Category Archives: Temple football

06.30.23
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What could go wrong? The buddy system

Stan Drayton himself was the beneficiary of the buddy system, going from working for Texas football to be hired by the former Texas football directior of operations Arthur Johnson.

One of the benefits of being a 50-plus-year Temple football fan is seeing what worked and what did not.

From my observation, the best Temple football coaching staffs had only a small element of guys who were past buddies and a larger composition of guys who applied for the job and were interviewed and hired by a head coach who really didn’t know the guys elsewhere before.

The staffs that qualified under the former were the ones of Wayne Hardin, Al Golden, and Matt Rhule.

You know how that worked out.

At least a couple of favorite Temple football coaching hiring stories come to mind.

Vince Hoch met Hardin at high school football coaching clinic in South Jersey. Hoch approached Hardin and asked for five minutes of his time then laid out defensive coaching philosophies. Hardin was so impressed he hired him on the spot. Hoch might have been the best DC ever. Hardin didn’t know Hoch from Adam.

A young assistant from West Carolina drove five hours to 10th and Diamond and asked Temple aide Nadia Harvin if could wait two more for Al Golden to be finished from his meeting. That assistant, Matt Rhule, wasn’t hired on the spot but he made such an impression on Golden that when the first spot opened Al hired him.

It helped that they both played at Penn State but Al didn’t really know Matt until then.

The rest is history.

Matt Rhule drove five hours and waited for two more outside Al Golden’s office to ask for a job at Temple.

The other staffs who failed here were the guys Rod Carey loved (an entire NIU staff pretty much), the Geoff Collins staff and, to a far lesser extent, the Steve Addazio staff.

At least with Addazio, he brought with him from Gainesville, Fla. significant pieces of the national champion Florida Gator team he left behind. Absolutely mind-blowing that a DC who Urban Meyer credited for half a national championship one year was in the same spot at Temple the next. Less mind-blowing but still impressive was that Tim Tebow’s quarterback coach (Scot Loeffler) turned Chris Coyer into the first Temple bowl-winning quarterback since Brian Broomell.

If Everett Withers posts consecutive shutouts his first season as DC at Temple like Chuck Heater did in his, a lot of Temple fans will be shocked out of their minds (most of all me).

What happened under Chuck Heater:

His Owls posted back-to-back shutouts. A Temple team hasn’t done the same since then.

What does that have to do with this year’s prospects?

If Stan Drayton’s Owls were to post even as memorable a season as Daz’s first Temple team did (8-4), it would be to buck a 50-year Temple football trend because the staff Drayton has put together includes three assistants from a couple of 2-10 Texas State teams and a head coach of that same team (Everett Withers) who never shut out anyone when his sole job was as a DC.

Drayton’s staffs pretty much mirror the staffs of Carey and Collins and probably aren’t even half as accomplished at Daz’s staff.

What’s that famous Bill Parcells’ quote?

“You are what your record says you are.”

The flip side of that coin is that Drayton’s resume as an assistant is as impressive as his aides are putrid.

This isn’t the 1987 Frankford High era when one head coach (Al Angelo) and one assistant (Tom Mullineaux) can lead a team to a 12-0 season without the help of a single other coach.

Or even 1950 Penn State where the only two coaches were Rip Engle (head) and a young assistant named Joe Paterno.

Drayton might be the head chef but he did not do himself a favor by hiring those who have surrounded him. There are a lot of cooks in this kitchen and one overcooked or undercooked meal could ruin the bowl prospects of a team without a large margin of error. They may be nice guys and he may be comfortable with them but familiarity can breed contempt if the bottom line isn’t met.

He will go to war with the devils he does know and it’s obvious he’s comfortable with it now. Let’s hope this staff is an exception to a well-documented Temple football past.

Monday: What Can Go Right?

06.26.23
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Optimism, pessimism, and somewhere in between

Bill Connelly was right on the money here.

After picking up all of the preseason college football magazines and seeing the Temple football Owls picked for near the bottom of the league the last few years, something stands out this year.

There is more optimism than pessimism for the Owls’ chances in the reformed AAC with the truth probably resting somewhere in between.

