Category Archives: Temple football

05.26.23
by

Mike Aresco: The AAC’s Don Quixote

A rare color photo of Temple Stadium, a place that existed from 1928-2004. Have to wonder where Temple would be now if the campus was moved to the border of Cheltenham and Philadelphia, as was the original thought when the stadium was built. Temple could have upgraded it and 12,500 students living there could have made it a real home-field advantage.

Like him or not, you cannot accuse American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco of being lackadaisical.

As recently as two weeks ago, Aresco penned an open letter complaining about how the league has been treated by “the media” in not getting a Power 5 designation.

It is a familiar theme for Aresco and unfortunately will fall on deaf ears.

The problem is, like Don Quixote, the hero in a satirical novel by Cervantes, Aresco is tilting at windmills. To some, Quixote represents the idea of a person pursuing a goal that might be foolish or unattainable in the eyes of others but the quest matters to them.

That’s pretty much where the AAC is today.

Temple made several institutional missteps along the way to find itself in limbo with the other top G5 schools when it had a chance to be promoted. Maybe it goes all the way back to 1928. When I asked the late Doc Chodoff more than a decade ago why Temple built a field on Cheltenham Ave. instead of the main campus, he said the plan back then was to move the campus there so that’s where it made the most sense to get ahead of the game and build a campus around a stadium. Back in the 30s, the seating capacity was 40,000 and already having a stadium the university could have easily made upgrades. In the 1950s, the capacity was downgraded to 20,017.

Moving from largely a commuter school to 12,500 students living on campus, a stadium already existing in that environment could have probably been enough to position Temple for inclusion into the Power 5. Keeping Bruce Arians as head coach probably would have also helped move the ball forward. Instead, the school fumbled with bad coaching hires that started with Jerry Berndt and hopefully ended with Rod Carey.

Charles G. Erny (hat) and two others take a look at the “brand new” Temple Stadium in 1928. Erny contributed $350,000 to build the stadium and the Temple baseball team played on the adjacent Erny Field for decades. Perhaps Erny is pointing to North Philly and telling the men that’s where the school will house its students temporarily. (Photos courtesy Temple Libraries)

Water under the bridge for Temple now and so to it is for the AAC.

The “media” isn’t responsible for the Power 5 designation but the NCAA is for allowing the five largest conferences to hijack whatever governing it had over not only football but for the two major sports. The NCAA probably feels it has no other choice but to cede power to those leagues because it might fear they will break away to form their own organization.

Maybe they should let them go because a lot of the good that the NCAA provided was a tight reign on institutions that play fast and loose with the rules in order to get ahead.

Now it’s the Wild Wild West and there is no James West or Artemas Gordon to police the bad guys.

The bad guys certainly are not the media who just report on the reality of the situation.

The reality is that the “bad guys” are in control and no number of good guys or good arguments by the good guys seem to matter.

The system in place now rewards the “haves” with more riches and subjugated the “have-nots” with even less than they already had. The G5 didn’t start out to be a farm system for the P5 but with the NIL and the transfer portal, that’s what it has become.

The victim has been fairness and an eroding of confidence by fans of G5 schools that their teams can ever get a shot at upward mobility.

Nobody on the governmental level seems to be in a hurry to restore it. All Aresco can do in 2023 is, like Quixote in 1605, tilt at windmills.

Monday: The New Arrivals

05.21.23
by

Saying goodbye to a legend: Ted Silary

Former Temple great tight end Colin Thompson talks about Ted Silary covering him at Archbishop Wood.

Found out Thursday morning that Ted Silary passed away.

That’s Ascension Thursday in the Catholic religion.

Fitting because Silary no doubt he took the fastest track to Heaven because as good a writer as he was he was a better person. He also had the best sense of humor of any guy I’ve ever met in this business.

This one hit particularly hard for me because Ted and I spent many late afternoons roaming the sidelines together at places like 29th and Clearfield, 10th and Bigler and 67th and Woodland, watching high school football games, having fun and “working” if you could call it that.

