02.09.18
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The King of All Classes

 

 

 

Cincinnati has Tavion Thomas, Temple has Travon King.

While no one really knows if either one will make an impact with their respective schools, the takeaway from National Signing Day on Wednesday was that Temple went for length and speed and character and Cincinnati reached for the stars.


You can talk about length,
speed and character until
you are blue in the face,
what matters most is wins
on Saturdays. That’s really
all that matters

Thomas, a 6-foot-2, 225-pound running back from Dunbar in Dayton, picked his nearby hometown squad after decommiting from Oklahoma. His final three were Cincinnati, Tennessee and Ohio State.

File that name away because what Cincinnati and the other AAC schools do is important in comparison to what Temple does. Cincinnati had the No. 1 recruiting class as ranked by the website 247.com (recently merged with Scout.com) and while the same service ranked Temple’s class as its best ever, it was still behind the Bearcats.

All you have to do is check the number of five-stars and four-stars on rosters like Alabama and Ohio State over the past few years to determine what the meaning of them on the field can be.

recruitingsnip

Geoff Collins, also a second-year coach, has not signed a four-star yet.

Maybe next year.

No one at the signing ceremony at the Aramark Facility (a huge upgrade, by the way, from the Student Pavilion) seemed to mind.

There were many of the obligatory ohhs and ahhs watching the highlight films of the Temple recruits. Here is the complete breakdown with heights, weights, 40 speeds and even some academic achievements. Nary a negative word will be found about this class on Pravda or any other site that covers Temple regularly using notepads, pen and tape recorders and “making phone calls”, but we will try to offer some balanced objective perspective here untainted by receiving a paycheck from Temple.

At the end of the presentation and remembering the similar feeling I had watching recruiting highlights the last three years, I got up out of my seat and the first thing I said to Temple linebacking legend Steve Conjar was: “How do we ever lose a game with these kind of players?”

(I did not have the heart to mention maybe it’s because we do some questionable, OK stupid, things like passing on first-and-goal at the Army 1 when we had the best fullback in the country available to lead block for a running back who gained 151 yards that day.)

It’s what you do with the players once you get them that determines wins and losses.

King represents what Collins is trying to do with this class. Collins called King a “designated pass rusher” and he had a couple of those in this class. If Temple can find a DPR who is also able to play the run well, that will be the guy who sees the field.

It would be nice to have reached up and grabbed a (five) star or four stars, but this is the process at Temple now and we won’t know if it’s a better one than the other teams in the conference until a couple of years from now. You can talk about length, speed and character until you are blue in the face, what matters most is wins on Saturdays. That’s really all that matters.

For now, though, the guys already in the program will have to make their mark. For the guys signed with this class, a little more patience is required.

Monday: Possible Johnson Replacement

Wednesday: Notes, Quotes and Anecdotes

Friday: Developmental Program?

02.07.18
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Signing Event: Quality and Quantity

hardwork

Most of the hard recruiting work was done by this day on the beach in December with Kevin Kopp, Geoff Collins and Morgyn Seigfried.

Anyone who has been a Temple fan for many seasons has been to at least a couple of these recruiting signing nights.

The one that happens tonight (5-7 p.m., Student Pavilion Building) will have a different feel to it.

recruiting

Back when Al Golden was having these things, he’d roll out the projector and show all 25 guys’ recruiting highlights. Then the oohs and ahhs would follow, someone would yell out (“they all look like USC and Alabama recruits”) and Golden would shake a few hands of the fans and we’d call it a wrap. There were surprises, last-minute guys who Golden would beat a BC or a Pitt for and who would go on to be great Owls.

For the first time, though, a lot of the surprise element is gone this year. Because of the early signing date, we have known for over a month who is in the fold.

That’s a good thing, not a bad one, because in the past Temple would invariably lose a number of recruits to Power 5 schools between December and February. Off the top of my head, they lost a running back to Iowa, a fullback to Pitt, a safety to Penn State and an “athlete” to Ohio State. Since they did not go to Temple, they shall remain nameless in this space.

The best national site on recruiting, according to most objective observers, is Scout.com and that site has Temple signing at least 25 players with as many as four add-ons coming tonight. Since we’re a little superstitions so we won’t name them until the ink is dry on the dotted line. More on them in this space on Saturday.

