Eric Reynolds is No. 9 in this video.
By Mike Gibson
Webster’s dictionary refers to a hypothesis as an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument.
I had a couple of belly laughs and had to shake my head from side to side when I read interpretations relating to how well the Temple University football team will do based on faulty logic.
One fan in particular caught my eye on the Boneyard, UConn’s message board. He stated the Owls’ running game won’t be that good because “Harper is no longer on the team.”
Well, (Jason) Harper is on the team but the guy who gained over 100 yards against the UConn defense was moved to wide receiver because every member of the Temple coaching staff, Al Golden included, thought that with the influx of exception talent coming in that Harper could do no better than be the fifth running back.
That’s right. Five.

They liked Harper’s blocking ability and speed so much they thought they might try him at wideout.
Well, those wideouts are pretty good, too, and Harper is having a tough time cracking the 1-2. No doubt Jason will be a valuable member of the Owls on special teams and that’s fine because he has a nose for the football and wants to help out wherever he can.
I had to laugh again when someone who should know better wrote that he “has some concerns” about the Owls’ inexperience at running back. The guy writes the MAC blog for PhillyBurbs.com but, when it comes to Temple, he doesn’t really have a good grip on how things really are on North Broad Street.
If his opinion is reflective of the rest of the MAC _ and from reading the MAC message boards it pretty much is _ he has no idea of what about is to hit him. Or, more precisely, no idea of how hard a time MAC teams will have trying to hit those inexperienced guys.
Let’s see. When you have four guys coming in who are better than the No. 1 back of last year, that’s not much cause for concern.
Inexperience?
Ha.
All over the NCAA, true and redshirt freshman running backs have been making an impact for years.
It will be no different at Temple.
Here’s the current tailback depth chart, subject to change right up until Friday night’s kickoff at Army:
MARQUISE LIVERPOOL _ The 5-11, 195-pound sophomore from Ramsey, N.J. was a SuperPrep All-American at wide receiver playing at Don Bosco High School in 2004, where he was rated the No. 23 high school receiver in the nation his senior year. Signed letter-of-intent with Boston College, but elected to play pro baseball instead. Now back with football. Showed his open field running ability by taking five punt returns for touchdowns during his senior year.
JOE JONES _ Listed as a co-No. 1 on the depth chart now with Liverpool, the 5-11, 206-pound Jones, a redshirt freshman, was the most heralded tailback out of talent-rich Broward County (Fla.). As a senior at South Broward High, Jones had 98 carries for 989 yards and 23 TDs. Was All-Miami Herald first-team running back. Turned down a solid offer from South Florida to sign with the Owls.
AHKEEM SMITH _ Scored 50 (that’s right, five zero) touchdowns as a junior and senior at Bethlehem Liberty, one of the marquee programs in the Lehigh Valley. The 6-0, 190-pound true freshman has been compared to the Minnesota Vikings’ Adrian Peterson in running style by Temple quarterback Adam DiMichele. As a senior, he rushed for 1,010 yards and scored 23 touchdowns. As a junior had even better stats for the District 11 Class AAAA (large school) champs, with 27 touchdowns and 1,340 yards.
ERIC REYNOLDS _ The 5-10, 192-pound true freshman enters Temple with spectacular credentials as well. Reynolds was Associated Press first-team all-state at running back and it’s easy to see why. The Central Bucks South product was Pennsylvania Football News’ 2007 state football player of the year (large school division) and the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Southeastern Pennsylvania player of the year. As a senior, he led the Titans to an 11-1 record by rushing for 2,830 yards and 38 touchdowns.
Yeah, I’m concerned about the inexperience at running back and the fact that Jason Harper is not running with the first team anymore.
Real concerned.
Father forgive these doubting Thomases. They have no idea of what is about to hit them.
Or what they soon won’t be able to hit.

By Mike Gibson
About five minutes after Al Golden arrived on campus, he dropped a couple of what one reporter termed as “Goldenisms.”
I prefer to call them Golden Nuggets.
Like, “we’re going to keep pounding that rock until it breaks” (referring to a long losing streak) or “I’m going to build a house of brick, not straw” (talking about avoiding the quick fix to build a solid structure of a program at Temple University.
Things haven’t changed much in Year Three.

