Our friends over at Bull Run (actually, friend, Tim Riordan is a one-man show over there) asked us to answer Week 1 questions and we are only too happy to oblige.
Here they are:
And here are the week one questions..

1) Lets start with the new blood. There are several new coaches in the conference, which coach was the best get and why?

TFF: I don’t think that’s possible to tell now but, hypothetically, the best coach should surround himself with the best staff. If that’s the most important thing, it’s hard to argue against Steve Addazio and Temple. Chuck Heater was the defensive coordinator for Utah went it went 11-0. He was the co-defensive coordinator for Florida last year. Urban Meyer called him “Mother Theresa because he’s been a miracle-worker for us.” Scot (one T) Loeffler is the new offensive coordinator. He was quarterbacks coach at Michigan for Tom Brady. He was QB coach at Florida for Tim Tebow. If Daz lets these coaches coach and he takes over the motivation, these SEC coaches are the best in the MAC.

2) Lets look at the old blood? Which coach is the most likely to be dumped after the season and which is most likely to be plucked away by a big AQ school?

TFF: I think Ron English is most likely to be dumped. I think Frank Solich gets another chance at an AQ school.

3) Which somewhat realistically winnable non conference game would give the MAC the most publicity? What are the odds of the MAC team winning that game

TFF: Penn State vs. Temple. 50/50. Last year’s game was a 22-13 PSU win before 106,000 in State College. This year’s game will be before 70K in Philly (30K Temple fans, 40K PSU fans). Temple is much better this year. I’m sure Chester Stewart won’t get a chance to throw three picks like he did last year.

4) What do you think of the UMass addition and how would you realign the divisions?

TFF: I wish they would have gotten Marshall back instead. It’s one thing for Temple fans to drive 4 miles south of the Main campus to a 70K stadium. It’s another thing for UMass fans to drive 105 miles from their main campus for games in Gilette Stadium.

5) Who wins the East and what is their key game along that journey

TFF: Temple. Ohio at Temple. Solich and his read option confounded Golden and Mark D’Onofrio. Heater won’t even be fazed by it.

6) Who wins the West and what is their key game along that journey

Northern Illinois.

7) Rank the teams first to last

1) Northern Illinois

2) Temple

3) Ohio

4) Central Michigan

5) Toledo

6) Western Michigan

7) Bowling Green

8: Akron

9) Ball State

10) Buffalo

11) Miami

12) Kent

13) Eastern Michigan

TFF’s Week 1 MAC picks:
Temple 35, Villanova 14 _ Every fiber in my being says this is going to be a more epic beatdown, somewhere between 35-14 and 55-3. I’ll avoid the temptation to split the baby down the middle and go for 46-19. I’ll stick with 35-14 and leave it at that. Temple is a 6 1/2-point favorite. Easier money you’ll never see.
Idaho 28, Bowling Green 24 _ BGSU covers the 8-point spread in defeat.
Ohio State 41, Akron 7 _ OSU barely covers the hefty 33-point spread.
Missouri 35, Miami (Ohio) 14 _ Twenty-one is good enough to lay for the Tigers, who are giving 17.
Alabama 45, Kent State 3 _ Trent Richardson runs roughshod over KSU and helps Bama cover the 37.
Michigan 31, Western Michigan 14 _ Western Michigan comes close, but not close enough to cover the modest 14-point spread. All that extra practice time helps the Wolverines.
PITT 42, Buffalo 0 _ Panthers beat Bulls by the same score Temple did a year ago and easily cover the 30.
Northern Illinois 42, Army 28 _ Huskies beat Army by the same score Temple did a year ago.
Indiana 14, Ball State 10 _ In an upset, Ball State covers the 6 1/2 against its in-state rival.
Ohio 34, New Mexico State 7 _ Frank Solich’s crew has no problem on the road covering the 7 1/2.

Join the picking fun by joining Bull Run’s pick ’em this year:

Remember, the group ID: 13180
user name: 2008champs

It was about this time a year ago when I was trying to drum up Temple alumni support for attending the second annual Mayor’s Cup that an old Temple football player reached out to me.

No excuses, Temple fans. Thursday will be a great night for both football and the Owls. Be there.