Channel 10 was the only TV station to cover his passing.

Like Ted, I got my start in the high school sports department of the Philadelphia Bulletin, then moved to the Doylestown Intelligencer before accepting a job in the same building Ted worked in (The Inquirer building) for 15 years. We crossed paths many times over the years traveling in the same circles.

Silary was “the Man” and gave a lot of these players their nicknames. His was Teddy Ballgame and it fit because nobody told the story of a ballgame better than Teddy. He was such a good writer that he was offered every big beat at The Daily News and turned them all down.

“I never wanted that,” Ted said. “To me, there was nothing as satisfying as chronicling the achievements of young people.”

Silary’s connection to Temple football is tenuous but there is a thin thread. Ted went to Temple but dropped out to take his first professional job. Every Temple player from the Philadelphia Catholic, Public or Inter-Ac League at least knew of and admired and respected Ted.

There were plenty of them, from the Ray Haynes’ (Dobbins), to the Anthony Russos and Colin Thompsons (both Archbishop Wood), to the Adam Kleins (Episcopal Academy) and really too many to mention.

Whatever publicity Silary gave them probably contributed in small part to Temple offering the scholarship.

And those Temple players knew and appreciated Ted and he them, rooting for them throughout their college careers. His lasting gift to them is a website, TedSilary.com, that lists what they did and the records at their particular schools. High school sports will stand still now because I doubt anyone will continue to compile the detailed records and stats that Silary did.

For every amusing anecdote Ted put in the paper, there were at least a few he left out.

A week after the Edison football team lost its 40th-straight on the way to 58-straight losses, I ran into Ted on the sideline of a Wood-Ryan football game.

“I wish I could have used this,” Ted said. “The snap sailed over the Edison punter’s head. He didn’t even go after the ball. He walked off the field and headed straight home, saying, ‘I ain’t chasing that damn bleeping ball ever again.’ He quit right there and walked home in full uniform. Funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Ted left the world in the same unassuming way he arrived, requesting no services. He was born in a hospital for unwed mothers in 1951 and adopted by the Silary family a year later.

If there is a Twitter in Heaven, I hope Ted got a chance to see this.

The rest is a history like only he can write it.

Now he’s in another world and I hope in that one he sees how much he meant to the people he left behind.

On Thursday, national Twitter blew up with #RIPTed and people who didn’t know him were freaking out thinking it was Ted Lasso or Ted Cruz not knowing that a high school sportswriting legend could have such an impact.

He did because he was the best and no one ever will match what he did or even could. #RIPTed, indeed.

Friday: The G5 Magna Carta

Monday: Temple Cleanup Day

05.19.23
by

Temple football in the press: No respect, I’ll tell ya

A comedian in the 1970s named Rodney Dangerfield made a bundle on a routine that centered around one phrase:

“No respect, I’ll tell ya.”

Then Dangerfield launched into a litany of hilarious jokes about from the way his wife and kids treated him to the general public at large.

If Temple’s second-year head football coach Stan Drayton still had those Dangerfield 78s on a turntable, you could excuse him for playing them today.

A listing of the rankings of AAC head coaches came out the other day and Drayton placed 11th in the listing of “top head coaches” in a league that has only 14 members. Two first-year coaches were ahead of him in addition to a couple of CUSA head coaches joining the league.

Ugh.

To me, something like that is very superficial and doesn’t take into account all the variables.

I would have placed Drayton closer to sixth than 11th but I understand the process.

As Vince Lombardi once said, winning isn’t everything it is the only thing.

You could not judge rookie head coach Drayton on his first year by everything alone.

You could judge him on how he moved the ball forward.