Of the 25 so far, though, Scout.com has 22 with at least three stars. Only three of the signees have two-stars. That’s an important distinction because, while Temple has had higher-ranked classes before, they have never had over 20 three-star players in the fold in a single class.

Quality and quantity should be the theme here.

Expect Geoff Collins to talk about adding depth throughout the organization and, unlike last year’s class, there will be quite a few guys in the room from it tonight who will make an impact not only on the highlight screen tonight, but on the field in a few months. That’s because at least five December signees are already working out at the E-O.

That’s progress.

Friday: Recruiting Night Recap

02.05.18
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Temple’s Super Bowl?

playoffbowl

By this 1969 playoff bowl between Dallas and Minny, fans and everyone else lost interest.

Back in the day, they used to have this thing in the NFL called the “Runner-Up” Bowl.

If you are a certain age—folks under 40 probably have never heard of it—it was either an interesting diversion or the most meaningless game at the end of the season.

If the “Runner-Up” Bowl existed, we’d be watching the Minnesota Vikings take on the Jacksonville Jaguars last week, maybe instead of a Pro Bowl that is also outdated. In 1967, near the end of this 1960s invention of the Runner-Up Bowl (officially called the Playoff Bowl), the Eagles lost to the then Baltimore Colts, 20-14, before 58,084 fans in Miami.

Two years later, it was over.

I thought about that while watching the Philadelphia Eagles play in the Super Bowl last night.

My second favorite team in all of sports was getting a chance at being the best in the world.

What about my favorite sports team, The Temple Football Owls?

Do they have the same shot at being the best college football team in the world?

No, and it’s not even close.

The system is so skewed against Group of Five teams it is not even funny.

If the best UCF does in an unbeaten season is No. 7 in the country, the system is stacked against the Group of Five teams so much that it should be illegal.

If Temple is set up for, in Geoff Collins’ words, a “ridiculous” season in 2018, the best the Owls can hope for is college football’s version of the runner-up bowl.

Realistically, the best Temple can hope for is to do what UCF did—beat a successful and respected Power 5 team in a NY6 bowl—and let the chips fall where they may. Maybe this year, with wins over Boston College and Maryland and rolling through the league schedule unscathed, Temple gets a better break than UCF did but that’s asking for a lot more than any organization should be asked.

What UCF did was pretty darn good and it is something the Owls should aspire to do from time to time.

According to Collins, this appears to be one of those times.

In an unfair system, and until Temple can position itself to join the big-time, that’s our Super Bowl.

Wednesday: Signing Day Primer

02.02.18
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Boomer: The One Who Got Away

boumerhi

Boomer started his first season helping students into dorms here.

You cannot go back in time and say for certain one thing would have happened under different circumstances, but Temple let a good one get away at the kicking position the other day.

We’re not talking about Austin Jones, the graduate transfer who we will be watching kick for Alabama next season, but about our own Aaron “Boomer” Boumerhi.

What’s that you say, Boomer is still here?
journey

Yes, for next year and for 2019 but except for some incredibly botched handling of the kicking situation by the current coaching staff, he could have been here in 2020.

Hindsight is 20/20 and that just so happens to be the year Temple could have had the services of Boomer until. Like many things on this site, the coaching staff did not need the benefit of hindsight; they just could have read this blog and would have saved themselves a lot of heartache. Jones, in a two-kicker system, got hurt in 2017 but who knows what would have happened in the injury department had he been awarded the job on his own? He might have gotten injured, but then again he might not have. He deserved the chance to prove either way.

This is what should have happened and what we outlined in a post in this space way back in August and here is the proof in black and white.

Jones should have kicked his senior year here, using up his eligibility, and Boomer should have been redshirted, saving a year of his.

That was the King Solomon Solution: Split this kicking baby right down the middle like a Jones/Boumerhi field goal and keep the good times rolling at a very important position for another year.