Connelly’s breakdown of the top of the league this year. He has the Owls finishing ahead of a team that has tormented them recently, East Carolina.

The Owls were picked as high as fourth in the league by the website “Underdog Dynasty” and as low as eighth by Athlon Sports.

The in-between part–where I kind of think the truth lies–belongs to ESPN and numbers cruncher extraordinaire Bill Connelly, who has the Owls tabbed for sixth.

Stan Drayton really rolled the dice bringing back his old buddy Everett Withers to be the DC.

Pretty impressive because in my mind, at least when it comes to the Owls, Connelly has a pretty good track record.

He was the ONLY outsider who, in 2019, picked Temple to beat Maryland and the Owls won that game, 20-17. How impressive was that pick? The week before Maryland had dropped 60 on the No. 21-ranked team, Syracuse, and entered the game at Temple ranked No. 23.

If Connelly is right about the Owls, they will finish sixth in the league standings this year and go bowling for the first time since that Maryland prediction. Connelly, unlike Athlon does his homework. (Athlon had Layton Jordan transferring to Wisconsin. Jordan is still here. Darien Varner is the DE gone to Wisconsin.)

This is what he writes about Temple: “Temple has gone just 7-24 over the past three seasons, with an average SP+ ranking of 114.3, but the Owls not only return a healthy amount of experience but also take on the easiest schedule in the AAC; SP+ gives them a 59% chance of bowling for the first time in four years.”

I will take 59 percent over the zero percent I saw over the last three years.

I personally would love for the Owls to win the league title but they haven’t significantly improved a porous running game that held them back last year and there are some questions about the new defensive coordinator, even though seven starters return on that side of the ball.

Victor Stoffel is the only offensive lineman with significant playing time returning although a strong argument can be made from a sheer talent level that the OL coming in is more talented than the one going out.

We’ll see.

Of course, as fans, we root for optimism over pessimism but, at least this year, somewhere in between offers a tangible reward at the end of the Cherry and White rainbow.

Friday: What Could Go Wrong?

Monday: What Could Go Right?

06.23.23
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Owls ready for Prime Time?

In exactly one month and a day from now, the AAC will be holding its Media Day in Arlington, Texas.

I’ve seen the Temple football Owls picked anywhere from fourth in the league to eight and the anticipation for the season is the highest since the 2019 Owls finished 8-5.

Great interview with E.J. Warner here.

That’s a tip of the hat to the way Stan Drayton had the Owls competing in games for the first time since then. It might be at least one of the reasons that Temple already has three prime-time games lined up for television.

The folks at the networks do not want to be burned by a non-competitive game under the lights and the way Temple played bowl teams East Carolina and Houston late in the season was enough to convince them that Temple was a pretty good risk for that hour.

If the Owls beat Akron and Rutgers and play Miami tough, more moveable prime-time games are sure to follow.

Right now, they have all the ingredients for success in that they have a quarterback with the “it” factor in E.J. Warner. The “it” factor simply is this: You look at a quarterback and know he can make positive plays regularly. That’s a rare factor and only about 10 percent (or less) of college football quarterbacks have it. Warner, particularly over the last few games, showed he can do that. It also helps that he is the son of a Super Bowl-winning NFL Hall of Fame quarterback and gives play-by-play and color guys another talking point to hype the game.

Plus, Drayton has done one of the better jobs in the Group of Five holding a team together. Of the 20 players who left for the portal, only three have landed at FBS schools. The other 17 dropped down a level and that’s an indication that, overall, the Owls have a better roster. Meanwhile, those 20 have been replaced largely by P5 and FBS players.

The first of the three-night games currently on the schedule is at Rutgers at 7:30 on the Big 10 Network. The Owls lost that game last year, 16-14, but that was Warner’s first full game as a college quarterback and, although he battled through it, he was 10x a better quarterback five games later than he was then.

The next two are at Tulsa Sept. 28 and home to SMU on Friday, Oct. 20.

If Temple is able to field a competitive team, the ratings should follow. The highest-rated prime-time college football game in the history of Philadelphia involved Temple (Notre Dame, Oct. 31, 2015).