At the end of 2021, Temple was at its own 3-yard line The Owls had a head coach with no charisma and someone no one liked. Hell, I doubt even if his wife and kids liked him. Temple got rid of that problem and told him to take our six million and sit at home for the next three years. No one in Philadelphia likes you and no one cared about you. Fast forward to hiring Drayton a couple of months later. If Temple had won six games in 2023–as we thought possible in this space a year ago–the Owls would be in enemy territory.

Not quite what we expected but better than it was.

Temple, entering this 2023 season, is about on its own 47.

Stan Drayton was around a national champion at Ohio State and a very good team at Texas two years ago but said he was “never around a group of fighters” like the ones he had at Temple University last year. Those fighters are still here.

It’s time to get into the red zone and put points on the board in terms of national respect.

There were Temple fans (sadly) expecting Rutgers would blow out the 2022 Owls. We never did. We thought it would be a close game and that turned out to be true.

That’s thanks to two things and both can be attributed to Drayton. One, the 3-9 under him was much more impressive than the 3-9 under the coach who shall remain nameless. Two, after that 3-9, half the team could have exited stage right and, instead, about 90 percent of the team bought into Drayton’s vision for Temple to be a champion.

The Owls have a coach the team likes and respects and a quarterback who is dynamic. They have that now. They didn’t have that two years ago. In college football, that is everything. Put that in a pot, stir, and win.

Guys who write for national college football websites can’t possibly understand that nuance.

We who follow the program do.

What’s next?

The progress last year that turned 61-14 and 45-3 results against RU and ECU into 16-14 and 49-46 must be flipped to 16-14 and 49-46 for the good guys.

I believe it will.

It is a belief based on what I saw right in front of my own eyes. The national guys who don’t give a bleep about watching anything other than the scores don’t see the same thing. Pur it this way: Temple lost to Houston 37-8 in 2021 and with the same talent led Houston 36-35 with 1:13 left in the game last year. Temple lost to RU, 61-14, , and only a pick 6 by a rookie QB separated it from a 14-9 win. Temple lost and was disinterested in a 45-3 loss at ECU in 2021 and yet, with the same talent, was a failed 3d and 1 at midfield from falling on the ball and taking a knee for a 46-42 win.

Same talent, and different coaching.

By December, we will find out if that lack of respect was warranted or if respect of nuance should have been a prerequisite for ranking AAC head coaches.

Monday: Saying Goodbye to a Legend

05.15.23
by

Miami fans respond to Temple Football Forever

A couple of days ago, the Sixers’ Tyrese Maxey ended his press conference with the statement: “Game Seven is going to be a war and, if I had to go to war, these are the guys I want to go to war with.”

Yeah, it was a war only if the one you were thinking about was Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939. Like the Sixers on Sunday, that war lasted about 39 minutes.

Miami vs. Temple football might be a war and it might not. Let’s hope it’s more like Japan vs. the U.S. for four quarters, err, years, in the 1940s. I’ll sign for Temple being the one to drop the Atom Bomb. Now just so Miami fans don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying Temple WILL be the one to drop the bomb. Hell, Miami could blow the Owls out but it would be a nuclear-type “jawn” for Temple to beat Miami so let’s hope Stan Drayton is working on his own Manhattan Project.

Unlike that war with Japan, no sneak attack is necessary.

Already a little border dispute has flared up with one Miami Youtuber firing back at Temple Football Forever.

The ORIGINAL headline was misleading in that he said TFF claimed Miami should “fear” Temple. If you can find a single sentence or even phrase proving we wrote Miami should “fear” Temple, then you win 100 bucks. (Credit to Coop for changing that headline yesterday to “called out” instead of feared.)

Nowhere did we ever say that but reading comprehension evidently isn’t a strongsuit for Miami fans.

For a game between a Group of Five team and a Power 5 team, though, there are enough storylines for two weeks of pre-game stories.

Not only did Miami hire (and fire) two ex-Temple coaches, Temple passed on the current Miami coach, Mario Cristobal, who finished second in a two-man race to current Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule for the Temple head coaching job in 2012.