At Media Day, Golden polished off a freshly baked batch:

On offensive lineman Devin Tyler: “We’re all pleased that he finally bought into the program and finally figured it out. He was one of the last holdouts.”
On a won/loss goal: “Our only goal is to execute and finish every day, every play. That sounds like a cop out but, if we do that, we’ll have success in the end.”
On the MAC media’s fifth-place prediction: “We want to finish first or second in everything we do, from recruiting to everything else. As for that (prediction), we finished fifth last year. I don’t think anybody could think that would fit (well) for us, intuitively.”
On the fierce competition for spots: “Nine or 10 linebackers are going to want to get on the bus (to Army) and we’re going to only have room for four. So you can imagine how fierce that competition is. If some of them are going to make the bus, it’s going to be on special teams.”
On the turnover in the starting lineup: “We played with a lot of guys this year who are not starters for us this year and that’s a good sign for our team.”
On preparation for Army: “Today was the first day we looked at Army and (Thursday) will be the first day we’ll practice for Army. Nine days is more than enough time.”
On the fans’ hype with the UConn game: “We’re not even thinking about UConn. We’re taking one day at a time. Today, we were thinking about going to Fan Fest and seeing the parents and the fans.”

On quarterback Adam DiMichele: “I love Adam. He’s a special person and more than fit to lead our football team right now. We rested him a couple of times in camp so far by choice but it wasn’t his choice. He looks good and he’s running very well.”
On the competition at defensive line: “There’s a tremendous battle going on right now. We have eight different combinations there and all of those guys are playing at a very high level. There’s a lot of competition going on there and I expect it to go on throughout the season. We believe in a Meritocracy. If you merit it, you get to start.”

By Mike Gibson
You never know who you are going to see at Temple Football’s Fan Fest.
Last year, Bill Cosby made it.
The Cos, Temple’s most famous ex-player, dressed up as a 1940s Temple football player when we all know he played in the 1950s and early 1960s.
At least some of us do.
Perhaps the most impressive fan fest came last year when, coming off a 1-11 season, 2,000 fans showed up.
This year, about 5,000 fans are expected to the free event.
That says a lot about the potential for a WINNING Temple team to attract paying customers to the actual games.
This one is Wednesday from 5-7 p.m. at Lincoln Financial Field.
All of the Philadelphia TV stations will be there and Comcast Sports Net will devote a large part of its popular Daily News Live program to the event.
You are sure to see Temple football coach Al Golden and about 115 players vying for starting and travel squad jobs in what promises to be the toughest competition for those spots in a generation.

Sign looks like the one above, with the word “Justice” on top and the date and place of the game on the side.
By Mike Gibson
It is a relatively new term, “Thinking Outside the Box” and it means to solve a problem differently, from a new perspective.
One of the main problems with Temple football has been filling the seats, a problem exacerbated by 25 years of losing.
The solution, of course, is winning.
The “what to do in between” crossing that bridge from losing to winning led some Temple University people to think outside the box the last couple of years.
For this year’s opener against UConn, on Sept. 6, the Temple people put their heads together and came up with a couple of spectacular ideas designed to put fannies in the seats.
The football people, led by video whiz Fran Duffy, put a nifty two-minute video documenting how Temple was ripped off at UConn last year and vowing revenge.

The promotions people, led by Scott Walcoff, might have topped that with “lawn placards” made in the shape of those poltical signs for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John McCain.
Lawn placards is a misnomer because they aren’t meant for your front lawn.
Walcoff made hundreds of these sharp-looking signs and now they are all over Philadelphia and South Jersey in high-traffic areas.
I picked up one of these yesterday and placed across the main parking lot at Temple’s Ambler campus, where thousands of Temple students, faculty and staff can see it every day. (My plan was to put it at 20th and Spring Garden, but a police officer was there yesterday and I lost my nerve.) I got a couple of thumbs-up when I put it on the satellite campus. I was even shocked that it was the only sign placed there. Heck, the ground was pretty solid but I used both feet to secure the sign as best as I could.
It was the second-straight year Temple people thought outside the box to put people in the seats.
Former head coach Wayne Hardin led that charge last year when he “guaranteed” 66,000 fans for the opener with Navy.
He went on every TV station in the Philadelphia area, every radio station and talked to every reporter getting that guarantee out there.
The “guarantee” in and of itself was news and an example of thinking outside the box.
Hardin got publicity money could not buy and his guarantee was half right.
Thirty thousand, mostly Temple fans, gave Lincoln Financial Field a rare college football atmosphere.
Navy ran into some problems. Due to Labor Day Weekend, many of its loyal fans eschewed a trip to Philadelphia for a trip to the shore. The Academy would not pay for the Midshipmen to make the trip.
So only about 2,000 Navy supporters made it, including about 100 Midshipmen who paid their own way.