Considering the fact that three prior Penn State vs. Notre Dame games were also on prime-time TV in Philadelphia since 1986, that’s an indication that Temple, when competitive, is the best draw in the nation’s fourth-largest market.

There is only one top 10 TV market not having a Power 5 team and that’s the fourth-largest one. The fact that Temple was the X factor in a game against Notre Dame proves that only Temple can deliver huge numbers in that market.

Winning a championship is, of course the goal, if not this season but next. Still, getting national folks used to the notion that Temple football is back is the first step toward that. Winning in prime time would certainly help

That’s a big reason why the TV people are gambling on Temple to be good again. From their lips to God’s ears.

Monday: The most optimistic projection so far

06.19.23
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What’s the Deal: Hopefully, all Cherry and White

An Open Letter to John Donahoe

CEO Nike

Beaverton, Oregon

Dear John,

Another June 19th has come and the crooked number next to my name ticked up a year.

After, say, 40, that’s almost never a good thing. It’s all downhill from here in more ways than one. My birthday was never a national holiday as a kid but I was always aware of the importance of June 19th because I looked it up even as a 7-year-old. Very proud to share it with this important and positive day in U.S. history. #Juneteenth

The only good thing that’s come out of it so far has your name (Nike) on it in the form of gifts I unwrapped yesterday.

Temple grad and CBS radio host Zach Gelb celebrates Father’s Day with dad and legendary Mike and the Mad Dog producer Bobby Gelb by wearing Under Armour versions of Cherry and White.

Just read that you renewed your deal with Temple University as the official footwear, apparel, and equipment provider for all 19 of Temple’s intercollegiate athletic programs. I was the beneficiary of some sweet Nike Temple wear today being gifted a football jersey, a Temple T-Shirt, and a Temple golf shirt.

The colors were Cherry and White with the T-Shirt and football jersey and the golf shirt was white.

Perfection.

To me, those are the best colors in college sports.

How Temple got lucky enough to wear those colors, I will never know but I am grateful.

I have one small request.

For the football team only, please supply only Cherry and White game jerseys this season.

They can practice in blue, green, purple, and gray but please make the gamers Cherry and White.

There are a couple of reasons for that.

One, the abovementioned “opinion” that Cherry and White are the best colors in all of sports, let alone college football.

The second is a more factual one.

Temple almost never wins football games wearing anything but Cherry and White.

Statistically, it’s not just bad luck, it’s terrible luck.

Since Temple began regularly wearing colors like black and gray in football games, the Karma of rejecting Cherry and White is there in, well, black and white.

We’ve tracked the Temple football record since they started wearing other colors post-Al Golden Era and the numbers are not good. The Owls are 2-18 wearing black, 1-1 wearing gray, and 55-45 wearing some combination of Cherry and White.

That alone should be enough for Stan Drayton and company to demand only Cherry and White uniforms but if that’s all you supply, that solves the problem right there.

Don’t do it for my birthday.

Do it for all of the birthdays of all of Temple’s fans.

Your sales will go up, I promise.

Thanks,

Mike Gibson

Friday: The Temple TV schedule

06.16.23
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This year, the cliche is true about first games

I’m not touching the Temple game but I really like Northwestern getting 6 at Rutgers right now.

The odds came out this week for the first college football weekend of the year.

Temple opened as a 10-point favorite over visiting Akron in the opener and that immediately dropped to nine the next day.

While it’s nice that Vegas set the Owls as a double-digit favorite, the public wasn’t buying it.

The old cliche is that your most important game is your next one is especially true about Temple hosting Akron this season.

If the Owls win, they are off and running and probably bowl-bound.

If Joe Dickhead, err, Moorhead can beat Matt Rhule with Fordham talent, he can certainly beat Stan Drayton with Akron talent. I’ve had a lot of low moments as a Temple fan, including suffering through a 20-game losing streak but this post-game tailgate was definitely the worst.

If they lose, some serious questions arise about whether they will be 3-9 for the third-straight season. Or whether they have the right leadership going forward.

Make no mistake about it. Akron CAN beat Temple.

Whether it will or not is another question.