At that time, Temple athletic director Bill Bradshaw was said to be leaning to hire Cristobal but had an Ephinay when Cristobal called Bradshaw from Philadelphia International Airport asking for directions to Temple.

At the press conference introducing Rhule as the Temple head coach, Bradshaw said one of the candidates called for directions to Temple from the airport. He didn’t say who during the actual Rhule press conference but when pressed by a couple of writers afterward he said it was Cristobal asking for directions to Temple from the airport. “I figured if the guy didn’t care enough to research this for himself, he wasn’t our guy. Matt was the guy who wanted the job the most.”

Rhule was the guy who got Temple consecutive 10-win seasons, a blowout win over Penn State and a college football game day in Philadelphia so Bradshaw made the right call.

As far as Miami “outclassing” Temple, the same thing could have been thought by teams from Vanderbilt in 2014 (a 37-7 Temple win) or Penn State the next year (a 27-10 Temple win) or Maryland in back-to-back years (Temple by 35-14 and 20-17) or Georgia Tech in 2019 (a 24-2 Temple win) or even Maryland in 2011 at Maryland (a 38-7 win for Temple).

Who did Georgia Tech beat the same year it lost to Temple, 24-2?

None other than the Miami Hurricanes, 28-21.

The same year Temple beat Maryland 38-7 who did Maryland beat 32-24 two weeks prior?

Also the Miami Hurricanes.

I’m sure the vloggers for all of those schools–if they had any back then–put those games in the win category for Vandy, PSU and Maryland. Never count your chickens before they are hatched or your wars before they are won.

If Temple-Miami is more of a war than a skirmish, Stan Drayton would have proven to be an even better choice than Rhule was.

Conversely, leaving Cristobal at the Philadelphia airport could even look better now than it did back then.

Friday: Temple in the press

Monday: The G5 Magna Carta

Friday: Temple Cleanup Day

05.12.23
by

The greatest Paul Palmer video dropped this week

The years have not been as kind to Ukee Washington as they have to Paul Palmer.

Ran into one of my main Temple friends, Paul Palmer, at Cherry and White Day a month and a couple of days ago.

After we caught up on some things, I mentioned to him–like I seem to always do–that he hasn’t aged a bit since when I met him as a writer and he as a player from Temple in the early 1980s. Everybody else, including me, and the several Temple greats I ran into that day, have fallen victim to Father Time.

It this were a prize fight, Paul would have knocked out Father Time in the first round.

“Black don’t crack, Mike,” he always says.

Not quite true.

After seeing the above video, I’m shocked to see how much Ukee Washington has cracked and you can throw in longtime Temple play-by-play guy Harry Donahue (Paul’s first radio sidekick).

Paul, at least to me, has never cracked.

He’s the “Dorian Gray of Temple.”

That story revolves around a portrait of Gray, painted by Basil Hallward. Dorian expresses a desire to sell his soul to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade. The wish is granted and Dorian stays young. All the while, his portrait faded.

That’s the youth part of this story.

Rather than a deal with the devil, I attribute this fortune to good genes, the same genes that enabled Palmer to have that knack for elusiveness that made him the greatest running back in Temple football history.

Those weren’t Temple records back then. They were all-time college football records.

If you don’t believe me, watch the above video that came out earlier this week.

A lot of this footage has really never been seen since 1986 and thanks to Youtuber Joe Tolstoy it is available to a wider audience now. Tolstoy taped all of the games I taped in the 1970s and 1980s but the difference between me and him is that I lost many of my tapes in several apartment moves in places like Doylestown and Quakertown and he maintained the library.

Temple as a school has done a very poor job of archiving its football hstotry.

Tolstoy is a treasure in the sense that he’s releasing a lot of it now.

Now a new generation of Temple fans can understand what a lot of us boomer guys already knew.

What would make me more comfortable with the 2023 Temple prospects? A running back with 1/10th the talent of Palmer. Not one half, not two-thirds, but I will settle for one-tenth. If that player enters the program in the next couple of months, my excitement level for the season goes through the roof.

