Coach in this great Sheldon Morris photo taken Saturday.

Nothing is ever given in life on this earth, especially the knowledge of the time that you have here.

All of us know what day we arrived; none of us knows the future day we will depart. All we know is to do our best to live the best life we can.

No one lived a better life than Wayne Hardin, the legendary Temple coach who passed away Wednesday, a couple of days from attending Alumni Day at the Edberg-Olson Complex on Saturday. By all accounts, coach was in good spirits and gave a great speech about “filling the stands” for future Temple football games to the 120 or so alumni players in attendance.

On a personal note, I have known coach Hardin since I was 17 and covered his football teams for the Temple News and for the Doylestown Intelligencer later. He was the greatest college coach I have ever known (hell, the greatest coach, period) and this was something I was convinced of since my college days. Sadly, his death came two months after the greatest high school coach I ever knew,  Central Bucks West’s Mike Pettine Sr., passed away.

I had always been convinced of Hardin’s greatness, but it was nice to get affirmation from other writers, too.

During a game in which Hardin put a big-time scare into Penn State for only what seemed like the umpteenth time, John Kunda, the sports editor of the Allentown Morning Call and a Penn State beat writer, broke the silence in the press box.

How fitting was it that the last championship game coach saw was Navy vs. Temple?

“Hardin’s out-coaching Joe again,” Kunda said.

The press box erupted in knowing laughter.

Later, when Tubby Raymond schooled a young Bruce Arians in a Delaware upset win over Temple, Philadelphia Inquirer writer Chuck Newman similarly broke the silence in the Blue Hen stadium facility.

“Will Wayne Hardin please report to the press box?” Newman said  over the public address system.

More laughter because Hardin had beaten Raymond in eight of the 10 previous years.

I was overwhelmed with pride, knowing that my school was the smartest school on the field every Saturday afternoon that Wayne Hardin was on my sideline and, because this was college football, that meant a lot.

Maybe everything.

Hardin always out-coached Joe Paterno, the way General Robert E. Lee always outcoached Ulysses S. Grant. Paterno, like Grant, always won because what those guys had at their disposal was more than what Hardin and Lee had.

Still, it was fun watching Temple move those chess pieces around and checkmating the bad guys time and time again.

Bill Belichick followed Hardin around as a 7-year-old son of an assistant coach to Hardin, and then followed Hardin’s teams at Temple. He took copious notes and is admiration for Hardin is documented for posterity.

“I’d say Wayne influenced me more than anybody else,” said  Belichick in a recent article by CSNNE’s Phil Perry. “Honestly, I saw other coaches at Navy take a different approach, and looking back on it, even though I didn’t know it at the time, but I would say looking back on it, I would rather be like him. I’ve seen these others, but I would rather do it the way he did it.”

I was there in the press room underneath the stadium at Colgate the day Hardin quit. I asked him why and he said simply: “Mediocrity is not my cup of tea.”

He was a very young 55 at the time.

It was Hardin’s idea to take the goofy-looking Owl off the helmet and spell out TEMPLE on the side.

“We want people to know who we are,” Hardin said. “We’re Temple.”

That “TEMPLE” became the brand during the winningest TEMPLE years and, when Al Golden arrived, he changed the ‘][‘ back to TEMPLE because, as Golden said, “that’s the brand Temple football had when it was respected throughout the country.” Perhaps a fitting tribute to Hardin this fall would be to bring back TEMPLE at least on one side of the helmets.

People in sports like to talk about records that will never be broken, mentioning Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. Heck, I’m convinced no coach in Temple history will ever do what Hardin did, which is win 80 games in 13 years at the school. No coach might ever get Temple into the final Top 20 again because a Temple coach who gets the Owls on the brink will probably be gone by the bowl game. Hopefully not but that’s the reality of college football today.

Joe Morelli, a former Temple quarterback who never played for coach Hardin, made sure he drove coach to the games and that’s why we were all able to enjoy his company over the past few years.

“Joe takes good care of me,” coach said.

Last year, I asked coach if he still golfed at 90.

“Last time I did that was last week,” coach said. “I fell three times. I don’t do it any more.”

He asked me to walk him over to where his ex-players, led by Steve Conjar, moved their tailgate and I was more than happy to do that.

“Look who I found!” I said to the guys.

“God bless you, Wayne,” Mark Bresani said. “I love that you come to the games. I’ll tell you what, when I’m 90, I will probably be here, too.”