The guy, a good guy and someone who I remembered as a player, said:
“Mike, I love your blog and I’m going to try to get to a game this year.”
I wrote him back something to the effect that: “See you in the parking lot at the Villanova game, then.”
“I won’t be able to make that one, but maybe one later in the season,” he replied.
Huh?
I’ve never understood that line of thinking.
Temple fans, if you are going to make a game, make this one.
It’s important for a number of reasons:
One, you can’t lose to Villanova. A lot of the euphoria over the nine-game winning streak and the bowl game against UCLA was wiped out for me by a loss to Villanova in the opening game that year. Every Temple detractor (and we all know there are many) added a “yeah, but” … as in Temple’s good, but yeah but it is in the MAC or “how good could Temple be” because it did not beat Villanova?

Updated Temple vs. Villanova depth chart is here: thanks to Owlsports.com

Getting your Temple TUFF fan butt in the seats and yelling your lungs out for this team will insure there are no “yeah buts” at the end of the season.
Two, this is a message game. It’s a message to the college football world that Temple, not Villanova, rules the city’s college football’s rooting interest. It’s a message to the Big East that they are missing out on something, a school with 270K alumni and 37K full-time students in the heart of the nation’s fourth (not fifth) largest market. Temple football has a documented history, hard ratings numbers, of doing well on TV. What it doesn’t have is a documented history of adding fannies in the seats to those numbers. A crowd of 40,000, mostly Cherry-clad fans, would send that message to the Big East and the rest of the college football world. Wear Cherry, not white.
Three, this is new Temple coach Steve Addazio’s first game.  Daz says everywhere he goes Temple alumni keep asking him about the third game. He said he’s not even thinking about the third game, that all he’s thinking about is beating Villanova.
That’s not coachspeak. This game is that important.
Temple must not only beat this team, but beat it bad, both on the field and in the stands.
That’s what creates a sustainable momentum.
That’s the only way to make the rest of the games after that meaningful.
Making time to be there for three hours on a Thursday night is not too much to ask any Temple alumni or student.

What Temple fans MIGHT expect from Chris Coyer on Thursday.

One of the momentous decsions in the early Steve Addazio Era is in the process of being made right now.
And it all comes down to a red shirt.
More precisely, an orange shirt.
That’s what the Temple quarterbacks have been wearing since spring ball.
The shirt means these guys can’t be rushed, can’t be sacked, can’t be hit, in practice.
While I understand the reasoning, what I don’t understand is how this will make Addazio’s first all-important decision easier.
Remember, I’m talking from the perspective of having seen guys like Vaughn Chartlon and Mike McGann throw 11 straight completions in seven-on-seven drills.
Both looked like Peyton Manning that day.
When the orange shirt came off, in “real” games, both looked like Rex Grossman.
Not good.
Let’s hope that Addazio takes the game film into account before he makes this most important of decisions in the coming days.
I don’t care who starts, I just want the guy to be a gamer and a leader and a guy who makes plays with defenders hanging all over him.
I did not see that in Chester Stewart in any of the last three years.
I did see that in Mike Gerardi last year, at most times.
If Chris Coyer beats Mike Gerardi out, then that means Temple is that much better set for Thursday night’s game. It means that Coyer can make plays with his feet as well as his arm. I did not see Gerardi making plays with his feet last year.
I don’t think it is possible for Juice Granger to be ready.
Not quite yet.
Call it a gut feeling based on reports from insiders at camp, but I think Daz goes to the darkhorse guy in redshirt sophomore Coyer, an Ohio State recruit.
Your call, Daz.
May you make it wisely.

Gotta love the personnel moves Steve Addazio has made so far in training camp and my personal favorite is moving the explosive Nate Smith (brother of former Eagles’ tight end L.J.) to fullback.
Daz announced that along with a few other interesting tidbits in the video above.
You remember the fullback position.
It’s been pretty much a non-factor at Temple since Shelley Poole blocked for Paul Palmer some 25 years ago.
Before that, a hard-charging guy named Mark Bright earned the MVP in the Garden State Bowl.
Smith was an explosive running back in high school and, in the backfield with Bernard Pierce, gives the defense something to think about before loading up to stop BP.
In other news on the video, Daz talks about moving George Washington High athlete Daquan Cooper to corner and says he’s going to work Cooper in on special teams, which I interpret to mean returning punts and kickoffs.
He doesn’t have a timetable for naming a starting quarterback but says “that’s not where we’re headed” when asked a question about playing more than one quarterback. At the same time, Daz indicates that he is working on a limited package with Juice Granger and Granger could have a role in the Villanova game.

