12.06.17
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Ridiculousness: Temple Football Edition

Taking time off from all the bowl mania to re-examine one word uttered by Temple football coach Geoff Collins in his last press conference that we wanted to get to before too much time passed.

Ridiculous.

It stood right out there like a high-hanging curve ball for Barry Bonds to hit out of the park.

“We’re going to have a ridiculous team next year,” Collins said on the day the Owls beat Tulsa. That was his last press conference because he hit the recruiting trail the day after Tulsa and was not back for the bowl press conference.

kraft
“We’re going to have a ridiculous team next year,” Geoff Collins.

On the TV grid, MTV has a show called “Ridiculousness.” I page down it on the way to watching the Sixers or another sporting event and have never stopped, but the guide describes it  as “various viral videos from the Internet, usually involving failed stunts.”

Since the Minister of Mayhem (and swag) probably wasn’t referring to the Merriam-Webster definition of the word, we went to the online urban dictionary to get the meaning of it to the kids today.

The urban dictionary of the word ridiculous says “something unbelievable in any shape or form, or something worthy of memory.”

The last part of that sentence is probably what Collins was thinking about.

Something worthy of memory …

Geez, I hope so but this team loses two of its three best receivers, its best offensive lineman, the best fullback in the country, its two best edge rushers and pretty much the entire starting defensive secondary.

All of the things that should have made this season more satisfying to Temple fans than it turned out to be seem to be part of the reason why the Owls won’t return to championship form next year. All of those losses were guys who were key contributors to an AAC championship team and their talents should have been accentuated enough to get to at least eight wins this season.

Instead, the coaches tried to force a square peg into a round hole too many times this season, at least offensively, trying to turn fullback-oriented and play-action talent into a something foreign to them.

It’s all about the Jimmy’s and Joe’s, not the X’s and O’s, and the Owls lose too many Jimmy’s and Joe’s to be as “ridiculous” as Collins is projecting them to be. A word of caution is that when the experts picked UCF and USF ahead of the Owls, Collins said “I love it.” The interpretation at the time was that he loved it because he would have loved nothing better than the Owls to prove them wrong by vaulting over them, not that it had lessened the pressure of defending his team’s AAC title. Now, his word is ridiculous and we’ve got to interpret that was ridiculously good, not ridiculously bad.

For his sake, and ours, let’s hope he’s right but here we sit a year to almost the day from finding out, there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Friday: An Early  Look At FIU

12.04.17
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TU Bowl Motto: Let’s Win This Bad Boy

tailgate

Tailgate areas are at the top of this photo

Other than knowing the geography every nook and cranny of Philadelphia, the Tampa/St. Pete area is the one I am most familiar with on the planet.

If I could live there, I would. That’s pretty much why I play the lottery a couple of times a week.

Great weather a dozen months a year and no driving in the snow. I know. I spent nearly 20 springs there, covering the Philadelphia Phillies for a suburban daily and going down on my own in the years I was not on assignment.

fiusked

This is a team Geoff Collins should beat

Can’t beat it. From Dale Mabry Boulevard to the Howard Franklin Bridge, the driving is easy and the people are laid back and happy. There are plenty of Philadelphia transplants, lured by the appeal of the Phillies being in town for February and March and plenty of Eagles’ bars down there.

So the Temple Owls will live in St. Pete/Clearwater for at least a week, getting an invitation to the Gasparilla Bad Boy Mowers Bowl (Dec., 21, 8 p.m., ESPN).

It should be a fun week.

This time, though, the focus should be on winning. It is the only game on national TV that day and the national perceptions of Temple football will be formed in bars from Salem, Oregon to Salem, Massachusetts.

The Owls’ lone motto from today on out should be: “Let’s Win This Bad Boy.”

If Matt Rhule were to get on the horn with his good friend Geoff Collins, he’d give the first-year coach this advice:

“Geoff, I wanted our Florida bowl to be a reward for our kids so we went heavy on the air hockey, the bowling, the beach volleyball and even a trip to the Everglades. What I didn’t do enough of was game prep and we got our asses handed to us by a good Toledo team. Don’t make the same mistake I made. Go very light on the tourist stuff and very heavy on the game prep. Make it like a regular week at the E-O.”

If that were truly Rhule’s advice—and we suspect it would be—the Owls will be much better off. Look at it this way: From a national perception standpoint, the Temple football brand (Temple TUFF?) takes a huge hit if it loses to Florida International. There’s a big difference between finishing 6-7 and trending downward after back-to-back 10-win seasons and 7-6 and trending upward by winning four of the last five games. It’ll be pretty hard to sell things like “The Standard, Money Downs and Swag” coming off a 6-7 season. In fact, it will sound damn hollow.

Plus, there is the added incentive of doing something those double-digit-win Temple teams did not do: Celebrate the last game of the season by hoisting a bowl trophy. They had to watch two teams do that the past two years at their expense.

So let’s win this bad boy and wash that nasty taste out of our mouths. There’s no easy formula to accomplish that, but hard practices would be a good place to start.

Wednesday: Ridiculousness

Friday: Closer Look at FIU

12.02.17
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Bowl Scenarios: It comes down to Florida

There are two thoughts that come to mind when thinking about Temple’s bowl destination:

1)  Beggars can’t be chosers

2) What difference does it make?

We won’t know for sure, but my gut is telling me that Temple’s bowl destination will be Boca Raton again.

Process of elimination.