Paul Palmer was a legend in the game of football. He also follows in the same legacy of Dorian Gray when it comes to eternal youth.

If there’s a portrait of Palmer somewhere that is aging, I’ll pass on seeing it.

Friday: Temple in the press

Monday: The G5 Magna Carta

Friday: Temple Cleanup Day

05.07.23
by

Temple’s new cockiest foe: Miami

Pro tip; If you are a blogger or a vlogger and your team got blown out at home by Middle Tennessee, don’t make pronouncements regarding any future opponent the next year.

You won’t see any sentence in this space disrespecting any 2023 Temple opponent even though the schedule is the third-easiest in college football.

The mantra at Temple should be to respect everyone and fear no one.

That, however, doesn’t seem to apply to a certain foe this year for Temple: Miami.

The only gift Temple wants Miami to bring to Philadelphia is turnovers.

For many years, Temple’s “cockiest” foe was Penn State and the Nittany Lions had plenty of reasons for it. Until Temple’s 27-10 win in 2015, the Lions had not lost to the Owls in the prior 74 years (although they played to a 7-7 tie in 1950). When AAC defending champion Temple went on the road and lost by a touchdown to Big 10 champion Penn State the next season, a lot of that cockiness was knocked out of the Lions’ fans, who probably had a newfound respect for Temple. Had the Owls come up with eight more points that day, it would have been the first time a G5 champion ever beat a P5 champion on the road. So close yet so far.

The respect doesn’t extend as far south as Miami, which has a number of fan Youtube channels. The No.1 from a subscriber perspective channel is “Coach Coop” and he dismissed Temple out of hand with his preseason rundown of the Miami schedule last week.

Coach Coop watching MSTU celebrating in Miami after a 45-31 win in 2022.

“Next up we face off against the Temple Owls who went 3-9 last season and have won a combined seven games over the last three years,” Coop said. “Not a good football team but it’s going to be that MTSU argument all over again. We’re going to hear that all season and every season from now on as long as Mario Cristobal is the head coach until we prove otherwise consistently. It is what it is. This should be an easy win. Crazier things have happened to us but I’m just saying it should be an easy win. Temple is not a good football team. Let’s keep going.”

That was it.

No mention of the fact that quarterback E.J. Warner was the rookie of the year in the best G5 league in the country. No mention how improved the Owls were over the second half of the season. No mention that they took a Navy team that beat UCF (objectively a better team than Miami) to overtime when Warner just started to get good or the fact that Warner put up 500+ yard passing games against better teams than Miami (Houston and ECU) in the last part of the season.

You can’t expect Coop to know that.

Or even care.

Like those games against Penn State, Temple is going to have to earn Miami’s respect.

Just for giggles, we went into Coop’s wayback machine and found this gem discussing the upcoming game against MTSU in the 2022 season exactly 11 months ago:

“I’m just going to be honest with this. This should be an easy DUB (W) for the Canes. I don’t even need to say anything else about that football team.”

Coop had to eat those words. We’re not saying that Miami is going to be an “easy DUB” in this space, we are just saying that if Warner looks like the guy he did against ECU and Houston, the Owls have more than a puncher’s chance.

And that’s all they can ask for at this point.

Friday: Another Temple gem unearthed

05.05.23
by

What the Eagles’ draft taught Temple football

The sky is blue. The earth is round. Men were actually on the moon in 1969 and the Japanese (not the Germans) attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Those are accepted undisputed facts among reasonable people.

This week, another accepted fact came to light that everyone I checked on agreed upon:

The Philadelphia Eagles won the NFL draft.

I watched ESPN, the NFL Network and Fox Sports, and every single one of the experts on those networks being paid handsomely to comment on it agreed unanimously. The Eagles schooled the league. I did not delve into all of the fan sites on Youtube but I saw enough.