Put it this way. The Akron team facing Temple in 2023 will be a lot more formidable one than the Akron team that lost to Rod Carey in the otherwise forgettable 2021 season, 45-24.

First, the Zips have a big-time coach in Joe Moorhead. There is no question he can beat Stan Drayton because he took lesser talent and beat an objectively better coach than Drayton (Matt Rhule) in 2013 when he took an FCS Fordham team into Temple and came away with a win.

Since then, Moorhead became a head coach in the Power 5 (Mississippi State) before Drayton did and fell victim to the unreasonable expectations that come with P5 fan bases.

Last year, in his first one at Akron, his team got better as the season went on and it finished with a 44-12 thumping of a Northern Illinois team and almost beat a better Buffalo team the next week, losing by just a point. That Buffalo team finished 7-6 and beat Georgia Southern, 23-21, in the Camellia Bowl. (Yes, the same Georgia Southern that beat Rhule’s current Nebraska team earlier in the season.)

Here’s why I think Temple will win. Akron needed overtime to beat St. Francis last year and St. Francis lost to a Lafayette team Temple hammered, 30-14. Also, the Houston and ECU teams Temple hung with in the latter half of the season were probably significantly better than Buffalo and NIU. Probably, but I don’t know for sure.

Not much evidence to go on since both the learning curves for Temple and Akron went up significantly as the season progressed.

Not enough evidence to bet the house and farm on the Owls so they have to make sure they cross the I’s and dot the T’s on a solid game plan over the next three months. The first film to dissect is the Fordham at Temple film of 2013.

The Owls will have to make sure they are ready for everything and anything Moorhead will throw at them and, hopefully, they did not bury that game film.

Monday: What’s The Deal?

06.12.23
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An Award Temple football fans can get behind

Two weeks after Maryland beat Al Golden’s Miami team, 32-24, Bill Bradshaw congratulates Steve Addazio here for beating Maryland, 38-7. It wasn’t that close. After Maryland scored a late fourth-quarter garbage touchdown, Daz had the Owls take three knees inside the Maryland 5 instead of winning 45-7.

Nobody knows how many mistakes an athletic director is allowed to make but, at a place like Temple, the margin of error is smaller than others.

On Sunday, a guy who hit AT LEAST .666 on Temple football coaching hires got the most prestigious athletic director honor that can be awarded: The James J. Corbett Memorial Award is a US award given annually by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA). It is presented “to the collegiate administrator who through the years has most typified Corbett’s devotion to intercollegiate athletics and worked unceasingly for its betterment.”

Pretty precise language when it comes to Bradshaw’s contribution to Temple football.

When you’ve had collegiate football since 1984 (and the school was founded 10 years earlier), and you hire two of the best four college football coaches at said school, you’ve done a remarkable job.

Bill Bradshaw’s photo at the ceremony on Sunday. He seemingly gets younger with each season.

Very few people can argue that Al Golden and Matt Rhule were two of the best four hires in Temple history. (The other two are inarguable: College Football Hall of Famers Wayne Hardin and Pop Warner.)

For one AD to hire half, that’s a job well done and, at least at Temple, fit the criteria of “devotion to intercollegiate athletics and (working) unceasingly for its betterment.”

Put it this way: Compared to the three hires his successor made, Bradshaw knocked it out of the park. Pat Kraft hired, in order, Geoff Collins, Manny Diaz and Rod Carey. The less said about those three the better.

That also applies to the more said about the three prior football hirings: Golden, Rhule and Steve Addazio.

Pretty good for a guy who was a baseball player at LaSalle and came from a place (DePaul) that didn’t have college football.

To put it in Bradshaw’s best sports terms, Golden and Rhule were upper-deck home runs. Daz was certainly not a strike-out or fly out but the argument can be made that he was at least a gap double (first bowl win in over 30 years) or a hard-hit single off the wall while being thrown out at second (his 4-7 season the next year).

Bill sets the record straight on TU football attendance.

Although Collins won a bowl game with a worse record than Daz, he never quite fulfilled his promise (Mayhem) here and Diaz struck out looking while Carey was a swinging strikeout.

