Hell is Coming for Villanova fans 9/3 and they don’t even know it.

By Mike Gibson
Smfh.
That’s tweet talk for shaking my f-ing head.
(I just learned that yesterday, but we won’t go into how.)
Well, smfh is what I was doing after reading some postings by Villanova football fans over on their Rivals.com board recently.
If I were Villanova, I would be respectful of Temple, say only nice things about the Owls and then talk after the game if I was lucky enough to pull off the upset.
But nooooooooooo, as John Belushi liked to say.
They are just doing a lot of talking. If the Wildcats are working on trick plays over at Villanova Stadium as much as their fans are working their jaws, we might be in trouble.
But I don’t think that’s possible.
Here are just some of my favorites:
“Remember #71 Ben Ijalana who will spend the night pancakeing your D linemen.” _ Villanova fan Uncle Ed (I left the misspelling of the word pancaking in for effect).

“Will Coach Talley pass the ball 76 times vs Owls? NO, because the Cats will be running the ball down your throats.”
_ Villanova fan Uncle Ed (Ed Rideout, pictured) on Rivals.com board

I guess the lineman Uncle Ed was referring to might be Outland Trophy candidate Andre Neblett but, unlike the Outland committee, I doubt if that grumpy old uncle even knows who Neblett is. He’ll find out in two weeks, though.
Or more Uncle Ed:
“Will Coach Talley pass the ball 76 times vs Owls? NO, because the Cats will be running the ball down your throats.”
Yeah, I guess a 1AA (or FCS) team can run the ball down the throats of a team that shut out Big East power UConn and NFL first-round running back pick Donald Brown for all but 3:39 of last year’s game.
Yeah, right.
Or 3rd General Wildcat:
“Villanova has two QB’s that could start on your team …”
In that context, it’s who, not that, General but I will let you slide because you were presumably educated at Villanova. Oh. Our third-string quarterback got offered (not just interest) from Ohio State, so I assume your top two guys could play at Ohio State.
Yeah, right.

Or Wideright82:”Step up on the 3rd and maybe you’ll get some respect, because as of now, outside your little Temple bubble, you guys are nothing but a joke.”
I have a funny (pun intended) feeling there are going to be a lot of guys wearing Cherry and White with Temple caps bouncing down the Lincoln Financial Field steps laughing at that joke come 10 p.m. or so Sept. 3.
This trash talking won’t hurt Temple’s cause at all because it will only help fill stronger, quicker athletes with a terrible resolve.
But that’s why they play the game on the field and that’s why I like having guys like Andre Neblett and Dominique Harris and Vaughn Carraway and Jason Harper and Steve Maneri and Adrian Robinson and Alex Joseph on my side.
To name a few.
We’ll give you Ben Ijalana, whoever he is.
Do the neighborly thing and spare Villanova fans three hours of hell by purchasing all of the available tickets …

Al Golden and Bill Cosby agree on importance of Villanova game.

By Mike Gibson
Everyone I go, I get buttonholed by fellow Temple fans who invariably ask me one question.
“What do we have to gain by playing Villanova?”
Then they say, “If we win, say, 20-17, we’re supposed to win. If we lose, it’s a disaster.”
I always tell them to relax.

We’ve got plenty to gain by playing Villanova.
Heck, they used to ask Wayne Hardin that question way back when about both Villanova and Delaware.
“My philosophy is to play ’em and beat the heck out of ’em,” Hardin said.
For the most part, Hardin did beat the heck out of them, 7-3-1 against Villanova and 9-2 in his final 11 games vs. Delaware.
There’s an argument to be made that there’s even more, not less, to be gained by playing them now.

Wayne Hardin Era vs. Villanova

Owls went 7-3-1 against Villanova under coach Hardin.

