Category Archives: Temple football

05.18.20
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Pet Peeve: The TU scheduling philosophy

Screenshot 2020-05-17 at 12.55.28 PM

The only way CC was able to fill a 21K-seat stadium was to draw the fans in as in this artist rendering.

In this space today, we were supposed to discuss recruiting.

That can wait for another day simply because there was a timely development over the extended weekend that put Temple playing in 21,000-seat Brooks Stadium in 2025.

Screenshot 2020-05-17 at 10.50.54 PM

It’s so rare for some real news about Temple football so we’re going to jump on this topic while it’s hot.

Now signing a 1-for-1 deal with Coastal Carolina (here, 2024, there 2025) is problematic enough but seeing the Temple Owls regress to playing in 21,000-seat stadiums is something I thought we were long past.  This after Brooks Stadium increased its seating capacity from 6,400 in 2018 to 21,000 in 2019.

Something we should be long past, at least.

Yet here with are with Coastal Carolina added to a future group that includes this:

Screenshot 2020-05-17 at 12.45.54 PM

To me, getting into a Power 5 Conference should always be a long-range goal for Temple football. Temple is one of the largest universites in the nation and the country’s 6th-best producer of educated professionals.

The Owls belong in a group with Penn State, Pitt, Syracuse, Rutgers, BC, Louisville, West Virginia and, yes, Cincinnati, and not necessarily with the Tulsas and the Tulanes.

The question has always been how to get there and television is just one advantage Temple has. If you buy the argument that Rutgers is in the New York market, there is no Power 5 team in only two of the top 10 markets: Philadelphia and Houston. USC and UCLA are in Los Angeles, Northwestern is in Chicago, TCU in Dallas/Ft. Worth, Stanford in Frisco/San Jose, Boston College in Boston, Georgia Tech in Atlanta and Maryland in D.C.

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Temple’s TV ratings when on in the Philadelphia market surpass those of Penn State in the same market for seven of the last 10 times the two have been on TV opposite the other. The Temple-Notre Dame game (2015) is the most-watched college football game in the history of Philadelphia TV. Before you give credit to ND, the Irish and Penn State played three times on national TV and did not come near the Temple numbers in this massive market. Temple owns the Philadelphia market, largely due to the fact that its 35,641 full-time students, 12,500 full-time employees and 175,000 of its living 279,000 graduates still reside in it.

The answer, though, is that TV is just not enough. If it were, Temple would be in the ACC by now. Mix TV success in with attracting fannies in the seats and that moves Temple to the head of the P5 prospect class.

Attract 50,000 fans a game to Lincoln Financial Field or in excess of 30,000 fans a game to an on-campus stadium and do it over a long period, perhaps a decade.

That’s why it’s called a long-term goal.

How to do it?

Schedule and beat Power 5 teams. Scheduling and beating Power 5 teams is something Temple used to do (Maryland, 2011, 2018 and 2019), Vanderbilt (2014), and Penn State (2105) on a fairly regular basis. Four of those five games were blowouts. The Owls did by successfully recruiting against P5 schools in half of the Al Golden and Matt Rhule classes and filling those classes by “trusting the film” and recruiting “tough kids” like Tyler Matakevich and Haason Reddick who eventually became NFL players. They did it by emphazing the run, shortening the game, being tougher than teams with better talent.

By doing so, Temple had the second-highest percentage increase in the nation in attendance (from an average of 15K in 2008 to 29K in 2019) of any team, either P5 or G5. Temple football is one of the underrated success stories of this century and the Owls didn’t do it by beating Stony Brook and Bucknell.

How not to ever have a chance of being invited to the Big Boys’ table? Do what Temple is doing now.

 

Scheduling Coastal Carolina, Idaho, Lafayette, Wagner, Norfolk State, Rhode Island is the right turn on the road to oblivion. A home game against, say, Vandy, puts 10K more fans in the seats than one against Lafayette. Home games against regional foes like Rutgers and Pitt would put even more fannies in the stands. Winning those games attracts attention from the larger conferences.

Another way of not doing it is playing the P5 teams and going with an RPO offense that stops the clock and gives more talented teams needless extra possessions.