Bradshaw’s gift in my mind at least was a knowledge of Philadelphia (he went to LaSalle) and common sense.

He took a yellow legal pad with him to Charlottesville to interview then Virginia DC Golden, watched Golden pull out a binder of East Coast recruiting and coaching contacts, listened to what he had to say, and, on the way home, jotted down: “This is our guy.”

With Rhule, who finished second to Daz the first time, Bradshaw listened to all of the Temple players but still kept his options open. When Mario Cristobal asked for directions to Temple from the Philadelphia International Airport, Bradshaw had second thoughts. Everyone from the Temple police to the players to the cafeteria people met and loved Matt Rhule, who knew every nook and cranny of Temple. Then he ran into Temple icon (and assistant AD) Al Shrier in the hallway of the Liacouras Center.

“Bill, listen to me. Hire Matt Rhule.”

That was all he needed to hear.

Temple was off and running in football again, surpassing what even Golden had done. If you had Temple being unbeaten and hosting College Football Gameday (and then grabbing the all-time single-highest prime-time TV rating FOR ANY COLLEGE FOOTBALL game in the history of the nation’s fourth-largest market), then you might have been the only one. I never saw that coming. That was a day and night we might never see again for Temple football.

A large part of the credit for Oct. 31, 2015 goes to Bill Bradshaw.

For those of us who benefited that day, the Corbett Award is the least he deserves. Sainthood could be in his future, but let’s hope that is many years away. What he did for Temple football was perform the requisite three miracles.

Friday: That First Weekend

Monday: What’s the Deal?

06.09.23
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The game Temple should have never turned down

Twenty-two days after the Giants won this NFL title Temple lost to Tulane in the Sugar Bowl.

Not quite a century ago Temple was approached by the New York Giants and the Mara family (who still own the team) and asked to play a game to “legitimize” in the mind of the public that the NFL game was at least the equal of good college teams.

Temple rejected the idea out of hand.

Haven’t seen the Temple football team called “Husky” in my lifetime.

Yeah, it happened long before you and I were born and probably before anyone else who has ever read this space, but wouldn’t it have been neat if the Owls accepted the November 9, 1935 game? Hell, since it was the Giants’ idea in the first place it would probably have been played at Temple Stadium.

The Temple coach, Pop Warner, wanted to keep the date as a “breather” for his team (called a bye nowadays) but the accepted truism then was that a good college team like Temple would have beaten an NFL team.

Pop, what the heck were you doing?

My, how times have changed.

Now even crazy Georgia fans are called nuts when they think they can play with the worst NFL team, let alone the best one.

Let it be known, though, for the rest of all time that the only NFL CHAMPION to ever challenge a college team was the New York Giants and the only COLLEGE team to ever be challenged to a game was the Temple Owls.

Kinda surprising because the Owls were not even the Georgia or Alabama of their day that year. They finished 7-3 and beat national powers Vanderbilt and Texas A&M but maybe the Maras were banking on the good publicity they would get beating a respected college team not that far from where the Giants played. Probably the fact that Warner was the most high-profile coach of the 1930s also factored into the offer.

Just think, though, if Temple had accepted the challenge. The Owls could have struck a blow for the college game or, on the other hand, helped legitimize the NFL years before it beat out baseball and became the national pastime. It was a win/win situation for Temple because no one would have blamed a team of amateurs for losing to a team where everyone got paid.

We will never know.

But we do know this: The New York Giants could have challenged Miami,, Rutgers, Penn State or Georgia.

They chose Temple.

No other NFL team chose anyone else.

Somewhere in Heaven, if Pop was honest, he’d probably be as curious as the rest of us how it might have turned out.

Monday: Rating The Hires

06.05.23
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Toughest Temple coaching job ever? Probably

Jon Gruden on AG’s TU teams: “The Temple Owls play as hard as any team in the country.”

Imagine being a plumber who was an apprentice to the best in the business and the guys he worked for raved about him and said he should have his own company.

Then say someone gave him that job and then a couple of years later took his wrench, plunger, and snake away and told him to do the best job he could with his hands.