1970 = L 31-26
1971 = T 13-13
1972 = W 12-10
1973 = W 34-0
1974 = W 17-7
1975 = W 41-3
1976 = L 24-7
1977 = W 38-15
1978 = W 27-17
1979 = W 42-10
1980 = L 23-7

Villanova, unlike us, has built up some street cred in the sport over the last 20 years.
Villanova, rightly or wrongly, is viewed as having a good football team by people in Philadelphia.
Temple, rightly or wrongly, is not.
That’s why a big Temple win, as I and most experts (who live outside Philadelphia) expect, will be the culmination of a hugely positive night for the university and a stepping off point for Penn State.
If Temple beats Villanova, 20-17, I’m not as enthused about the Penn State game as I would about my score: 34-13. I made that prediction in Feb. and I’m sticking with it.
If Temple beats Villanova, 49-0, I’d be worried if I was Joe Paterno.
Villanova fans remember playing Temple in 2003. They think because No. 1 happpened in 2003 that No. 2 will happen in 2009. This is not 2003. Temple football hit rock bottom in 2003 and had a disinterested head coach who lived in Alabama much of the year.

This is 2009. Temple has a head coach who is from this area and virtually lives in his office for 365 days a year. He’s done things the right way. He’s established recruiting connections with local coaches. He’s re-energized the fan base and knows the importance of the game to the Temple community.
“It should be a great game for the city,” Golden said in a terrific interview with Owlscoop.com editor John DiCarlo. “What we need is a unified front here at Temple. I can’t speak for Villanova. We need a unified front here at Temple. We need the alumni, and we need supporters saying, ‘Hey, let’s support the team. Let’s stop worrying about the politics of the game. Let’s support the team, let’s support the administration.’
“And again, if anybody’s got a problem with the selection of the game, blame me. Don’t blame (athletic director) Bill Bradshaw or the athletic administration. I thought we needed this game when we got here. Bill supported me, and we need to support the administration right now.”
Philadelphia needs to know that Temple does have a good football team and what better way to show that than by doing a victory lap with the Mayor’s Cup after a resounding victory Sept. 3.
Philadelphia also needs to know that a healthy representation of the 260,000 Temple alumni and 33,000 current full-time students are loud and proud that night.
“Our most important game is our first game,” Bill Cosby told ESPN radio. “Villanova at home. We want that stadium packed and it should be packed. It’s a city rivalry.”
Sometimes rivalries are one-sided, as this one should be for the Owls both on the field and in the stands.
Let’s put 66,000 Temple fans in the stands and do Villanova a favor by leaving them 4,000 tickets, half of which they’ll return …

The story of Wally Pipp dated several decades before I was born and is now the stuff of legends.
Pipp held down the first base position pretty well for the Yankees in the early 1920s until he had a “headache” on June 2, 1925 and gave way for what was supposed to be one game to a youngster fresh out of Columbia University.
That youngster turned out to be Lou Gehrig. The game turned into a couple of thousand.
I’m not hoping Donovan McNabb and A.J. Feeley go down in the Eagles’ tomorrow night exhibition opener but, if they do, I’m convinced another kid out of a hometown school, Adam DiMichele (pronounced DEE-MIKEALL), would hit a home run in relief.
I know it.

Click on the helmet for the best season-ticket buy in all of sports

Technically, DiMichele is replacing backup Kevin Kolb who went down with an injury earlier this week but, given an opportunity to get on the field, the sky is the limit for this remarkable young man.
I got a lot of grief on this site last year when I wrote that, in my mind, Adam DiMichele is a better quarterback than Donovan McNabb.
By my mind, I meant for my team.

I had more confidence in DiMichele getting the job done in a big spot for my primary team (Owls) than I had McNabb getting the job done in a big spot for my secondary team (Eagles).
That’s based on close observations of both over the last three years.
Is the 22-year-old DiMichele better than the 32-year-old McNabb?
No, we’re not saying that, but we are saying that getting DiMichele on the field won’t hurt the Eagles at all in tomorrow’s pre-season game at Lincoln Financial Field.
We’re talking about a young quarterback with a fresh set of legs and a world of moxie against an old quarterback with tired legs and questionable moxie.
You can say that Reid did this out of a professional courtesy to the local team, but DiMichele showed Reid enough at mini-camp for him to place the phone call yesterday.
The Eagles will find out a few things about my favorite quarterback if they give him just three or four offensive series tomorrow night:

• He can make throws on the run;
• He won’t throw balls at the feet of receivers;
• He can still scramble;
• He has a knack of making the big play at the big time;
• He can throw an accurate deep ball;
• He doesn’t wear a flak jacket that limits his mobility in the open field;
• He won’t throw up on the field like a certain other quarterback has done twice at crunch time.