Beating Power 5 teams, as we found in the last two bowl games, is hard. As JFK said about the Moon landing, we don’t do it because it’s easy but because it is hard.

By scheduling the Coastal Carolinas of the world, it looks like Temple is taking the easy way out. Temple should be better than that.

Saturday: Recruiting Patterns

05.15.20
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Temple football as Lysol Spray

Screenshot 2020-05-14 at 9.38.50 AM

Got to feel for the people whose unenviable job is to sell college football season tickets.

I’m sure they are given a script to follow because I got something like this again left on my voicemail yesterday.

“Hi, Mike, just checking base to see what you are going to do about season tickets. I know it’s a crazy time but wanted to see what your thinking was …. blah … blah … blah.”

Problem is, they are giving these guys and gals an impossible job. They are trying to sell a product that doesn’t exist or won’t have in stock. It’s like being a Lysol Disinfectant Spray salesman. Lysol spray is a favorite product of mine that I thought was always going to be available and now cannot get in any store or online and, frankly, I don’t know when I ever will. Tried supermarket chains Weis, Giant and Acme, then moved to the Dollar stores and even the small mom and pop pharmacy down the street.

No luck.

Temple football these days is a little like Lysol spray.

Screenshot 2020-05-14 at 9.37.11 AM

The difference is no Lysol spray guys are calling me.

We think there will be college football but, as long as people in the media vacillate between some semblance of a fall season and moving the entire thing until spring, the product is “currently unavailable.”

Here’s my true feelings: Get back to me when a decision has been made if and when the season is going to be played and only then will I move forward with the purchase. It’s hard to commit a couple hundred bucks to something that might not exist.

Ironically, the type of season talked about now might be more beneficial to Temple than anybody else. At least one idea floated around will start the season late, and include only conference games and one “regional rivalry” game chosen by mutual agreement. To me, that would be an AAC schedule and maybe the Rutgers’ game.

That would be a good season, eliminating the angst involved of opening at Miami and against former Temple player Quincy Roche and pretty much giving the Owls an even playing field against every team not named Cincinnati. After the UNC debacle, I don’t look forward to playing a team with significantly more talent than Temple and I think Miami might fall into that category.

Who knows?

The way the Owls competed against Cincinnati in the last five years (winning four-straight followed by a 15-13 loss last season on basically a missed extra point returned for two), they could have a better than 50/50 shot at every game on the schedule from a pure talent standpoint. If they can fix the special teams, it could be a special season.

I would sign for those season tickets today. Just give me a firm starting date and my check will be in the mail.

Maybe by that time I might be able to get a bottle of Lysol as well.

 

05.11.20
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Virtual Press Conference: Rod Carey

Everything is virtual these days.

Virtual graduations.

Virtual games.

Even a virtual Kentucky Derby showdown between Seattle Slew, Affirmed and Secretariat (spoiler alert: Secretariat won).

There are even actual newscasts seeming virtual with reporters and weather people working from home.

Temple head coach Rod Carey gave his thoughts on the NFL draft from home via Skype to reporters from Jeff Skversky to Fran Duffy, two guys with deep Temple connections.

Maybe it’s time for a Carey press conference on the state of the program where no reporters have to show up and the folding chairs for the press don’t have to be six feet apart.

NCAA Football: Florida at Miami

Scott Patchan could have filled an area of need for Temple.

If there was one, these would be the five questions I’d ask Rod:

You brought the RPO offense from NIU but Temple has used play-action and a power running game to post consecutive 10-win seasons and recruited that type of personnel. What was your thinking behind that?

What Rod would probably say: “Really, that’s the only offense we were comfortable running at NIU and Mike (Uremovich) doesn’t know how to run anything else.”

What we hope he would say: “Yeah, that was a mistake. We took a long look at the film and we’re going do try to establish the run first and have explosive plays in the passing game of play fakes. When you have a guy with a great arm like Anthony, you can’t be exposing him to decisions on whether or not to run the ball. Plus, Ray Davis and our OL gives us a chance to establish the run. Once that happens, I can see a lot of success off play-action to guys like Jadan and Branden.”

carey

What did Quincy Roche say to you when he transferred to Miami and what did you say to him? 