Why did the staff choose the two-kicker solution, you ask? Good question. As all detectives can tell you motivation is a tricky thing to determine, but my educated guess is that this staff did not think they would be here in 2020 so why do they give a flying fuck about Temple having a serviceable kicker in that season? (Excuse my language, but this is the college football world we live in today.) I do. Maybe other Temple fans do, too. You could give me $7 million to write a Baylor blog extolling virtues of Baylor football, but I’d have to say no thanks. This is my school and the the Temple football team is the sports team I love above all others, including the Eagles, Phillies and Sixers. Coaches come, coaches go, I and a great many Temple fans will be here forever. Not all coaches burn redshirts like the Steve Addazios and others. Say all you want about Al Golden but he promised Temple he would “build a house of brick, not straw” and he delivered on the promise by redshirting 10-15  guys every season. Golden would not have gone with the two-kicker system, if he had two kickers who were even because he felt his word was his bond. Collins has made no such promises and that’s his right, as it was Golden’s right to reward Temple with solid assurances. Golden gave Temple five good years and the uni is indebted to him forever for that.

Coaches with one eye on the door don’t make the promises Golden kept.

Who knows if Jones had been allowed to kick this season by himself he would have gotten injured like he did? We cannot say for sure. Nobody can, but it was a plan that needed to be executed first. Kick Jones this season, save Boomer’s redshirt.

Instead, they tried the two-kicker system and that’s never a good plan.

There is no guarantee that Collins—or Al Golden or whomever succeeds him—is going to be able to recruit a kicker near the ability of either Boomer or Austin in the future and there’s quite a lot of evidence to the contrary.

From 1991 until 2009—which so happens to correspond to the longest period of futility in Temple or any other kind of football—Temple had a lot of nondescript and comically ineffective kickers.

There were exceptions to the rule, of course, such as when Cap Poklemba kicked for Bobby Wallace, but the rule pretty much held firm until Brandon McManus came to town. When Steve Addazio was running Montel Harris into the middle of the field to set up for an OT win at UConn, he said: “We were going to put it in the middle of the field and let the best kicker in college football win it for us.”  Before that, it was just an embarrassment at the position. After that, an embarrassment of riches.

Like the stock market and a ball that sails off a foot, what goes up must come down and it would have been nice to have a blue-chipper in the portfolio for one extra year.

Monday: Temple’s Super Bowl

Wednesday: Signing Celebration Primer

Friday: Signing Celebration Recap

Monday: The New Transfer Rule

 

 

01.31.18
by

Great Expectations

eolsen

Getting another one of these in 2018 is the goal.

While the football game that will be played on Sunday will be on the minds of most people who live in the metro area, the football games being played on Saturday a few months from now are never far from the mind of Geoff Collins.

As they should.

He gave a brief glimpse into his thinking with this recent email to Temple season ticket-holders like me:

collinsletter

I like the optimism. I like the salutation more.

“Dear Mike,”

It was a nice touch, although the guy sitting next to me probably got a “Dear Joe” and the one next him a “Dear John” and so on.

Now if he added a few paragraphs afterward that said this I would have been blown away:

Dear Mike,

Great meeting you at the season ticket-holder party last year. I remembered you said to me, “Do me one favor. Never take Nick Sharga off the field.” I remembered my response was something like, “Don’t worry. I’m his fullback coach and we’re going to use him even more this year than they did last year.”

I should have followed your advice and my own. We certainly would have scored against Houston on first and goal from the 7 instead of punting from our own 36. We would have scored at Army on first and goal from the 1 instead of coming away with zero points.

I let Dave Patenaude influence me too much instead of relying on Temple TUFF in those situations.

This year, don’t worry. We’re putting the round holes in in the round pegs and the square holes in the square ones this year. Look for Nitro to be our full-time three-down fullback leading the way for Rock, David Hood and Jager Gardner. Then look for Frankie Juice to fake the ball into the bellies of those guys and, with the linebackers and safeties up at the line of scrimmage, throw it over their heads into the arms of Isaiah Wright and Ventell Bryant for explosive downfield plays in the passing game.

We finally figured this Temple TUFF thing out and I think you’ll be pleased with the results.

Regards,

Geoff

Friday: The One That Got Away

 

 

01.29.18
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Attendance Goals: Cement Ceiling

mcHale

 

Recently, a hashtag has surfaced on the Temple football twitter page #fillTheLinc18 with photos of several returning Owls in action.