My admiration for this tough-as-nails young man is well-documented here.
I wish he would have had the opportunity, for example, to go up against Penn State for four full quarters, that game would have been a lot closer than a 42-point spread, I really believe.
Maybe 10-15 tops.
Maybe Adam could have made enough plays to keep them in the game to the end.
There are 22 guys on a football field at any given time but, for Temple, it’s been a long time since one man has made such a difference.
That man was (I have to use was now, unfortunately) Adam DiMichele.
Football is a funny game.

Had ADM been fully healthy for the last two seasons, I have no doubt that the Owls would be going for their third-straight winning season.
No doubt.
Adam now has a blog on Owlsports.com and he’s shown a nice ability to express himself on paper. Heck, I even like his blog better than McNabb’s.
The Eagles have had one quarterback who has mostly infuriated me for the last three years. They now have another who has never let me down.
All he has to do is be himself and Andy Reid will love him. So will Eagles’ fans.

When he played running back at Bishop McDevitt, there was no better RB in Southeastern Pennsylvania than Lamar McPherson, who is profiled today.
By Mike Gibson
I’ve never been a big practice guy and that goes back to my pre-teen days when I first started playing organized sports.

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The first practice I ever attended was for my grade school travel baseball team as a 10-year-old.
At our first practice, the coach told us to go to a position where we’d like to play.
I went out to shortstop on the field at Conwell and the Boulevard, made a couple of nice plays diving for balls up the middle and throwing guys out at first and the coach took me aside.
“You can’t play there,” he said.
“What I do wrong?”
“Nothing. You are a lefty. Lefties don’t play short. What other position do you play?”
“Catcher,” I said.
“Lefties don’t play catcher, either.”
So they made me a pitcher.
Never liked practice since.
So, too, it is with Temple football.
In all of my days following the Owls, my eyes have fooled me only in practice.
As Allen Iverson says, “Not a game. Practice.”
Lamar McPherson alluded to it when he said in today’s interview (video posted above) that, “Camp is camp.”

The last 30 or so years, I can count 10 guys who were practice all-timers but couldn’t play a lick in the games.
One quarterback of the Bobby Wallace Era was the greatest practice quarterback I ever saw, but had this annoying habit of throwing the ball to other team’s jerseys in the games. He even fooled an NFL team into giving him a contract because he had terrific (you guessed it) practices. Once he got into a couple of exhibition games, his career was short-lived.
Adam DiMichele was, by his own admission, a terrible practice quarterback but there was no better guy in games.
Give me ADM over anybody else. I trusted him in games. He earned my trust.
That said, I realize more than anybody else that four hard weeks of good practices are necessary to beating Villanova, so I hope the Owls have four terrific weeks of practice, get their timing down and have no false starts or offsides or holding penalties in the game. What I want to see more than anything else at the Villanova game is a Temple team that plays sharp and makes no mental mistakes. That, however, requires a great summer camp where all the players and coaches remain totally focused.
So we’ll keep posting practice videos, with one eye askanse.
Other than that, wake me up when the games start.

Do not leave your seats until the fantastic end of this video, which comes seconds after the practice clips end. Please grab a pen and copy the phone number down

A special “closed practice” for Penn State followed this initial practice for Villanova.
Only kidding, PSU fans.
Or not.
If Temple comes out in a single wing or a wildcat or a triple option on Sept. 19, you’ll know then.