If the Owls handle Army, as expected, my guess is that 30-35K will find their way to Lincoln Financial Field and it will be a sea of Cherry and White. It could be more. I doubt it will be less. If the Owls lose to Army, I would not be surprised with 15-20K. That’s life in the big city.
What the signs do and the video does is get the brand out there so the fans can start thinking about attending the game and buying tickets and circling their calendars for Sept. 6.
For that, you can thank guys like Fran Duffy and Scott Walcoff for thinking outside of the box and a lot of fans, like Mike Adkins, who used plenty of old-fashioned shoe leather to find high-traffic places to put these signs before thousands of eyes.

By Mike Gibson
A week ago, the “MAC football media” picked Temple to finish fifth in the Eastern Division of the Mid-American Conference.
Clueless hogwash.
I could just see it now.
A MAC beat writer who doesn’t know Eric Reynolds from Al Reynolds or Joe Jones from Jack Jones circles Temple for fifth place because he remembered the Temple running game from last year and figured it wouldn’t be much improved.
One guy even wrote, “With everybody back, Temple should be an improved squad” and then his bottom-line prediction was 4-8. Huh? Temple won four games last year.
Another guy who doesn’t know Adrian Robinson from Jackie Robinson figures the Temple defense could not possibly get any better than last year’s, which was incidentally No. 1 in MAC overall and No. 1 in the nation in red-zone defense.
No. 1 out of 119.
It wasn’t long ago that Temple was 119 out of 119 in a number of categories.
The after-effects of 25 years of futility are not lost on the MAC beat writers, who seemingly cannot get THAT Temple out of their minds.
Al Golden and company have already reached that mindset.
“We can’t change what’s happened in the past,” Golden said. “We’re a whole different program.”
Yesterday, Golden’s group of 102 extremely talented players got to work at the Edberg-Olson Football Complex to debuse the MAC media’s incredibly sloppy research when coming to a fifth-place berth for the Owls.
Sloppy research and, yes, a lot of anti-Temple bias based on outdated notions of the program.
It’s a new year and a new program and it’s going to be fun proving the so-called experts wrong.

By Mike Gibson
You don’t know who long I’ve waited to write this or see this in print.
TEMPLE SEASON TICKETS SOLD OUT!!!
Well, they are.
At least for two sections.
I was told today that sections 120 and 119 are sold out.
Season tickets in 121 and 118 are also going at a very brisk rate.
I will be sitting on the 45-yard line, in section 121.
As most of you know, Temple moved over to the “sunny” side of the field from its “home” side since the nation’s best football venue became its permanent home in 2003.
That led to a lot of ignorant people writing on mostly MAC message boards saying things like, “No way there were 30,000 people there. I watched on TV and there was nobody there.”
Dude, TV shoots the “visitor’s side” of the field exclusively (the cameras are all set up that way) and, if there was nobody there, that’s your fault, not ours.
The empty seats belonged to Kent fans or Miami fans or Central Michigan fans.
The 30K on the Temple side were unseen by people watching on TV. Despite repeated complaints to the television people to shoot the Temple side, they all wrote back saying it would be too costly to move the permanent camera spots.
So Temple moved its fans.
Now they will be right there for all to see.
And, once the Owls start winning, the other side will fill up, too.

By Mike Gibson
The following story appeared in Sports Illustrated after Temple’s 13th-straight win in 1974.
Written by Ray Kennedy, it was entitled, When playing Temple, Pray.
It might not be long before the folks on the Owls’ schedule adopt that motto once again.
The comparisons between the way Wayne Hardin built a program that won at the time was a national-best 14 straight games _ only a missed chip shot field goal at the buzzer prevented them from winning 15 or more straight games _ and the way Al Golden is building the program now are eerily similar.
Here are some of the quotes from that SI story:

“Forget all that old business about desire, dedication and do or die. Temple ‘s Wayne Hardin has hit on a new formula that seems as simple as it is surefire. Take one heavy dose of loneliness. Mix well with a dash of rejection and disillusionment. Stir in a few assorted longings—for a clean pair of socks, say, a cold beer or a faraway girl friend—and presto! You’ve got a 13-game winning streak.

Or ….

“You don’t have to go far away to grow up. You can live on campus like I did. There won’t be any parents here bugging you. And whenever you want to you can shoot home for a good meal, hit dad for a couple of bucks and, what was very important for me, drop off a bag of laundry. Your parents have raised you for 18 years and they love you, and they deserve to see you play. You run off somewhere where nobody knows you, and that won’t be possible.” Then, eyes narrowing and voice lowering, he will plant the seed. “You’ll get homesick, too. And believe me that’s a baaad sickness.”

Hardin’s formula, and apparently Golden’s, is based on simple geography: Draw a 90-mile circle around Philadelphia and keep that talent mostly home, with occasional excursions elsewhere.
It worked before.
It now appears to be Golden’s working template, too.