It might have had something to do with seeing that stadium vibrant and exciting and filled to capacity and sound for the Eagles’ season but, while an admirable goal, that ceiling is out of reach.

bestoftemple

 

A university with 40,000 full-time students, 320,000 alumni and 12,500 employees should be able to fill a 70,000-seat stadium

 

It should not be, but it is. A university with 40,000 full-time students, 320,000 alumni and 12,500 employees should be able to fill a 70,000-seat stadium but only a small fraction of those numbers are even interested in college football. (We have a great ex-Temple basketball player who posts photos of him and his sons at Eagles’ games every Sunday on Facebook but who I’ve seen at about one Temple football game in the last five season. #Sad.)

A glass ceiling is an Invisible but real barrier through which the next stage or level of advancement can be seen, but cannot be reached by a section of qualified and deserving individuals.

Temple football, though, does have a real ceiling of interest and it’s a cement one, harder than glass.

The 2016 Owls were set up for a nice season—which they eventually had—but fell flat on their faces before a crowd of 34,005 against Army. On the way out of that game, I heard several dozen fans saying “same old Temple” and “I’m not coming back” and these were the soft core fans, not the hard core ones. There is a reason why Temple always gets good crowds in the opener and it is because the soft core group is giving them one shot. Big wins in the opener usually mean good attendance years; big losses in the opener are almost impossible to recover from.

Getting that soft core wrapped around the hard core should be the goal and build from there.

Wayne Hardin was asked what it would take for Temple to fill Veterans Stadium—their long-demolished home then—on a consistent basis. “We’d have to go undefeated for 10-straight years,” Hardin said.

The comment was just a little tongue-in-check.

The ceiling of Temple football interest is about 35,000 fans and that’s why the university is creating a demand for tickets by building a stadium of exactly that size. So while the hashtag of #halffillTheLinc18 may not be as sexy, it certainly is a lot more realistic and the best the Owls can do until the new Temple Stadium is completed.

Meanwhile, a nice 52-7 win over Villanova would do much more to fill the Linc the rest of the season than another 16-13 one.

Wednesday: Great Expectations

01.26.18
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Killing Two Birds With One Stone

coppers

Every year, I make a point of heading down to the Liacouras Center to check out one or two basketball games.

Not this year.

I’m just not as into basketball at Temple as I am football and never have been, but I love Temple and love the state-of-the-art arena the basketball team calls home so it’s always been an enjoyable venture the few times I could get out. The place seats 10,400 and is a spectacular modern facility as good as any on The East Coast. I can only pray the new football facility being built next to it is held in as high an esteem nationally but, for $130 million, I have my doubts.

After the basketball Owls beat Clemson, South Carolina, Auburn and Wisconsin early in the season, I thought it was going to be really enjoyable but then those wins were sandwiched around loses to George Washington and LaSalle, among others, and I said no more. Nothing in sports is more frustrating than a team capable of beating good teams losing to really bad teams so I thought I’d sit this season out completely.

Until something arrived in the email the other day: A Temple football event.

recruiting

On February 7, there will be a recruiting event—called a celebration—at 5 p.m. Since the event ends at 7 and a basketball game begins then, my streak of going to at least one LC game a year since its opening will continue. The cost of the recruiting event is $20 ($25 for non-Owl Club members) and you can get a basketball ticket for as low as $12 added on, which I did. Pre-registration is encouraged so check your emails.

Call it killing two birds with one stone.

The recruiting part should be a celebration of the great job Geoff Collins did in that department this season. While he hasn’t signed any four stars, the depth of three stars is far deeper than Matt Rhule’s last full class. Of the first 25 signed commitments, 22 were three stars and above. Rhule signed only nine three stars and above in his last “full” class, the one after the Houston championship loss.

This is a consistently good class with a lot of guys who turned down Power 5 schools—offers, not just interest—to play and be educated in one of the greatest cities of the world. This is a class certainly deep and talented enough to be capable of beating the P5 teams and former traditional Eastern rivals on the schedule in the next few seasons.

Hearing Collins talk about how it came about is certainly worth the trip to town. While there, you might as well kill two birds with one stone—even though the other bird is a once vibrant now sickly Owl that certainly needs the love and attention it is not getting this winter.

Monday: The Attendance Bar

01.24.18
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Tea Leaves and The Coaching Shuffle

taver

Taver Johnson

You’ve got to hand it to Geoff Collins.

With some recent coaching assignment reshuffling, his vague “Above The Line” concept  at least has extended throughout the Temple football organization.