Morkeith Brown’s leadership skills are on display from this video taken last year at this time. Go to the 4:01 mark on the time display.

My movie viewing habits can be best described as spotty.
I haven’t seen a movie in an actual theater in about 22 years.
I usually write down a list of movies in the back of my black book (the one I used to use for dates when I was young and handsome … well, young) and eventually get around to them in the summertime when they come on my Blue Ridge Cable under the $2.95 movies.
One of them was Invincible and I finally got around to it tonight.
It was a real tear-jerker, probably moreso because they used Temple play-by-play man Harry Donahue instead of the Hall of Famer Merrill Reese (a real Temple grad, who probably would have done the part). After nearly 20 long years of listing to Harry the D do Temple games, I kept thinking he would blurt out: “Papale makes the tackle. There’s a fumble. Eagles recover! No check that, the Giants recovered.”  Or: “Morton throws the ball and it’s INTERCEPTED! No, dropped.”
Then I realized that the movie was scripted and therefore Harry couldn’t make the kind of mistakes we’re all too familiar with and ones that Merrill just doesn’t make.
There was a scene in the movie where Dick Vermeil is down to cutting “either Papale or Sampson” and passes it around the table to his assistant coaches.
They all say keep Sampson and Vermeil takes that under advisement and keeps Papale.
I thought a lot about that while pouring over the Temple football depth chart tonight.



Morkeith Brown attracts a crowd at the bowl party.

  Having seen a lot of these guys in “real games” and not on the practice field, I don’t get a couple of things on that depth chart so Steve Addazio doesn’t have to take my thoughts under advisement but I’ll offer them anyway.
To me, he nailed the offensive line. Left tackle Pat Boyle (6-5, 320), left guard Derek Dennis (6-5, 328), center John Palumbo (6-3, 206), right guard Wayne Tribue (6-4, 324) and right tackle Martin Wallace (6-6, 340) have talent and more importantly nastiness to match their sizes.
What has me scratching my head is the “XWR” position that has Deon Miller starting and C.J. Hammond backing up.
To me, if you want explosive plays downfield, like Addazio promised, simply move James Nixon or Joey Jones over to that side to complement Rod Streater, the “ZWR” starter on the other side.
I didn’t see a whole lot of explosiveness in Miller or Hammond last year.
Nixon, Jones and Streater have enough explosiveness to blow up the Lincoln Financial Field scoreboard. Add a healthy RB like Bernard Pierce into the mix and they have enough C4 to bring down the place.
At quarterback, Chester Stewart “or” Mike Gerardi are listed as the co-starters, but that whole position is a work in progress.
I’m not concerned.
If there wasn’t talent in those first five guys, I’d be concerned.
I’ll take the five Temple QBs over the Villanova starter any day of the week.
Practice starts Friday.
My guess is that some positions will be tweaked by Sept. 1.
We’ll get to the defense soon enough, but suffice it to say that I’m happy to see Morkeith Brown as the starter at LE.
To me, he’s a born leader and, as such, he needs to be out there motivating the troops.



“After all I did to change the helmet to TEMPLE, Addazio is doing WHAT?”

I could see Al Golden was doing some of the right things way back when he was getting some wrong results.
Nothing made me jump for joy after a 1-11 first season like something in did in the off season after that year.
He ditched the T logo on the helmet for the classic throwback TEMPLE helmet.
It might not mean much to you and some of the other younger TEMPLE fans, but TEMPLE on the helmets meant a lot to me.
“We’re doing it to get back to our brand,” Golden said at the time. “When I was growing up Temple had a lot of  really good, tough, physical, teams and they all had that distinctive Temple on the helmet. We want to get back to those days.”
Those were pretty good days as I recall.
Let’s see.
In the Wayne Hardin days of the TEMPLE helmet, the Owls won 82, lost 50 and tied 1, regularly scared Penn State, beat the crap out of West Virginia (38-16) AT WEST VIRGINIA, beat the crap out of a bowl-bound Syracuse team (49-17), WON a bowl game, beating a PAC-10 team (28-17) … etc., etc.
In the Bruce Arians days of the TEMPLE helmet, the Owls twice won six games (against the 10th, not 119th toughest sked in the country) and had a Heisman Trophy runner up in Paul Palmer. Also, they were 5-0 against MAC teams, beat a bowl-bound MAC team (Toledo) by a 35-6 score and beat Pitt in 3 of 5 seasons.
In the last two years of the Al Golden TEMPLE helmet, the Owls won 17 and lost 8 in consecutive regular seasons.
In the T years, the Owls were largely the biggest joke in college football.
Can you see why I don’t like the T?