What Rod would probably say: “We have a rule that once you are in the portal, you are off the team. We wished him good luck.”

What we hope he would say: “We pointed out that Haasan and Muhammad were first-round defensive linemen picks out of Temple and told him there was no reason he couldn’t follow in their footsteps. Plus, we showed him how much progress he made in one year under Walter (Stewart) and if that was repeated next year, the sky would be the limit.”

Temple fans haven’t watched their team beaten 55-13, 63-21, and 45-21 in the same season in a long time. What do you attribute those lopsided games to?

What Rod would probably say: “We had a lot of bad luck, turnovers, missed assignments, things like that. We just let those games get away from us. Matt (Hennessy) didn’t play in the UCF game and that hurt us.”

What we hope he would say: “That kind of alludes to what I said above. Temple has been known in the past as a tough team that runs the ball, controls the clock, shortens the game, and wins it in the fourth quarter. That’s what we have to get back to and that’s where we hope to be in 2020. I’m still kicking myself for throwing the ball 26 times in the first 34 plays at Cincinnati. If we had flipped that, like we started to do in the second half, we would have won that game.”

Did you show any interest in available portal players Scott Patchan (Miami DE who ended up at Colorado State) or Ricky Slade (Penn State running back who is still in the portal)?

What Rod will probably say: “We were only interested in guys who wanted to be here. Manny Walker, for example, wanted to be here.”

What we hope he would say: “We know we had holes at DE and RB and looked at every available guy. We tried to sell Scott on proving to Miami they gave up on him too soon but he wanted to go play for Steve Addazio.”

You mentioned after the NFL draft that Temple is already cashing in on the NFL success with potential recruits? Which recruits with Power 5 offers have committed since the NFL draft?

What Rod will probably say: “I can’t tell you names but I can say we got a few guys who MAC schools offered and we hope to get more.”

What we hope Rod would say: “We got a few guys who saw the NFL stuff, want to play in the NFL, and said Temple was a proven place to achieve that dream. We convinced Muhammad and Haason to make those calls and that really helped us with recruits. We got one guy with an offer from the SEC, one from the Big 10 and one from the Big 12. We’re going to release those names soon.”

Friday (5/15): Advantages of a shortened season

Monday (5/18): Recruiting Patterns

Friday (5/22): Suspending Campaigns

 

05.08.20
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Smoking Out the AAC winner: Cincy

Cincinnati v Tulane

In the run-up to the college football season, we’ve seen some hope among the generally accepted gloom and doom.

South Korea’s baseball season already has resumed with games on ESPN, albeit in empty stadiums. South Korea’s first case of the virus came on the same day as the United States’ first case.

So, yes, they are doing better than us but that doesn’t mean we won’t get to where they are. Also, New Zealand has declared it has had no new cases for the past two weeks. If college football can play its entire season in New Zealand, no problem.

That won’t happen.

The larger point is that there is hope for a college football season in the United States, even this year.

For the purposes of this post, though, we’ll assume there will be a season either this fall or next spring and it doesn’t look good from a Temple football perspective.

The Vegas Over/Under for the Owls is 5.5 wins.

be272-aac

Five. Point. Five.

I’ll take the over only when I’m sure there will be a season, but the line is telling me something.

Vegas was spooked by the Owls’ bowl result and the losing way they ended the season and is putting their money where their heads are.

So who is going to win the AAC?

Memphis won last year, but lost its head coach and that always has a negative impact on the next season.

UCF looks strong again but my money is on Cincinnati finally taking home the crown. Luke Fickell turned down the West Virginia job to remain at Cincinnati two years ago and it almost paid off but the Bearcats lost their final two league games to Memphis (regular season and championship). He turned down Michigan State in February to remain at Cincinnati.

I just wish one Temple coach would turn down one Power 5 job let alone two.

Two years ago, Cincy came to Philadelphia with 35 freshmen (including red shirts and true) on the traveling squad and those youngsters extended Temple into overtime before losing.

