring in established FCS stars starting with the quarterback position. They went 3-9 with E.J. Warner last year. To go 6-6, they need someone twice as good as Warner and, in Albany’s Reece Poffenbarger, that option is still available in the portal. (Hell, Matt Sluka is still in the portal and he may be better.) Both are better than anyone Temple has on the current roster by a good bit. They haven’t had a big-time running back since Ray Davis played for Geoff Collins and Rod Carey.

They need to get one and a JUCO doesn’t cut it.

Plenty of really good FCS players are in the portal now and there won’t be FBS scholarships for all of them. Temple needs to scour the portal for the best of those players and show them some love.

Does this coaching staff understand that?

Do they even care?

They didn’t last offseason judging from the results.

Right now, even extreme urgency might not be enough, but it is worth a try. The football franchise depends upon it.

Friday: At Least We Had This

Monday: Comparing Apples to Apples