By Mike Gibson
Some strong praise from Western Michigan coach Bill Cubit in this latest Kalamazoo Gazette preview, including mention of Al Golden’s salary.
Five-hundred-and-seventy-five-thousand dollars a year.
Hmm.
Just as we thought all along.
Al Golden is going nowhere, not because he makes $575,000 a year, but because both Temple and Golden’s people, including his agent, wanted to make the deal a lock-solid one.
Temple, for its part, took a risk _ hiring an unproven assistant coach for a salary double what the next-highest coach in the MAC made.
The TU administration needed an insurance policy and Al Golden gave that to them in writing. There is no buyout. There never needed to be one.
Any buyout clause will be written into the next contract, after Golden gets the job done here.
That’s where the “this university has made a commitment to me and my commitment to them is that I will build a house of brick, not straw” comment came from. That wasn’t something Golden made up as a nice sound bite. It was part of the fabric of the contract between him and the university.
The straw house takes about three years to build.
The brick house takes five.
Al Golden is in this for at least five, hopefully more, years.
Golden realized a day or two before he was even hired that this two-way commitment was the minimum that was needed for Temple to turn this thing around.
For that, among all other things, he should be applauded.

I wish all Temple fans stood up and cheered like this guy.

By Mike Gibson
Al Golden, meet Cap Poklemba.
Oh, you have?
Kinda sorta.
“I’ve never really met coach Golden,” Poklemba said Saturday. “Well, I did give a speech at the pep rally for Penn State and then I handed the microphone to him and said, “Good luck against Penn State coach.’ He looked at me like, “this guy is crazy.’ “
Well, he is, Al, but crazy in a very good way.
I have a feeling Al Golden would like Cap Poklemba very much if he ever got a chance to know him.
When we last saw Poklemba on the field in a meaningful game, five years ago almost to this very day, the Owls’ kicker drove a stake through the hearts of Rutgers’ fans in the final seconds of a 20-17 win at Rutgers’ Stadium. He then led the team over to the Big East logo in the corner of that stadium and stomped on it with 55 other players as the strains of “T for Temple U” rang in the background.
It was a Delicious moment for the program.
Ever since, Poklemba has been doing his part to make Lincoln Financial Field a homefield advantage for Golden’s Owls.
Poklemba is a one-man raving lunatic with a purpose, at times going into the heart of the lower deck to yell out, “I DON’T CARE WHAT AGE YOU ARE, YOUNG OR OLD, I JUST WANT YOU TO GET UP ON THIRD DOWN!!” He then alternately leads the crowd into chants of “Let’s Go Temple” or “DEE-FENSE, DEE-FENSE” or “MOVE THOSE CHAINS, MOVE THOSE CHAINS, MOVE THOSE CHAINS … HOOT” … after each first down.
Then he runs to the student section and acts like Eugene Ormandy or Leonard Bernstein and orchestrates that section in the same manner. They respond to him with a wall of beautiful sound. Poklemba is only missing a baton.
Golden himself must have noticed, or heard, the nearly 17,000 fans sound like 70,000 strong in a 24-14 win over Kent State on Saturday afternoon because, after the game, the first thing the coach did was run up to each member of the team and direct them to the sidelines to high five the fans.
Or he must have noticed the 21,000 for Homecoming Day sounding like 200,000.
There is one person responsible for this and it’s Cap Poklemba.
Al Golden gets it.
So does Cap Poklemba. Nobody asked Cap Poklemba to do what he’s done, but what he has accomplished is demonstrate that one man can make a big difference.
It’s a lesson all of us can learn and part of the fabric of Al Golden’s character.
It’s a shame the two have never been formally introduced. It would be nice (i.e., smart) if the university found some sort of kicking coach/promotions position for this dedicated young man soon.
Whatever, in some storage room at Edberg-Olson Hall there is a most valuable player award for this year’s Temple Owls and it’s going to deservedly go to Adam DiMichele.
Yet somewhere in some box way in the back there should be a most valuable Owl award and it would be nice if Al Golden gave it to Cap Poklemba at the football banquet.
There’s not a more deserving Owl, past or present.