That’s kind of what Stan Drayton is facing today as head football coach at Temple.

Doubt when he took the Temple job that Drayton realized the Owls would have to battle the NIL and transfer portal.

The job he took two years ago was harder than the job Rod Carey took or the one Geoff Collins took. Neither of those guys had to face the NIL or the transfer portal on the level Drayton had to face.

In fact, the debate worth having is who had the tougher job?

Al Golden or Drayton.

A valid case can be made that Golden’s was tougher. Thanks to the eight years of Bobby Wallace, Golden took a team headed for a 20-game losing streak and a woeful APR that robbed the Owls of almost as many scholarships as the Penn State scandal hurt the Nittany Lions.

Golden kicked out all of the poor students–some of them happened to be very good players–and then slowly built a house of brick, not staw (his words).

By the time he left in 2010, the Owls had beat a Fiesta Bowl team (UConn) and Golden’s nine-game winning streak was the second-longest in Temple history (only to Wayne Hardin’s 14-game winning streak between 1974 and 1975). His appearance in the 2009 Eagle Bank Bowl was Temple’s first bowl game in 30 years.

Yet how would have Golden done had he had to battle a roster full of JUCOs and a system that allowed other teams to poach his best players?

Not well, I’d guess.

Would Muhammad Wilkerson, for example, be a first-round pick for Temple under Golden or would he have transferred to another school?

We all hope that Mo would have stayed, but that’s just wishful thinking.

While the case can be made that Golden’s job was tougher, Drayton has fewer tools in his box than Golden did 15 years ago and he’s going to have do get his hands much dirtier than Golden ever did.

Can Drayton beat a BCS bowl team and rip off a nine-game winning streak? Probably not but an AAC title still remains a realistic goal and, should he do it, probably deserves the same spot in the Temple Sports Hall of Fame that Golden occupies now.

Friday: The One Big-Time Foe the Owls turned down

Monday: Rating The Hires

06.02.23
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Going from National to Regional: The New Normal?

Current UAB head coach Trent Dilfer talks former Temple quarterback Anthony Russo.

Back in the 1950s, a guy named Art Linkletter made a mint on a show called “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”

He would stick a microphone in the face of a 5-year-old and if the kid said something funny that didn’t include the f-word, it made the TV.

Linkletter never had to hire a writer or put a script together because the kids made the money for him.

Today’s modern equivalent is social media and, when it comes to Temple football, it’s the fans, not the kids, who say the darndest things.

Anthony Russo produced 27 points in the Independence Bowl against Duke. The defense was the culprit that day, allowing 56 points.

Some of those darn things are true.

I’m not sure I know a poster on OwlsDaily named “PinballOwl93” but he nailed it after reading a piece by editor Shawn Pastor on a quarterback the Owls are recruiting named Chris Dietrich.

“Not in love with 11 TD with 12 INTs last year in High school. Like to see those INTs way lower because the college game will be moving much faster for him to make those quick reads.”

Fair enough.

That was followed by another comment by “Owlsilver:” “I wonder if this is the new normal with NIL. Going from “real” Elite 11s (Anthony Russo, Re’Al Mitchell, Dwan Mathis) to “regional” Elite 11s. #Sad.”

This is what a “national” Elite 11 quarterback looks like playing for Temple. We have yet to see what a “regional” Elite 11 quarterback looks like.

Right below that a guy who goes by the handle “R3Regioinal Rail” correctly pointed out that Quincy Patterson made the Elite 11. He failed to mention that Anthony Russo made the same Elite 11.

Russo became, at least statistically, the fourth-best quarterback in Temple history.

That’s the 11-best high school quarterbacks in the country, not the region, and prior Temple staffs deserve credit for luring that kind of talent to North Broad Street.

Those two could have picked any school.

They chose Temple (well, after Virginia Tech, North Dakota State, and Rutgers) but they chose Temple.

Gotta wonder if Owlsilver is right, though.

Dietrich was an “Elite 11 Northeast Regional” quarterback. Russo, Dwan Mathis, Patterson, and Re’Al Mitchell (who just missed out on an Elite 11 invite but still ended up at Temple) for a while represented a different level.