This year, based on coaching, experience and four-straight years of having the No. 1 recruiting class in the conference (either Scout.com or Rivals.com ratings.), the Bearcats should take home the league crown.

At least that’s my pick here on May 8. Next season should be over by May 8 and we will find out for sure by then.

We’ll go with an AAC East finish of Cincy, UCF, Temple in that order and fervently hope it’s flipped the other way.

Friday (5/15): Advantages of a shortened season

Monday (5/18): Recruiting Patterns

Friday (5/22): Suspending Campaigns

05.04.20
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5 Under-The-Radar Temple wins

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Outstanding job of painting the end zones at Temple Stadium in this game against West Virginia in 1972

Hat tip to Rutgers’ fan and follower of this blog Joe P. for this idea.

When something you love is likely almost a year away from kickoff, the chances are you are going to run out of ideas for a post now and then.

tustadium

The empty area in an otherwise full Temple Stadium is where the band sat in 1972.

This is one of those nows and a couple of weeks ago Joe threw out the then part because on the RU fan site they were talking about wins under-the-radar that were on impressive when thinking about it but maybe not as much at the time.

We’re going to toss out the bowl wins, the championship wins, and, most importantly, in my mind, the biggest win–getting that 74-year-old Penn State monkey off our backs in 2015.

Those wins were so on the radar the screen cracked.

These are five in my mind that are very impressive in the context of history and how the teams the Owls beat finished, so they rate right up in there in the under-the-radar category.

Temple 39, West Virginia 36 (1972)

Before a Saturday night crowd of 14,854 (capacity 20,000) in the old Temple Stadium, the Owls beat West Virginia. That was important because it came only the second year after Wayne Hardin was charged with taking Temple from what was essentially FCS status (playing teams like Xavier and Delaware) to big-time status. The late Paul Loughran returned two punts for scores and West Virginia was a big-time team, losing to NC State in the Peach Bowl at the end of that season.  It set up a terrific 1973 season for the Owls.

Temple 34, Boston College 7 (1974)

The Owls were coming off a 9-1 season in 1973 but that lone blemish stuck out like a sore thumb, a 45-0 loss at Boston College. The Owls got revenge the next season in a big way as a crowd of 17,988 turned out on a Saturday afternoon at Temple Stadium and almost reversed the score. The Owls would go on to win 14-straight games over two years, the longest winning streak in the nation at that point. That BC team Temple dominated finished 8-3 and beat Navy (37-0), Villanova (55-7) and Syracuse (35-0).

Temple 49, Syracuse 17 (1979)

Syracuse had future NFL Hall of Famers Art Monk (Washington Redskins) and Joe Morris (New York Giants) and a future NFL quarterback (Bill Hurley) but the Owls had Sherman “Tank” Myers, who scored five touchdowns. The Owls rallied from a 14-0 deficit to score 49 of the game’s next 52 points. Syracuse was no joke that year, beating West Virginia, Northwestern, Miami (Fla.), and a 7-4 Navy team by the score of 30-14 but the Owls had their number at Veterans Stadium that night. ‘Cuse also beat 11-1 McNeese State, 34-7, in the Independence Bowl.

Temple Owls Bruce Arians

 

Temple 13, Pitt 12 (1984)

A Jim Cooper Sr. field goal was the game-winner and the Owls broke a 42-year losing streak to Pitt at Veterans Stadium. When Bruce Arians beat the NFL Super Bowl representative Seattle Seahawks, a reporter in the post-game that day asked him if that was his biggest win. Arians didn’t flinch: “No, my biggest win was beating Pitt for the first time in 42 years at Temple.”  The Owls finished 6-5 against what was then the No. 10-toughest schedule in the country.  That Pitt team would beat Penn State, 31-11, in State College later that year.

Bernard Pierce

Temple 27, Navy 24 (2009)

One of the Owls nine wins that season came on the road at 10-win Navy, 27-24, as Bernard Pierce ran for 267 yards and two touchdowns. That Navy team beat Notre Dame, 23-21, and clobbered an outstanding Missouri team, 35-13, in the Texas Bowl. James Nixon took a kickoff to the house as Matt Falcone provided not one but two downfield blocks that sprung the 4.3-40 Nixon. Temple would finish 9-4 and lose to UCLA in the Eagle Bank Bowl, 30-21.