Temple fans were there in force; just wait and see what happens when the school wins the MAC.
Great photos by Darryl Rule

Stark and indisputable visual evidence of a Temple fan-dominated side of the field
By Mike Gibson
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
I thought about that while watching a usually sure-handed Temple tight end drop a sure-handed touchdown pass.
I thought about that while watching another sure-handed Owl, Daryl Robinson, drop a pass over the middle with plenty of real estate in front of him.
I even thought about it while watching the most glue-fingered Owl, Bruce Francis, foul up what looked like a promising pass off a double-reverse.
Al Golden and George DeLeone led their horses right up to not water but champagne yesterday in a 31-0 loss to Penn State and they took one sniff, reared their hind legs and walked away in the opposite direction.
If they had just had a taste.
One touchdown, to Matt Balasavage, would have made it 14-7.
Who knows how far Daryl Robinson would have gotten in the open field?
Or what would have happened if Bruce Francis been able to get a grip?
The defense of Mark D’Onofrio had been playing with a swagger all day.
Had the offense helped out by putting points on the board, maybe they would not have been as tired as they were at the end when they gave up a couple of relatively meaningless touchdowns.
Maybe next week.
Maybe next year.
It’s all part of the process, as Golden likes to say.
This time, the coaches did their jobs about as well as expected.
The lesson learned was to catch those balls, execute those plays, put points on the board.
Penn State did not stop Temple on those plays. Temple stopped Temple.
Just once, it would be nice for this thirsty program to sip the same kind of drink Appalachian State and Stanford tasted earlier this season.
That something will have to come another day.
There is only one thing more frustrating than to contemplate what might have been and that’s musing about what should have been.

Owls: Your town, your team
(Story appeared on op-ed page of The Daily News Nov. 2, 2007)

IF Horatio Alger were still around, he’d love writing about Temple football. Is there anything more rags-to-riches than a three-game winning streak after 0-12 and 1-11 seasons?
“We’re America’s Team,” ex-coach Wayne Hardin once said. “You know, ‘Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor. ‘ “

America’s Team. Temple is indeed that more than the Dallas Cowboys. America likes a Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story. Dallas never was that. Temple is.

It certainly is Philadelphia’s team, with many more Philadelphians playing for the Owls than for the NFL team that plays in the same stadium.

The starting tailback? From North Catholic. Starting linebackers? Bishop McDevitt and Germantown. One starting cornerback for the opening game is from Gratz. (He’s hurt. ) The current starting quarterback? Suburban Avon Grove. The rest of the roster is almost entirely from eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

That can’t be said of the Eagles. The one Bird who played in college here, Brian Westbrook, is from the Washington area. Everyone else is a carpetbagger.

If Temple doesn’t deserve America’s support, then it certainly deserves Philadelphia’s.

The city’s football fans should come over to the other side and support a team that plays hard-nosed, aggressive football – a group of kids who more represent them in reality than the overpaid, spoiled and passive pros who frequently don’t.

The Temple Owls are an exciting team playing an exciting brand of football, much like Hardin’s teams did in the 1970s.

If you went to the last Temple game, you saw a heartstopping throw-back pass from wide receiver Bruce Francis to quarterback Adam DiMichele that went for a near-touchdown and a long bomb from backup quarterback Vaughn Charlton to Francis that did go for score.

You also saw a third-straight win from the hometown team.

At the time Hardin made his remarks about Temple being America’s Team, he was specificially talking about Temple football recruiting.

Under Hardin, Temple got a lot of players who were hungry to prove themselves to the higher-profile schools who overlooked them in the recruiting process. It got a lot of players tired of people telling them they were an inch too small or a step too slow. It got players who were poor in numbers of scholarship offers, but rich in areas like reputation and character.

Hungry, tired, poor.