Bad Karma.
I know it’s the school logo and all, but put it on the field. Hey, you can even put it on the stripes down pants. The coaches can wear baseball caps with it featured.
Just don’t put it on the helmets.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s not that big a deal but it feels like a big thing to me now.
Tennessee has a T on its helmets. So does Tulane.
TEMPLE was telling people who we are and where we came from.
I liked that distinction. Plus, I think it looks better.
“I talked with a lot our coach Hardin’s guys,” Steve Addazio said his first day on the job, “and I appreciate some of you guys.”
Addazio wouldn’t have appreciated ANY of those guys on Cherry and White Day because, trust me, I talked to them and nobody liked the new helmet.
If he really appreciates those guys, and he should, he would rethink this ill-conceived idea.
If there’s a way to go back to TEMPLE on the helmets, I think that Steve Addazio should find that GPS and right this wrong Karma before it gets too far.
Only one of the T teams did anything worth a damn and that was the Dick Beck-captained 1990 Owls, who won seven games and were screwed out of a bowl after beating Boston College, 29-10, in Boston. Those Owls also beat Wisconsin. At Wisconsin.
If it can’t be done, I won’t like it but I can live with it especially if the Owls can beat the only Big 10 team on their schedule this year.
Then, as one of the ex-Owls alluded on Saturday, he can put a photo of himself on one ear flap and Chuck Heater’s mug on the other for all I care.

Steve Addazio said he was sitting out Adrian Robinson and Bernard Pierce because they “had great springs” and quarterback Chris Coyer “was fine” in this video that features iconic SID Al Shrier walking around in the background wearing the worst possible logo on his hat.

You can tell a lot about initial impressions.
I thought about that while walking into the Edberg-Olson Football Complex, oh, about 9:59 a.m. on Saturday morning.
The sound blasting in the background was Ce Lo Green’s hit “Forget You” which featured the cleaned-up version of the original viral hit lyrics.
I thought how nice to dedicate a song to Villanova, the next Owl opponent.
Or, someone said walking next to me, Al Golden.
“Ouch,” I said.
I understood where he was coming from, though.
My school of thought on Al Golden is, simply, this:
There was no man alive who Bill Bradshaw could have hired at the time who could have pulled Temple’s football program out of the quick sand better than Al Golden.
He was the right man for THAT time.
If yesterday showed me anything, Steve Addazio might be the right man for THIS time.
One of the players’ dads might have said it best.
“These guys are big-time SEC coaches,” he said. “Can you imagine these MAC coaches having stuff thrown at them like these guys are going to throw at them? Their heads will be spinning.”
I say might because we won’t know until the real numbers start pouring in from the West Coast precincts, but here are some real numbers I’m looking for this season:
1) A 35-14 (or better) win over Villanova on Sept. 1 (55-3 would be preferable);
2) A 10-2 (or better) record.
If the first number comes in, go to Vegas and place a sheckle or two on the second number coming to fruition.