What’s next? Going after “Elite South of Northeast” regional quarterbacks? Elite 11 always meant just that, Elite and, I don’t think any other G5 has had the same kind of recent success recruiting national Elite 11 quarterbacks that Temple had.

Are the days of Temple luring that kind of talent over or do we celebrate the potential signing of someone who tossed 11 touchdown passes against 12 interceptions on the high school level? In my 50 years of following Temple football, I have never once heard of the Owls ever recruiting a quarterback who had more interceptions than touchdown passes.

I love this staff but they’ve got to do better than that.

In the 50s, kids said the darndest things that were both true and funny on national TV.

Nowadays maybe those kids are on fan message boards and the truth isn’t as funny as it might represent the new normal with this NIL and transfer portal nonsense.

Monday: A Debate Worth Having

05.29.23
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Temple football welcomes an important player on Memorial Day

Joquez Smith is the most heralded incoming running back at Temple since Bernard Pierce of Glen Mills

Anyone who follows college football knows it’s pretty much a 365-day business.

Yes, Stan Drayton and his staff are able to take at least a couple of weeks vacation in July but the fact that the facility will be hopping today (Memorial Day) is Exhibit A that the work of winning is never done.

At least in the programs that chase greatness.

Two of the more prominent incoming freshmen, running back Joquez Smith (Tampa Jesuit) and defensive lineman Conlan Greene (Penn-Trafford of the WPIAL) are arriving on campus today.

That’s good news.

Smith on the way to 234 yards and five TDs at Largo (Fla.)

We’ve been writing in this space since November that the Owls’ biggest area of offseason need is a back who can take over and be one of the best in the American Conference. There is at least that ceiling with Smith. Maybe that’s why head coach Stan Drayton did not feel the need to pick up an accomplished FBS back in the portal.

According to some, Smith was the best high school running back in the state of Florida and he has the numbers to back it up. As junior, he led Jesuit to a state Class 6A title and that is probably the toughest classification in the best high school football state in America. For his career, Smith gained 5,334 yards and scored 75 touchdowns. Smith figures to be one of two true freshman to challenge Edward Saydee for the top spot on the depth chart. (The other being Kyle Williams of Harrisburg).

Certainly some pretty good backs at Temple never came here with Smith’s numbers. We went into the wayback machine and could find only one, Glen Mills’ Bernard Pierce, who nearly had identical senior high school numbers to Smith and he turned out to be an NFL third-round draft pick. Even Jahad Thomas and Ryquell Armstead never had the senior years that Smith had or played against competition nearly as tough. Pierce had 1,769 yards and 26 TDs his senior year at Glen Mills while Smith had 1,934 yards and 29 touchdowns in his best high school season.

Bill Parcells once said: “You are what your record says you are.”

Jesuit coach Matt Thompson said Smith’s style “is slow to it (the hole) and fast through it.” Smith is adept at reading his blockers and seeing the hole and taking off.

One of the reasons he’s at Temple and not Alabama is that he’s in the 5-7 range and those Power 5 schools like their running backs at least 6-foot, 200 points and run a sub 4.5-40.

Temple is the kind of place where 5-9, 160-pound Paul Palmer thrived enough to finish second in the Heisman balloting in 1986.

If Smith even comes close to duplicating the career of Palmer, Temple will win a lot of football games.

Already here are offensive linemen Luke Wilson of Wilmington (Del.) and Eric King of St. Peter’s Prep (Jersey City) and safety Zyil Powell (Paramus, N.J.).

The Owls got their needed a fourth quarterback in the room when they plucked Forrest Brock from the junior college ranks (Santa Monica). Although Greene–while being recruited as a defensive player–was a more than adequate high school quarterback his senior year and is one of those guys who might be considered a disaster quarterback on the order of how the 49ers used Christian McCaffrey last season. Brock says he will compete for the top job and you’ve got to like that level of confidence.

While Owl fans are hitting the backyard and the shore and maybe a cookout here and there, it comforting to know that Drayton is using today to put the pieces together for what most of us hope is an AAC title run.

Friday: The New Normal

Monday: A Worthwhile Debate