A cynic would suggest that Andrew Thacker’s “promotion” to defensive coordinator would indicate that Collins was not entirely pleased with the job former defensive coordinator Taver Johnson did. Yet, despite the promotion of Thacker, Johnson was named “co-defensive coordinator” in the shuffle. So we have a new defensive coordinator, yet the old guy is the co-defensive coordinator, and an assistant head coach to boot.

Like the depth chart that really isn’t a depth chart, the lines are further blurred here because this doesn’t indicate who will be calling the defensive signals.  Got to think this is a way to get Johnson a raise, as well as some of the other guys. Presumably not getting a raise last year’s offensive coordinator Dave Patenaude because the title Johnson “assistant head coach” had on defense went to a familiar name on offense.

folmeister

 

Foley, who knows Temple tough inside and out, must have pulled the remaining hair of out his head when Patenaude called for a pass on first-and-goal from the 1

 

That’s also the title Ed Foley got on offense and all of us at Temple Football Forever (all one of us) are thrilled with that promotion. That means that Foley is the new boss of current offensive coordinator Dave Patenaude and we might not see a pass on first-and-goal at the one with 3:16 left in the Army game. At least that’s the hope. Foley, who knows Temple tough inside and out, must have pulled the remaining hair of out his head when Patenaude called for a pass on first-and-goal from the 1. Foley would have lined Ryquell Armstead (who had 151 yards in that game) behind fullback Nick Sharga and pounded Rock home for six on first down. Patenaude went Coastal Carolina soft and got zero points and cost Temple a win.

All in all, coaching assignments, like depth charts, should give fans an indication of who rises to the top of the organization but this is how Collins wants to operate so let’s hope he’s successful with it.

Other changes:

Reggie Garrett was promoted to defensive analyst after spending two seasons as a graduate assistant, working with the defense. Tom Pajic moves from director of player personnel to senior offensive adviser. Larry Knight, who was in charge of quality control for defense and recruiting, is now the director of player personnel.

Last week, Adam DiMichele was named recruiting coordinator/offensive assistant, allowing him to become the 10th full-time assistant coach. DiMichele shares similar offensive principles with Foley, which is a good thing.

Here are the coaches who have different roles and/or were promoted:

Ed Foley: assistant head coach offense/special teams coordinator/tight ends

Taver Johnson: assistant head coach defense/co-defensive coordinator/safeties

Dave Patenaude: Offensive coordinator/quarterbacks

Andrew Thacker: Defensive coordinator/linebackers

Jim Panagos: Defensive line/run game coordinator

Chris Wiesehan: Offensive line/run game coordinator

Tom Pajic: Senior offensive adviser

Larry Knight: Director of player personnel

Josh Linam: Quality control – defense

Friday: Killing Two Birds With One Stone

Monday: Strange Hastags

Wednesday; Great Expectations

Friday: The One That Got Away

2/5: Temple’s Super Bowl

2/7: Signing Celebration Primer

2/8: Signing Celebration Recap

01.22.18
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5 Unanswered Questions

tuff

The thing about coaching changes is that bumps in the road are going to be an expected part of the process.

No one—at least the people I talk to—expected to hit this many major potholes on the way to what was largely an under-performing season in 2017. Plenty of starters and key contributors returned from the AAC championship team and Matt Rhule did not leave the cupboard bare for first-year coach Geoff Collins. Talent-wise, this was a team that should not have lost to UConn and Army. You may say that is crying over spilled milk but leaving that milk there without cleaning  it up could make next season more sour tasting that it should.

Part of the process is asking hard questions and answering them honestly.  So far, no member of the Temple football media (to our knowledge) has asked any of these five questions of  Collins and getting these answers by Cherry and White Day would be nice:

sharga

5) What happened to the fullback position at Temple?

Matt Rhule said he had an Epiphany after his second season that the way to create explosive plays in the passing game was not by spreading the field with receivers but by establishing the run behind a blocking fullback and then using play action to get receivers open. That plan worked for two 10-win seasons and Collins seemed on board with it as late as the season-ticket holder party in August. What happened? Will Nitro be used as a fullback this year or is the fullback position done at Temple? (And don’t say the fullback isn’t used in college football anymore. Just because other teams don’t use the triple option, that doesn’t mean that Navy will stop using it. The fullback fits the Temple TUFF football philosophy as the triple-option is to Navy. Run the ball, play great defense and special teams and hit explosive plays in the play-action game is what got Temple consecutive double-digit win seasons)

4) What happened to Jared Folks?