The formula worked before.

And now it’s working again.

The current Owls are an interesting mix, but this group reminds me more of Hardin’s era than any team since because of the character of the players.

This group, like Hardin’s, have so many players who were captains of their high school teams. Eighteen members of the 1-2 depth chart were captains of teams that won their high school championship. And most were large schools in high-profile environments and most of those players excelled under pressure.

It was a proven recruiting template 30 years ago – and it’s proven to be the same under coach Al Golden.

Golden has a bunch of leaders, captains, who play aggressive, not passive, football.

“People in Philadelphia will be proud of this team once it starts to develop because it’s tough, it competes and we have fun out there,” Golden said.

You won’t be able to get into the Penn State game on Nov. 10 because it’s sold out, but check it out, Eagles fans, on Nov. 17 against Kent State. *

Mike Gibson is editor and publisher of Temple Football Forever (http://templefootballforever.blogspot.com), a Temple football blog. E-mail

templefootballforever@gmail.com.

By Mike Gibson
One three-win streak.
Major front-page stories in at least two publications, the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Another positive mention of what Al Golden is doing at Temple in Chris Fowler’s ESPN.com weekly column.
People are starting to notice Temple football.
New York Times
Phil Sheridan
It makes you wonder what will happen after a four- or five-game winning streak.

By Mike Gibson
By now, it should be apparent to even the worst of the doubting Thomases out there that we are watching something very special in one Adam DiMichele, the quarterback of the Temple Owls for this season and next, God-willing.
I’ll call it the Akron Audible for alliteration purposes.
You can call it whatever you want.
I would not believe it if I wasn’t watching it on my brand new Compaq Laptop computer, getting a clear wireless picture and going crazy all by myself in the Flourtown McDonald’s.
It was not only an audible, it was the second most amazing audible I’ve ever seen.
We’ll get to the first later. (Read the small print at the end of this post.)
DiMichele steps to the line of scrimmage, goes under center, then backs off, takes a look at the defense and his eyes almost pop out of his head like one of those cartoons.
He saw something that made him change the play, so he backs up into the shotgun, runs down the line of scrimmage to the left and right, alerts every Owl on the line almost individually, then yells to the outside receivers, then stomps his right foot twice, taps his right hand against the side, takes the short snap and fires a perfect pass over the middle to Crudup for six.
Easy as Pumpkin Pie on Thanksgiving.
If he and his Owl teammates keep improving with every game, by Thanksgiving Temple could possibly … possibly … be preparing to play for a Mid-American Conference championship.
And how would that taste?
Better than the best Pumpkin Pie with the best whipped cream topping.
Now to the greatest audible I’ve ever seen. The 1979 game at Villanova. Brian Broomell is the Temple quarterback at midfield. He walks up to the line of scrimmage, goes under center, is about to snap the ball and instead takes a step back. He points to wide receiver Gerald “Sweet Feet” Lucear, then gestures with his finger, pointing toward the right corner of the Villanova end zone. He calmly takes the snap, throws to that same spot in the end zone, and Lucear floats under the ball for six. THAT was the greatest audible I ever saw. Temple 42, Villanova 10.

Click once or twice on the icon in the center of image

By Mike Gibson
File this under the letter N.
For no shit, Sherlock.
However, according to the New Haven Register, the Temple Owls have been told by MAC officials that, yes, Bruce Francis did have one foot inbounds and possession on the game-winning catch against UConn and that, yes, Temple should have won the game and that, yes, Big East replay official Jack Cramer was wrong in not overturning the call.
All of this was done in an official review of the play by the MAC, who had their officials view it from every possible angle, including a shot from the “other” side of the field that clearly showed Francis had possesion all the way.
Interesting, though, in that it puts the Big East in a bit of a quandry.
Now the people in charge of the crew on the field are saying they were wrong in not getting the call right.
That means that the replay guy got the call wrong.
Right?
Right.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for the Big East Conference to admit that.