About 20 years ago, Hardin finally introduced me to his wife, Jane, who stopped and grabbed me by the arm.

“We like you,” Jane said. “It’s not just because you have red hair like we did.”

She remembered my articles on the coach and said she appreciated all of the nice things I wrote.

I told her I meant every word and did.

Now coach and his beloved Jane are together but those of us who remain behind and knew him are grieving now. Perhaps the most important lesson he taught us was how to live a life well.

Monday: 5 Questions Kraft Needs to Answer

Very classy tribute from Temple football video guys.

As an undergrad at Temple, Wayne Hardin was the only head football coach I ever knew at my school. As a result, winning was the only thing I ever knew. From the time I entered Temple to the time I graduated, Temple had four-straight winning seasons.
The Owls have not accomplished that feat since.

Joe Mesko (left), Hardin’s first TU captain, shakes hands with Roger Staubach, Hardin’s last Navy captain, last night  with coach and Steve Conjar in between.

Now that coach Hardin turned 90 yesterday, a group of his former players both at Temple and Navy honored him with a dinner last night in Florida, and it was a fitting tribute because they got to tell him again how much he meant to them and that was important.

I got to know coach Hardin as a reporter for the Temple News. Al Shrier, the then Sports Information Director, arranged for me an interview when I was a junior who was given the football beat.

To me, it was like getting to interview The Wizard of Oz.

One of the questions I asked him was about fun and football.

“The only fun in football is winning,” Hardin said.

That’s pretty much the way I felt then and my entire life and pretty much why I take losing so hard.

People talk about Bill Belichick’s coaching tree but, in reality, Belichick is one of the small branches on Hardin’s tree. Belichick’s dad, Steve Belichick, was a longtime scout and assistant for Hardin at Navy. When Hardin was head coach there, Belichick was just a kid. Yet Belichick tagged along at Navy practices and soaked up as much as he could.

Hardin was noted for outsmarting other coaches not only with everyday schemes but with trick plays and a keen eye on exploiting opponents’ weaknesses.

Patriots quick kicks, unique punt and field-goal rushes, certain trick plays — Belichick credits Hardin for many of them.

This from Comcast New England on Temple’s Garden State Bowl win:
“In 1979, when the Owls took on heavily-favored Cal in the Garden State Bowl at Giants Stadium, Belichick was in attendance. The Giants special-teams coach at the time, Belichick sat with then Giants assistant Ernie Adams, who now works alongside Belichick as the football research director for the Patriots. The pair of young and talented football minds were completely baffled as they watched Hardin toy with Cal’s linebackers, who were taught to read the guards in front of them.

“Ernie and I were sitting up there watching the game, and on the first series of plays, one guard pulled deep, the other guard pulled short,” Belichick said. “And they just folded around to get the linebacker, but they pulled. And the two inside linebackers ran into each other. I looked at Ernie, and he looked at me . . .”

Did Temple just screw that up, they wondered?

“Four or five plays later, same thing. The two linebackers,” Belichick clapped his hands together loudly, imitating the collision, “because they’re standing right next to each other. They went right into each other. [Temple ran] straight down to the safety for, like, 20 yards. They must’ve run that play six or seven times and it was 20 yards every time . . . At the time, I’d never seen that before.”

The result was the first bowl win in Temple history and a wide-eyed and impressed New York Giants’ assistant coach named Belichick.

Later, after graduating from Temple, I covered Hardin’s teams for Calkins Newspapers. While in the press box in State College, Hardin was driving Penn State head coach Joe Paterno crazy with similar schemes and play calls and Temple took a lead late into the third quarter against the heavily favored Nittany Lions. The Owls had several close calls before that game and it was only because Hardin was able to close the talent gap against the Nits with his brilliant mind. John Kunda, the long-time sports editor of the Allentown Morning Call, broke the silence in the press box.

Bill Belichick is from the Hardin tree, but coach Hardin is from the Amos Alonzo Stagg tree. Must be a Redwood.

“Hardin’s outcoaching Joe again,” Kunda said.

The press box erupted into laughter, but it was a laugh of respect. I just sat there beaming with pride in the knowledge that the smartest guy on the field every Saturday was coaching my team and everybody in the room acknowledged something I already knew.

Fortunately, coach Hardin was there last year to see the Owls finally get that monkey off their back. Happy birthday, coach Hardin, and many more healthy and happy ones.

One thing I’m sure both the Navy and Temple guys agreed on last night were two words:

Beat Army.

Saturday: We’re Talkin’ Practice