How does a guy start in the AAC championship game for a great team one year and become a non-factor for a mediocre team the next? Inquiring minds need to know.

nutile

3) How could it have taken them seven games to figure one quarterback was better than the other?

Despite saying for nine months leading up to the opener that all four quarterbacks were “equal” Collins rolled out an under-performing quarterback for seven games before an injury allowed Frank Nutile to play. Fans immediately saw that he was the far superior quarterback in the Army game. How could a highly paid coaching staff miss that?

2) What did Collins mean by his “square peg, round hole” comment?

Before the bowl game, Collins said that the offense didn’t come around because “I think we were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole on offense.” What were they trying to do that was wrong and what fixes did they apply to make it work?

journey

1) How could they have screwed up the kicking situation?

All over college football, you could see kickers on Power 5 teams miss chip-shot field goals but Temple had two kickers, Austin Jones, and Aaron Boumerhi, who were elite. That was an asset they should have extended by playing the healthy one and redshirting the other.  Instead the Owls tried to use two kickers from the jump. The Owls could have used Boomer for the extra year. Now Jones is gone and odds are the next one probably won’t be as good as Brandon McManus, Jones or Boomer. Great kickers are hard to find as Rhule found out in his first  year on the job.

Wednesday: The Coaching Shuffle

Friday: Killing Two Birds With One Stone

Monday: Strange Hashtags

01.19.18
by

Stadium: End Of The Beginning

 

badurban

Seats here are too far away from stadium and not on top of the field like this other example of a great urban stadium within essentially the same square acreage footprint.

urban

Roughly six years ago, a Temple University Board of Trustees member told a friend of mine at the NCAA Tournament that a football stadium on campus was a “done deal.”

My friend has a lot deeper pockets than me and often traveled to see the football team in remote Middle Atlantic Conference places like Mt. Pleasant, Michigan and Oxford, Ohio, with reports about the Temple fan presence there.

Often, he was it–the guy who was invited to home tailgates by the Central Michigan and Fake Miami fans like an alien who landed in a flying saucer.

This December, his move to Coral Gables, Florida made him a more likely prospect than I to make the Gasparilla Bowl and he bellied up to President Dick Englert at a pre-game function and dropped the question about whether or not Temple will build a new football stadium.

“We’ll see,” the coy Englert said.

goodurban

Temple fans should accept no less than this kind of stadium

Well, we saw a little bit on Thursday when the university announced to the world that the stadium is presenting plans to the city for the building of a “multi-purpose facility.” Notice the word “multi-purpose.” If it had been “a stadium” the already negative view of many of the city pols would have been further polarized.

Make no mistake about what happened Thursday.

This is not the end of the stadium process but the end of the beginning. The end is a long, long way away.

It was nice to finally see an artist’s conception of the stadium. To me, that was disappointing. The seats are too slopped back and not on top of the field. Some tinkering needs to be done on the architects’ end. Make the stadium like Boston College here and we’re in; otherwise, where is the Temple home field advantage?

The timeline that many stadium proponents state continues to be: Shovel in the ground by August, stadium done by 2019.

For someone who has lived in Philadelphia all of my life and knows the ins and outs of the corrupt political system here, that’s a pipe dream.

Figure on two years of hassle with the city and a shovel in the ground by 2019 at best. At worst, figure a thumbs’ down from the city and an extended Linc lease. I’m a lean toward a stadium at Temple because I think the ceiling for interest in Temple football is 35K at best. That still looks horrible in a 70K stadium and perception to many is reality.  Still, to think that today’s announcement puts this on a fast track to completion is pure fallacy.

Plan on going to that stadium for the opener maybe 2021 but more likely 2022.

I will have to eat a lot more salads, drink a lot fewer beers and work out about two extra hours a day to definitively  say I will see The Promised Land with you but I promise to try.

From what I’ve been told by my Philadelphia City Council peeps, there are 10 elected members and seven at-large members. For this to pass in the county, there will have to be nine votes. Right now, Temple can count on four. Getting to nine will not be impossible, but it will be close to impossible.

This is not the end but the end of the beginning. The end of the end could be longer than anyone knows. In short, not a done deal by a longshot.

Monday: Five Unanswered Questions