Click on the above image for Temple tickets

Happy Birthday to Temple’s favorite Yankee Doodle Dandy, Al Golden, July 4, 1969



By Mike Gibson
One of the surprising things about my cabin near the lake in the Poconos is the people I meet.
One of my good friends over the years, who shall remain nameless, was the supervisor of officials for what used to be known as Division IAA.
That’s the division that includes Delaware and Villanova and the like.
Every summer he regales me of stories about going to Lehigh and supervising his officials.
Entertaining, funny, stuff.
In turn, I regale him about my years of following Temple football.
Stuff funny to him, not so funny to me.
The guy is from Boston, so he knows Jack Cramer, the official who screwed Temple football in last year’s game.
The day after, he saw me jogging by his house.
“Mike, I saw the film, you guys got screwed,” my friend said. “The incredible thing is that I know Jack. He’s really a nice guy, but a Boston guy. If things are even, he’s going to give the New England team a break.”
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“I saw it from both sides on Hartford TV,” he said. “The kid (Bruce Francis) had possession and the ball clearly inbounds.”
“I knew that,” I said, “but thanks anyway.”
Now, I’m told by another friend who happens to be an official, that the end of the game against UConn is showing up in their pre-season briefings.
“Mike, I got to tell you, you are a training film for BCS now,” he said. “We’re training the replay guys. A situation like yours, we’re saying overturn the play.”
The MAC, he said, sent the game film in to the officials upon request.
“The MAC guys (officials) said the play happened too fast to call on the field,” he said. “They said something like that should have been caught. We agree. We’re telling our officials, including Jack, that was enough visual evidence to overturn. It’s a big part of their training now.”
Geez, thanks, I said.
I’m sure Bruce Francis would be thrilled but we plan on putting the game away Sept. 6 by the third quarter.
Or at least the first couple of minutes of the final quarter.
“Good luck,” he said.
“I don’t think we’ll need it,” I said. “There will be 30,000 angry full-throtted Temple fans who will make sure the officials, both on the field and the replay booth, know they can’t do that again.”
It’s up to every Temple fan or alum or any person who cares about Temple or Philadelphia to make my prediction come true.

By Mike Gibson
This is about as good a time as ever to resume posts on Temple Football Forever.
We’ve taken a hiatus since the Cherry and White game because, quite frankly, there hasn’t been much news about the program since then.

Much doesn’t mean none, though, and we are pleased to note that Adrian Robinson, a Temple-bound linebacker, was the first Owl to ever earn an MVP at the prestigious Big 33 game.
Tonight, Al Golden appeared on the radio to drum up more interest.
Late last December, I wrote a post Golden needing to build some walls of trust with his Temple fans.
AG has spent the months since making two west coast plane trips seeking the UCLA job doing just that.
He could have rested on a significant recruiting class, but he worked tirelessly to add some needed recruits after the Feb. signing date, including someone, Kee-Ayre Griffin, who I feel has a 50-50 chance to be a dynamite opening-day starting tailback. If Griffin doesn’t earn the job, it will be because Joe Jones went through the summer completely healthy.

I was thinking about the crisis in Myanmar today and I got sidetracked.
Suddenly, I thought about Burma.
Burma Shave, to be specific.
Somebody came up a terrific idea on one of the Temple message boards around the time of the Pennsylvania primary.
They saw all of the political signs for Obama and Hillary and Dougherty and Farnese on lawns all over the tri-state area and the guy said, “Wouldn’t it be great to have signs that say simply, ‘Temple Football’ and stick it right there on our front lawns?”
Yes it would.
It’s that kind of out-of-the-box thinking that we all need to brainstorm in the few months we have to the opener.
The mission: Fill Lincoln Financial Field with as many fans as we can.
Each of us has to do our part.
Since I didn’t have or couldn’t find a sign that said “Temple Football” I placed my “Let’s Go Temple” cardboard sign on a stick and planted it on my lawn.
It’s still there.
You could probably google map my house and see it, if you knew where I lived.
This Myanmar thing, though, came straight out of the sky.
Or at least off the front pages of Yahoo News.
Myanmar used to be known as Burma.
When I was a kid, there’d be Burma Shave signs on the sign of the road.
Funny, clever, poetry designed to have you buy the product.
Or at least think about it.
I’m not a poet, but something along the lines of justice and how it will be served on Sept. 9 could be a good place to start.
There’s no justice
People say
Justice prevails
Say others;
We’ll find out on Sept. 6
Temple football
Wouldn’t something along those lines look great on the road to the shore this summer?