The first number is important because, for all of Al’s admirable qualities, he couldn’t put away a seven-win FCS team and he lost to a national champion FCS team with a nine-win FBS team. That should not happen.
The second number is important because Golden set the bar high with that nine-win season two years ago and also because Al left Temple a wonderful parting gift:
Players.
Plenty of good ones.
Plenty of returning starters.
Plenty of really good talent he stashed away with a red shirt last year.
Myron Myles was one of them.
He gained 187 yards and caught a 22-yard touchdown pass from Connor Reilly.
Even Michael Doty, the less famous sibling of UConn superstar women’s basketball player Caroline Doty, caught a long touchdown pass.
They didn’t release depth charts but my guess is that Mike wasn’t on the first or second team.
Just a hunch.
There was sooooo much talent on that field yesterday it’s hard to know where to start.
James Nixon is going to be the greatest kickoff returner in America next year. You read that here first.
ERod and AJax will be the best tight end combo in the MAC. It’s not even close. Let’s stretch the field with the spread and watch the seams open up on the inside with dump offs to Eric Rodriguez and Alex Jackson.
I hope they put Nixon back on offense where he can stretch the field out of the spread with Rod Streater and Joe Jones and company.
The difference between Al and Daz as I saw it on the field yesterday was that Daz seems to be able to put these guys in better spots to utilize their talents. I just hope he finds someone else to punt by Sept. 1 because I don’t want to expose my NFL leg to a season-ending injury on a roughing-the-punter play. I want to use him for kickoffs and extra points only. Maybe a couple of field goals.
My friend, Ray, knows more nuts and bolts football than most guys I know.
“It’s hard to tell from a scrimmage,” Ray said. “But I know what I know and this is the most excited I’ve been coming out of a Cherry and White game in years.”
It’s nice to think that on your own, but it’s doubly nice when you can get that kind of validation from several good football sources.
Speaking of whom, Eagles’ coach Andy Reid was there. I thought I saw him over by the food trucks saying this was the greatest campus in America.
Reid sent his son to play for Daz, so that tells you all you need to know about how Andy Reid feels about Daz and being Temple TUFF.
Speaking of Temple TUFF, loved the T-shirts. I walked up to the table, wanted to buy one and the beautiful young lady there said, “Sorry, sir, this is for students only.”
Nice.
I thought this was Alumni Weekend.
On the way out, I saw the classic Temple football helmet being sold. The one with TEMPLE on it.
I thought that might be the last time I ever saw one, so I bought it.
In the parking lot afterward, I ran into some ex-Temple football players holding their tailgate. I told them about the T on the helmet.
Nobody liked it.
Nobody.
Hey, Daz has stepped up to the plate and gotten a hit most times since Dec. 23. He can afford a few swings and misses.
“If we beat Penn State, I don’t care what he puts on it,” I said.
“Hey,” one of the players said, “if we beat Penn State, he can put his picture on the side of the helmet if he wants to …”




The Owls probably won’t even need Matt Falcone (15) to punt because they will  be scoring touchdowns on every possession like depicted here. Still, it would be nice to save Brandon McManus strictly for the 157 extra points he will need to kick in the 2011 season.

Follow Temple football for 30-plus years, like I have, and you might have seen a lot of red flags along the way.
A red flag, by my definition, is one thing that leads a person to believe that the outcome of a particular endeavor probably won’t be desirable.
I saw a red flag in Temple’s hiring of Jerry Berndt, for example. How could Temple hire a guy to coach one group of Owls when he was coming off an 0-11 season coaching another group of Owls (Rice)?
I saw a red flag in the hiring of Ron Dickerson. Joe Paterno called him the best assistant coach in the country. If so, how come Dickerson, as defensive coordinator at Clemson, gave up 55 points in his last game?
Bobby Wallace? Don’t get me started. How do you expect a guy who has no East Coast roots to coach an East Coast team?

This is the only red flag I care about.

Red flags all.
Big red flags.
I’ve met Steve Addazio.
I like Steve Addazio.
Spring practice, by all accounts, is going very well.
That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have to jump over some red flags to earn my trust or really the trust of every Temple fan.
I’m willing to overlook the one red flag that every Florida fan seems to hate the guy because, in my mind, the buck stops with a head coach and he hasn’t been a head coach since Cheshire, Conn. If Addazio has any Florida sins, they were forgiven because no less a football expert than Urban Meyer saw fit to forgive them.
Still, I have some concerns.
I have not heard yet that there is a plan for a reliable, explosive, backup to Bernard Pierce. Maybe there will be. Geez, I hope so.  I don’t see a kid with close to Pierce-like talent in the program and that includes Matty Brown. Maybe when Nate Smith gets settled he will be but we don’t even know if he will  play running back.
No Pierce-like backup in sight so far. That’s a red flag.
Having Brandon McManus punt?
Not a big deal to Steve Addazio.
It’s a big deal to me.
I don’t want that valuable leg exposed to twice the injury risk so, by Villanova, I hope I see Matty Falcone punting (I know he’s injured now). Falcone was a first-team all-state punter at Palmerton High. Falcone was a special teams’ star for the Owls in the 2009 season, who missed all last year with a leg injury. Hopefully, he’ll get to kick some by July. If Matty can’t do it, somebody can. I find it hard to believe that in a school of 37,000 full-time students (OK, 18,000 boys) you can’t find a kid who can punt a football dependably.
Other than that, more green flags so far.
According to a few of the players I’ve spoken to, to a man they say “Addazio has us working twice, maybe three times, as hard as Golden did.”
Not one kid complained about it, either, saying that the extra conditioning will pay off in November and December.
Maybe even January.