Those were just five off the top of my head, but in the honorable mention category has to be the 28-14 win over Bowling Green to break a 20-game losing streak in 2006, especially sweet since the Falcons had dropped 70 points on the Owls in the two consecutive years before that. Also, the 1986 win over Peach Bowl-bound Virginia Tech in Norfolk was especially satisfying since the Hokies finished 9-2-1 that year and the Owls clubbed them, 29-16.

Nothing that happened in the Dark Ages (Jerry Berndt, Ron Dickerson, and Bobby Wallace) was especially gratifying. Yes, the Owls were a 36.5-point underdog and won at Virginia Tech, but losing at home to William and Mary the next week nullified that one. Since we brought up Rutgers earlier, beating them in Piscataway the year they beat Penn State was especially gratifying in that rivalry.

Those are mine. I’m sure there are some I missed but I will blame it on the CORVID mania.

Friday (5/8): Smoking Out the Winner

Monday (5/11): Virtual Press Conference

Friday (5/15): Recruiting Patterns

Monday (5/18): Suspending Campaigns

05.01.20
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Owls poised to build on NFL draft success

 

Probably one of the wisest of many clever things former NFL coaching legend Bill Parcells said was this:

“You are what you’re record says you are.”


The interior push with
Ifeanyi and Dan to sack
opposing quarterbacks this
year could be the best we’ve
seen since Joe Klecko was
playing in the middle
all by himself

When it comes to projecting success at either the NFL level or the college level, clues are almost always left behind.

That’s why I got extremely excited when the Owls brought in Adam DiMichele from his junior college baseball hiatus in 2005. His Sto-Rox high school football record: 35 touchdown passes his senior year and an offer from Penn State. Not excited when one of his successors, Vaughn Charlton, brought with him nine touchdown passes his senior year at Avon Grove and a smattering of MAC offers in addition to his Temple one.

Just as I expected, DiMichele was an outstanding quarterback at Temple and Charlton, to be kind, was mediocre.

 

I remember at the time Charlton apologists were saying those stats were due to Avon Grove playing a “flex-bone” in the now-defunct Southern Chester County League.

Flex-bone, doggy bone, I said. If Charlton is competing in the SCCL and DiMichele in the WPIAL, Charlton would have to have 50 touchdown passes to be even compared to DiMichele.

I was right and so was Parcells. You are what you put on tape and in the stat sheet. There are exceptions but they are so rare they are not worth mentioning.

That’s why the Philadelphia Eagles’ first-round pick of Jalen Reagor was illuminating to Temple’s chances of making a splash in the NFL draft again last year. If Reagor’s “record” is a guide, the Owls could be poised to have their first offensive player chosen in the first round since Paul Palmer in 1987.

Jadan Blue’s 40-yard dash speed is 4.38 while Reagor was clocked at a 4.47. Reagor’s junior year stats vs. Blue’s junior year stats:

Reagor: 13 games, 72 catches, 1,061 yards, 9 touchdowns

Blue: 13 games, 95 catches, 1,067 yards,  4 touchdowns

Since Reagor’s “better” of his two years were his junior one, it’s a fair comparison. The bar is pretty low for Blue now since he had more than 20 catches and six yards than Reagor did and he’s faster and the same size (6-foot-1).

However, if Blue gets nine touchdowns or more and repeats or even gets close to his 2019 Owl stats, you can book it.

He will be a first-round pick.

My guess that there will be a season no later than spring of 2021 (still holding out hope for the fall, though) and my money is on Blue putting up close to those numbers again.

I can see three other possible Owl picks in the 2021 draft, quarterback Anthony Russo and defensive tackles Ifeanyi Maijeh and Dan Archibong.