Being in Philadelphia, the Temple football coaches must’ve seen the same thing.

It’s almost a miracle for Temple that someone this good is still in the portal. The question is: Does Temple realize it?

Delving into the why, almost all agreed it was because Eagles’ GM Howie Roseman schemed the draft by studying it and mastering a plan to make the most of it.

The lesson for Temple football is not to hire Howie Roseman to navigate the transfer portal but to employ a guy who knows how to navigate it and grab players still available in it who can help Temple.

A “Howie Roseman of the transfer portal” if you will.

Now I don’t think Temple head coach Stan Drayton is that guy. I don’t think he wants to be. I don’t think he should.

Yet I’m guessing there a “that guy” out there and if Temple finds him, Temple football gets a leg up on the competition.

The Owls need a matchmaker who can convince players in areas of need Temple has that Temple will love him and he will love them.

Put it this way.

You don’t have to be a Howie Roseman to know that former Liberty running back Dae Dae Hunter is still in the portal. The guy has an FBS resume that at least doubles that of any running back in the program, by all accounts is a good guy and can (with quarterback E.J. Warner) turn the Lincoln Financial Field scoreboard into an adding machine.

Right now, the Owls are going into the season with the worst running game in the nation last year and their only significant FBS addition (E.J. Wilson,, FIU) had HALF the numbers of Temple’s best running back, Edward Saydee, a year ago.

Those numbers don’t add up for Temple success in 2023. Howie Roseman figured the Eagles’ numbers out and came up with a winning formula.

A “Howie Roseman of Temple” would probably be the best hire the program can make now to guide the Temple football ship through these new uncharted waters.

Monday: Temple’s New Cockiest Foe

05.01.23
by

A Homecoming Formula that might work

Atari was just launched. New York City had a blackout that lasted 25 hours. Elvis Presley died.

Before the last two Homecomings, yes it had been that long (1977) since Temple hosted a winning team on Homecoming Day.

A lot of losing foes visited Temple on Homecomings before the last couple.

Two times the visiting team was Rutgers. In 2021, it was Memphis. Last year, the Scarlet Knights came in with a 3-1 record. They didn’t finish with a winning record but they escaped Philadelphia with a 16-14 win when E.J. Warner was just getting used to the speed of college football.

Before that, the Rutgers’ team that Temple beat in 1977 was the only other winning team that came to town for Temple’s Homecoming. Temple won, 24-14, that day and RU finished its season at 8-3 with the other losses coming to 10-1 Colgate (yes, Colgate) and an 11-1 Penn State team.

There are reasons for that and the scheduling philosophy not only at Temple but at “most” schools is to schedule a so-called cupcake so that all of those alumni who only come to one football game per year could depart with a feel-good win and maybe some incentive to come back for another game or two that wasn’t Homecoming.

Temple athletic director Arthur Johnson bucked that trend last year by scheduling a Big 10 team and he is apparently bucking it now.

The reasoning seems to be that since this is Temple’s biggest home crowd of every season–there are usually roughly 10,000 or so Temple fans for that game than any other home game–is that the reward is greater than the risk.

That thinking comes into play this year as well. First-year AAC member UTSA is coming to town as one of the league favorites with one of the best quarterbacks in the country, Frank Walker.

If a big crowd helps boost the Owls to a meaningful league win, all the better.

Even though the Owls lost to Rutgers last year, Temple’s reputation on the national stage was served well by that game. The stands looked pretty full and it was apparent that the Owls had the big advantage in the number of fans and the loudness of the crowd. Rutgers’ fans admitted as much.

All that was missing was the win.

IF the Owls can pull of the upset of UTSA on Oct. 7, give a large part of the credit to Johnson.

Friday: What The Eagles Draft Taught Temple

04.27.23
by

College football: A great story for 60 Minutes

Found a gem on one of the message boards the other day.

Guy talked about the schism between the haves and the have-nots and said what a wonderful story the current college football saga would make for a 60 minutes segment.