While walking into the back of the large room reserved for Temple season-ticket holders at McFadden’s last night, I came across a couple of cool Temple football T-shirts.
One was gray with cherry lettering that said: Temple Football.
I saw Matt Rhule jogging wearing that in the late spring and put in the back of my mind that I had to have one of those shirts.
Another cool shirt was cherry with white lettering that also said Temple football.
Couldn’t buy either one, though.
I removed the last $20 bill I had in my wallet and was about to buy a couple until I was informed that they only had them in medium and small.
Tons and tons of them in medium and small and none in large or extra large.
What were they thinking?
The guy digging into the boxes looking for a shirt was wearing a name tag that indicated he was Gavin White Jr. who, like his dad and grandfather, seems to be a very nice guy.
It’s probably not his fault there were no large sizes, but you still have to wonder what went into the thought process when they loaded up the shirts on the Temple truck for the trip to McFadden’s.
“This is going to be all kids, right?” I could see the guy loading the boxes asking.
In reality, these crowds are always mostly older alumni (who, admittedly have put on a few pounds) and they probably should have left all the smalls and mediums at home.
Until then I wasn’t too concerned about some of the other news I heard about five minutes earlier that tickets to the inaugural Mayor’s Cup game with Villanova with one month to go are selling like hot cakes.
Hot cakes in the middle of the afternoon, that is.
The ticket folks at Temple seemed concerned but, quite frankly, I’m more concerned about whether we’re ready for a big walk-up crowd. We clearly were caught with our pants down in 2003, when up to 10,000 people went home after seeing long ticket lines at too few open booths.
From the standpoint of the game itself, it is the middle of the afternoon.
People aren’t thinking about the game right now.
It’s not in the news. There’s no feature stories on the players involved in the papers.

Nobody’s really thinking about it, except hardcore fans from both teams.
Wait until a couple of days before, when the Daily News and Inquirer write stories about it. Comcast is sure to run an obligatory story in its half-hour show after 27 minutes of covering its 30th straight Eagles’ practice.
Until then people won’t think about it.
My conventional wisdom is that if Temple can draw 21,000 for a Saturday afternoon Homecoming game in 2007 against Northern Illinois, it should put at least 30K in the seats for an attractive local opponent like Villanova on a coveted Thursday night date.
Fans now are thinking more about how to spend the last few weeks of summer.
Maybe one way to boost ticket sales for the Villanova game is to offer those cool Temple T-Shirts for free to fans who buy five or more ducats.
Maybe a large T-shirt to fans who purchase 10 or more.
“Would you like those tickets Supersized, sir?”
Then maybe the tickets would sell like hotcakes on a Sunday morning after church.
Whatever, I’m convinced this game is going to have a big walk-up crowd.
I just hope that the Temple staff is better prepared for the walk-up than they were for the shirt sale.

What if only one ticket window is open and 10,000 people are waiting in line Sept. 3? Just walk right by them with your ducats in hand if you click here:

By Mike Gibson
Anyone who was flooded out on the Schuylkill Expressway yesterday, probably remembered seeing one of the billboards the university rented.
For the school’s 125th anniversary, they are putting 125 facts about the school that most people don’t know but would find interesting.
It’s a marketing plan to get the Temple brand out there, but there are some really interesting facts involved.

Some of the obscure ones include:
• Three of the four members of Sister Sledge (“We are Family”) hold Temple degrees;
• Hall and Oates met while students at Temple;
• The Temple School of Dentistry receieves 4,500 applications for 125 available slots each year;

As it relates to football, though, the uni also notes that Bill Cosby lettered in both football and track and that the school played in the first Sugar Bowl game.
Interesting, but even more relevant to this year’s Owls is the following:
Temple is the 28th largest university in the United States;
Approximately 12,000 students live in and around the Main Campus and 33,000 full-time students overall;
Living Temple alumni number 260,000 in all 50 states, 250,000 of them within driving distance of an Owl game;

It’s time that a university in the top 30 in terms of size in the country has a football team in at least that upper echelon.
Once that happens, and we believe that string of winning seasons starts one month from today, it’s up to the alumni and the students to support them.
It all goes hand-in-hand.