Compare Russo’s 2019 stats to Green Bay Packers’ first-round pick Jordan Love:

Russo: (6-4, 235 pounds) 21 touchdowns, 12 interceptions, 246 completions in 419 attempts; 

Love (6-4, 225): 20 touchdowns, 17 interceptions, 293 completions in 473 attempts

To put that even in a better perspective, Russo is playing in a far-tougher league. Almost every team in the AAC is tougher than any team in the Mountain West.  You can say all you want about Love’s “footwork” being better than Anthony’s, but the proof is in the stat pudding.

To me, Anthony can go 21-12 again and pick up two more wins and he’s between a 2-4 pick. Winning will cure all that. If he goes 30 and 5 with those wins, he’s a first-round pick. He can make all the throws and his maturity should cut down on his INTs.

Footwork smootwork.

I also think Maijeh’s defensive tackle teammate, Dan Archibong, has an excellent chance of being picked in the first seven rounds. The interior push with Ifeanyi and Dan to sack opposing quarterbacks this year could be the best we’ve seen since Joe Klecko was playing in the middle all by himself.

Beyond that, there will be a surprise. To me, Chapelle Russell was this year’s one. There are plenty of Owls with that same kind of potential. We won’t mention any names because I think it could be as many as a half-dozen. Not all six will rise above UDFAs but those with fire in their bellies and sacks and interceptions will.

Winning games will put those guys on the NFL radar faster than anything else.

Like Bill said, you are what your record is.

Monday (5/4): 5 Best Next-Tier Wins

Friday (5/8): Smoking Out the Winner

Monday (5/11): Virtual Press Conference

Friday (5/15): Recruiting Patterns

Monday (5/18): Suspending Campaigns

 

 

 

04.27.20
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Owls dominate the NFL draft again

Screenshot 2020-04-26 at 1.16.42 PM

Penn State might be Linebacker U. and Miami (Ohio) The Cradle of Coaches but Temple is developing into NFL U.

At least in the G5 football world.

Hard to come to any other conclusion than this for current high school recruits based on the  2020 NFL draft. If those players have an eventual goal of making the NFL and are on the fence between picking a P5 or a G5 school, Temple is the place to go.

It’s not just the 2020 draft. It’s been that way for a while. The Owls have been the No. 1 Group of 5 team for nearly a decade in producing NFL draft choices.

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Over the three days of the 2020 draft, center Matt Hennessy was drafted in Round 2 by the Atlanta Falcons, defensive back Harrison Hand drafted in Round 5 by the Minnesota Vikings, and linebackers Shaun Bradley (Round 6, Philadelphia Eagles) and Chapelle Russell (Round 7, Tampa Bay) also were picked.

The reasons have been simple. Al Golden re-established a Temple TUFF culture that carried over into the next four coaches. Golden did it by making running, lifting and toughness a 365-day deal at the Edberg-Olson Complex. His practices were legendary for the level of hitting involved.  It is now up to Rod Carey to sustain that culture. Tyler Matakevich explained it perfectly once. “Our practices are harder than the games, so we’re really prepared to hit come game time,” he said.

Playing in an NFL stadium around an NFL culture also helps.

A couple of interesting things about this current draft: Had Quincy Roche come out instead of going to Miami, he would have been no lower than a No. 4 pick out of Temple. He was unquestionably the best player on a defense that included Bradley, Hand and Russell.

Hennessy will be joining former Temple center Alex Derenthal as a resident of Atlanta. Derenthal is the strength coach at Georgia State (which beat Tennessee last year).

Bradley is the first Temple player drafted by the Eagles in a long time and has a chance to stick if he can cut down on the targeting penalties. He plays hard through the whistle and sometimes beyond. I thought Mel Kiper’s analysis of Bradley was way off. He said Bradley “didn’t pack a punch” but I don’t think I’ve seen a Temple player hit as hard as Bradley over the last four years, and that includes Roche. If anything, he packs too much of a punch.

I wish the Eagles drafted Hennessy as well since Jason Kelce is getting long in the tooth. Yet the Eagles were set on Jalen Hurts in the second round. It might be just me, but Justin Jefferson was the best wide receiver in the draft and the Eagles could have had him in Round 1 and either Hennessy or Ohio State running back J.K. Dobbins in Round 2 and been much better off. If they were concerned about the backup QB position, they could have upgraded from Nate Sudfeld and picked some better options in the lower rounds.