Last week, I watched a story about a guy who some feel “instigated” the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol.

Nice story but nowhere near as compelling as what is ripping apart college football at the seems and no one seems to care about it.

To me, the “big story” on Action News (err, national news) is not the unfairness of the current system for at least half the FBS schools or how the field is tilted toward the schools who already have the most at the expense of the schools who have the least.

It’s about how the PLAYERS themselves are getting screwed the most in a system that ostensibly is designed to benefit them.

Nobody talks about that side of the story.

It’s an important side. The nation needs to know. In the 2021 transfer portal, 1,074 student-athletes entered the football end of it. Only 299 received scholarships. The other 72 percent DID NOT HAVE A HOME. Those percentages have not changed much after the 2022 season.

That’s important because a lot of these kids who enter have stars in their eyes and most of them end up holding an empty bag.

It’s a message Temple head football coach Stan Drayton should be drilling into his Owls at every team meeting.

“You might think you are great but the facts are that if 10 of you enter the portal tomorrow, seven of you will be giving up a full-time scholarship and getting nothing in return. That’s not me saying it. Those are the hard, real, numbers.”

Hopefully, Drayton has already hammered that message home. The signs are there. He’s done a great job keeping this team together.

That’s a local audience.

This message really needs a national one.

To me, a Sunday night segment on 60 Minutes might reach more college athletes than any other vehicle.

The madness has to stop and there is no sign that the greedy Power 5 is going to stop it.

Maybe convincing the players themselves that they are on the short end of this Ponzi scheme will be an unexpected way to restore some sanity to the game.

Monday: Scheduling Patterns

04.23.23
by

Rising Stock for 5 Temple Owls

By now, everyone knows who the key players will be for the 2023 Temple football Owls.

The names roll off your tongue like quarterback E.J. Warner, wide receivers Dante Wright, tight ends David Martin-Robinson and Jordan Smith, and defenders like corner Jalen McMurray and hybrid DE/LB Layton Jordan.

All of those guys are poised for stardom.

From what we hear, at least five guys who weren’t previously on the radar used the spring to raise their own stock and some of the names are surprising.

Dwan Mathis, WR _ Went through growing pains as a wide receiver last year and at times looked disinterested. No more. Even the defensive coaches are noticing. New DC Everett Withers said that Mathis was the one Temple player who stood out to him the most. “I even told him that,” Withers said. “I’m proud of you.” Mathis always had athletic ability. Anyone who catches a touchdown pass (as a quarterback no less) in the Georgia spring game (as Mathis did) shows that ability. Now all he has to do is catch a couple in a real game and he could be a big factor for Temple in 2023.

Dwan Mathis has been all smiles this spring and that has to make Temple fans happy.

Landon Morris TE _ A transfer from Utah, Morris caught at 10-yard touchdown pass in the spring game from Warner. That’s a position of strength for the Owls with DMR and Smith but Morris certainly showed ability by making a defender miss and getting to the end zone.

Sam Martin, SAF _ Martin was a big-time running back in high school but switched over to defense last year. He was really the only player to show any ability on kickoff returns and might be pressed into service in that area if the Owls are reluctant to use Wright on returns. In the spring game, he intercepted Warner.

Camden Price, K _ Price grabbed the job from Rory Bell last season and has shown no signs of giving it up. In the spring game, he made all three extra points and field goals from 41, 25 and 22 yards without a miss. How sweet would it be for the former Miami Hurricane kicker to nail the game-winner against the Hurricanes at Lincoln Financial Field this year?

Dante Alton, P _ Averaged 42.5 yards on two punts and appears to be a solid replacement for fellow Australian Mackenzie Morgan.

Since the spring game, the Temple coaches have been hitting the portal and don’t put it past them that another newcomer we don’t know about now will have the kind of spring that puts them on the radar.

Friday: A Must Story that the National Media has Missed

Monday: A Scheduling Pattern Has Been Detected