Cherry and White game, 2:30 p.m., April 16

Practices are superbly organized and everyone seems ultra impressed with the way offensive coordinator Scot Loeffler and defensive coordinator Chuck Heater go about their business.
Loeffler is a professional at moving the ball and scoring touchdowns and Heater is the same way about stopping the ball and going the other way with it.
Addazio seems to be respected and hands-on, but not a micro manager like the last guy was.
That’s a good thing, not a bad thing.
Being a big-time college coach requires wearing too many hats to be a micro manager. You’ve got to hire great people and give them shared responsibility.
Addazio seems to have done that.
If all we have to worry about are backups at punter and running back, I’ll take it.
For now.

Hopefully, some of coach Dunphy’s lucky ‘stache will rub off on coach Addazio.

I’ll be the first to admit that my favorite sport is football followed by baseball.
Basketball has always been a distant third.
Not these last couple of weeks, though.
I’ll also admit that I’ve been caught up in this run by the Temple men’s basketball Owls because of the prestige this brings our great university and because I got to know a few of the kids on the basketball team and met coach Fran Dunphy, who I’ve always admired.
I admire him not just because he’s a winner but you know he loves Temple. You know there’s no question he’s here to stay. I could never say the same about the football coach who preceded Addazio.
Heck, I don’t know if I can say that about Addazio yet.
Meet coach Dunphy just once and he will make you feel like the most important person in the room.
I often see coach Dunphy in the hallways at Lincoln Financial Field and always say “Hi Fran.”
He doesn’t know me from Adam but he always stops and says, “How ‘ya feelin’? All right?”
I talked to other Temple fans and they tell me they’ve had a similar experience.
I don’t know if coach Addazio is the football version of coach Dunphy but, geez, I hope he is.
If coach Addazio can do what coach Dunphy has done, three league championships in his first three years, then he will match what coach Dunphy has done from a regular-season perspective.
If coach Addazio can win three league championships in his first three years and then win the bowl game in the fourth, then his postseason will have matched what coach Dunphy did on Thursday.
Winning a first-round NCAA game is very much the equivalent of winning a bowl game, especially the kinds of bowls MAC teams are sent to.
I love the way the two interact in the above video, which has a corny premise but both took in good humor.
Whatever happens now for the hoops’ squad is gravy, but I like gravy.
Hopefully, Addazio will serve up delicious mashed MAC potatoes with the same kind of gravy on top.
Good luck, Fran.
Good luck, Steve.
Hopefully, Temple basketball will still be playing on a national stage when the football team opens up spring practice in four days.

An actual photo from the 1984 Temple football win in A.C.

Today and tomorrow, some 10,550 fans are going to be packed into Boardwalk Hall, otherwise known as the Atlantic City Convention Center, to watch (hopefully) a couple of great Owl wins.
There’s no secret to Temple’s success there.
Mix in about 9,000 rabid Temple fans with some great coaching and you have three straight A-10 basketball titles.
Hopefully, that will be a fourth by Sunday.
Yet Temple football once held the spotlight there, too.
I was last there in the Orwellian Year of 1984 to watch Temple play an out-of-this-world football game.
That year, the Owls posted a great football win before a big and enthusiastic Temple following. It beat MAC champion Toledo (8-1-1 at the time) like a drum, 35-6.
Toledo went off to the California Bowl after that and Temple went home with a 6-5 record against the 10th toughest schedule in the country.
Atlantic City: Temple’s home away from home.