No doubt in my mind that the Owls had a better three days at the NFL draft than the other birds playing in the same stadium but only time will tell.

Russell will get every opportunity to shine as Bruce Arians has pretty much an all-Temple staff at Tampa Bay.

Getting drafted his one thing. Sticking in the NFL is another and, based on watching their careers here, I think all five of these guys have a good shot. The last 12 Temple players drafted currently are still on active rosters and only eight schools–all Power 5–have that kind of streak going. For the fourth time in five years, Temple has had more players drafted than any other G5 school. Only the “mythical national championship” team of UCF had more players drafted than Temple in the last five years.

Whatever happens, Temple should parlay NFL drafting success into attracting better recruits starting now.

Friday: Temple in the 2021 Draft

Monday (5/4): 5 Best Next-Tier Wins

Friday (5/8): Suspending Campaigns

Monday (5/11): Virtual Press Conference

Friday (5/15): Recruiting Patterns

Monday (5/18): Smoking Out The Winners

04.24.20
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Spring Football looking more likely

Screenshot 2020-04-22 at 11.22.09 PM

The number on my cellphone flashed as unfamiliar the other day so I let it go to voice mail. The guy on the other end said he was from Temple and wanted to tell me that “the deadline for season ticket renewals” had been “extended” until May 1.

What’s the rush, I thought? Has this guy read the news recently?

The biggest Temple football news a year ago at this time was the absence of real hitting in the spring for the first time in memory for a lot of Temple fans.

season

 

In April of 2019, the faithful crammed into the seats–with no social distancing–to watch this drill: Punt returner catches the ball, then runs through a line of players on both sides who hit him gently with pads.

That’s not the Temple TUFF I had come to know and love. It became apparent I wasn’t going to go over a stat sheet and see Jadan Blue with 119 yards and three touchdown catches, as I did after the 2017 game. There was no “Cherry and White” game anymore.

At that point, a lot of us (raising my hand here) got up out of the seats and walked out of the Olympic sports complex.

Now it appears that we will have hitting in the spring, but it will be next spring and in real games, not practices. According to a column in Wednesday’s Forbes, the writer assumes it is pretty much a given that there won’t be football in the fall. His reasoning is that since the students probably won’t be coming back, it doesn’t figure the athletes will, either.

Bummer.

Since the coronavirus has turned the world upside down, it only figures to turn college football upside down as well. Fall becomes spring. Spring becomes fall.

That was the latest in several stories that first started out as speculation, then assumption. Until a few days ago, I thought it was possible that my beloved Temple Owls would be playing this fall. I thought we’d have to wear masks and gloves and they’d sell only every other seat in the 70K stadium but that doesn’t seem plausible now.

If we have to wait a few extra months for Temple football, so be it. I’d rather have all of our fans healthy in the spring than worrying about a recurrence of these quarantines in the fall.

Since I don’t think that the May 1 deadline will be set in stone, that phone call will remain unreturned until some kind of concrete announcement is made.

Monday: Owls and the NFL Draft

04.20.20
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TU: One Step back, two steps forward?

pophead

Temple’s best two football eras came by hiring guys who were successful head coaches at other big-time programs, as witnessed by the BOT’s putting their money where their mouths were here to hire Pop Warner.

Every time Temple changes a head coach, and that’s far too many recently, we argue against a line of thinking in the AD’s office that Temple should take one step back for two steps forward.

That is, hiring a “promising coordinator” from a big-time program and essentially giving up one year so he learns on the job how to be a head coach and gives Temple a good back end of that contract to make up for the learning curve.

When Geoff Collins left, we argued that Temple was past all of that and the Owls could not survive this pattern of one bad year and a couple of good ones. Fortunately, it took Manny Diaz leaving after 18 days for Pat Kraft to adopt that strategy.

It worked in the sense that the Owls went sideways, not backward, in Rod Carey’s first season, unlike what they did in the inaugural seasons of Matt Rhule and Collins. While Collins went 6-6 in his first regular season, it represented a four-loss drop from the previous two with essentially the same talent.

Every new coach since Wayne Hardin left was either a failed head coach at the place before him (Jerry Berndt was 1-11 at Rice before coming to Temple) or a coordinator (Ron Dickerson, Clemson; Al Golden, Virginia; Steve Addazio, Florida; Rhule, Temple via New York Giants and Collins, Florida).

Screenshot 2020-04-19 at 11.46.30 AM

Bob Mizia (left) and Pete Righi with coach Wayne Hardin in 1975

 

Bobby Wallace doesn’t count because he was a Division II head coach and it could be argued jumping two divisions eliminates any game-day coaching advantages he might have had because the CEO aspect of a FBS job is so much different.

 

The only person who had a good first season was Addazio, and his inexperience as a head coach was somewhat ameliorated by his hiring key members of a staff coming off a national championship (Chuck Heater, Florida DC, and Scot Loeffler, Tim Tebow’s QB coach, among several).

Pop Warner had two regular winning seasons his first two years at Temple. So did Hardin. If Carey’s next regular season is a winning one, he will join that elite company.

Friday: Spring Football?

Monday: (4/27): Temple and The NFL Draft

Friday (5/1): 5 Best Next-Tier Wins

Monday (5/4): Suspending Campaigns

Friday (5/8): Virtual Press Conference

Monday (5/11): Recruiting Patterns

Friday (5/15): Smoking Out The Winners

 

04.17.20
by

Once things return to normal, what next?

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Gabe Infante is a legendary high school football coach in Philadelphia.

In as perfect a world as possible for Temple football, Rod Carey would go from eight wins his first season to double digits his second and win two championships every six years along a couple of bowl games.

I’m not greedy enough to think Temple winning a championship every year is possible because a lot of schools like SMU, UCF and Cincinnati are also trying to do the same thing. Still, Temple is in a perfect geographic spot–the exact middle of 46 percent of the nation’s population–and should be able to pan enough gold from that mine to dominate the AAC.

The world has changed a lot in the past two months, but that doesn’t stop us from dreaming about what could be once everything gets back to normal. Everything will get back to some semblance of normal because the Spanish Flu–which killed far more people in 1918 than this virus will in 2020–did not last forever.

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National High School Coach of the Year Gabe Infante will have a positive impact on both Temple’s game plans and recruiting

After a year of watching Rod Carey, here is what I think is more likely to happen when things return to normal: Rod wins 6-7-8 games a year, probably doesn’t get Temple a championship and, as a consequence, does not become the hot prospect Al Golden, Steve Addazio, Matt Rhule and Geoff Collins were seen as. Temple, for its part, does what Temple always does: Keep mediocre coaches around forever.

There is, though, a possible third scenario where Carey makes Temple the NIU of the AAC and grabs a lot of championships and increases his 5-2 record against Big 10 teams to an even more healthy number. Maybe even wins a bowl game for once but that probably won’t happen at Temple if he delivers a title first (see Matt Rhule).

That means someone will eat Carey’s hefty buyout ($10 million this year, $8 million next and $6.5 million after Year Three), Temple would get another championship and everybody will be happy.

What happens then?

Temple could go back to hiring promising coordinators or grab another successful MAC-level head coach.

Or do something different, like elevate an assistant.

IF they go in the latter direction, they could do a whole lot worse than Gabe Infante, who is local, knows the recruiting landscape in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and, for a decade, had the second-best coached football team on the planet in St. Joseph’s Prep. (I will concede that the Bill Belicheck teams of this century were better-coached in a tougher place to win, the NFL.) Side note: As a long-time afficianado of high school football, there was no better-coached, least-penalized team I’ve ever seen at that level than St. Joseph’s Prep. The Hawks’ offensive line sprinted to the line of scrimmage–every other team walked–and then would pummel the defensive line on each and every snap. That’s damn good coaching right there.

If Infante can take an inner-city school six  blocks from Temple to being the Pennsylvania power of this century, he can work wonders up the street with a lot more resources and a $17 million practice facility.

Something for Temple AD Pat Kraft to put in the back of his mind when things get back to normal.

Monday: Two Steps Back, One Step Forward