Because Temple just scraped into being bowl eligible, it falls into the beggars’ category when it comes to the AAC pecking order. That means the more appealing bowls–at least to me–like the Birmingham Bowl and the Cure Bowl–will go elsewhere.

templebowls

To me, the Birmingham Bowl would be the ideal destination for Temple because the Owls’ football brand is best advanced by beating a Power 5 team. The only possible Power 5 opponent would come in either two bowls, Birmingham or Military.

That’s where the “what difference does it make?” phrase comes into play. If the Owls are not going to play a Power 5 team–and it looks like they are not—what difference does it make if they play either a Marshall, a Georgia State, a FIU or an Appalachian State?

Not much.

Since Navy, despite some rumblings down there to the contrary, is probably going to host the Military Bowl and since USF made known its strong desire to play a Power 5 school, the Owls are probably going to either St. Petersburg  or Boca Raton again. The Owls have demonstrated a strong following in Boca Raton, so I think that’s where they will be slotted again. They drew a conservatively estimated 6,000 to Boca (after drawing 4,000 to New Mexico for the previous bowl), so they are a known commodity there. They might do as well or better in St. Pete, but bowl committees like a sure thing and Temple is far from a sure thing there.

The opponent is the unknown factor, but if it’s a Sun Belt or CUSA school, the reaction by “Joe Philadelphia” fans to will probably be a “meh.” Ideally, you’d like to see the Owls go against, say, an ACC team like Duke or BC in Birmingham but that chess move has been blocked by USF.

So, in my mind, it’s back to Del Boca Vista. This time, let’s hope Geoff Collins goes easy on the beach volleyball, air hockey and bowling and cracks the whip on the game prep because, while beating a CUSA or Sun Belt team won’t advance the Temple TUFF brand, losing would be worse.

Monday: Bowl Reality

Wednesday: Ridiculousness 

11.30.17
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Fizzy’s Corner: Putting on Bow(l) on 2017

 

fullbacksnow

Winning a bowl game is what you practice in the snow for in February.

Editor’s Note: I met Fizz at a tailgate in the Al Golden years and immediately hit it off with him. If this truly is his last submission of the season, we thank him for his contributions. Not only a great former Temple player, but more importantly a great guy to talk to at the tailgates and we both had a good talk with Temple AD Dr. Pat Kraft together last year.

By Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub

That the Delaware Valley win over Husson University (???) was on page 7 of the Inquirer, and Temple’s victory over Tulsa was on Page 9, about sums up the season.  Six and six, when we woulda, coulda, shoulda been nine and three, was a disappointing beginning to Geoff Collins tenure.

For me, it wasn’t the record itself, but the questionable coaching strategies exhibited throughout the year.  My doubts began at the semi-closed scrimmage at Franklin Field, before the Notre Dame game.  After watching for an hour, I remarked to a former teammate, “I hope that’s not the offense.”  Unfortunately, for the first eight games, it was the offense. I called it the “Broad Street” offense because everything was straight ahead.  On a creative scale of 1 to 10, our offense was a 1.

fizz

There is a chance Fizz gets his swag on in Boca Raton again like he did in this photo two years ago.

 

Briefly, I want to comment on the Tulsa game which looked like the raggedy-ass cadets vs. the one-armed robot.  I never thought I’d see a college game where a team didn’t have a quarterback, but that’s what happened.  Tulsa had a wide-receiver playing QB at the end, and yet we couldn’t stop the off-tackle left and right.  Their running back gained over 220 yards.  Imagine!

 

Back in the day, did you ever meet a pretty girl, and yet there was no magic?  Although his play-calling improved significantly in the last three games, Dave Patenaude has shown little magic.  For example, he runs successfully three times in a row, and then wants to pass.  Fine!  But in that situation you throw from play-action, not from drop-back.

 

Next, after Tulsa almost blocked two extra-points in a row, we decide to go for a long field goal at fourth-and-three, on their thirty-four yard line.  Why?  The result was a blocked kick.  How about the split or “cheese-steak” offensive set?  Dave goes to that in the fourth quarter, and runs the same play he’s run every time before; the quick throw to Wright.  Doesn’t he know they’ve seen that play on tape? If you’re going to use that formation, you pump the throw to Wright, and have the end take off deep.

 

But the worst call of the game came with forty seconds left.  We’re on their twelve-yard line, and all we had to do was take a knee to end the game.  Instead, we ran Sharga up the middle.  So what?  Here’s what!  We had a devastating knee injury to one of our offensive linemen.

 

Enough about the offense…  We have a former SEC defensive coordinator as head coach, and yet we’ve had a porous pass defense until the very end.  Even this past Saturday, we tried to cover triple wideouts with two defenders.  On Tulsa’s scoring pass play in the first quarter, three receivers were open.  Later, they would send three wideouts to one side, and one wideout on the other, just to setup the off-tackle run.  We never adjusted, as the stats will show.  Also, we lost two games at the very end because we didn’t have an effective pass prevent defense all year, and then there were the misused time-outs in the Connecticut game.

 

However, to be fair, the players love Collins, we won half our games, and the team always played with great enthusiasm.  Next year, we’ll be able to add recruiting into the formula.

 

To sum up the 2017 season, the coaching staff earned a grade of “C.”

 

The Past and the Future

 

Al Golden with Matt Rhule as offensive coordinator, was a mediocre game-day combination.

 

Here’s one of the worst play calls I’ve ever seen.  Trailing by ten points, and with ten minutes left in the game, we had a fourth and one, at the Navy forty yard-line.  Al called a time-out, and when it was over, he punted.  Knowing full-well     Navy might control the ball for five minutes, he punted. Game over! (And I couldn’t even yell or scream because Al’s parents were sitting in front of me, so I went back to the corridor before losing it.)

 

When Steve Addazio wasn’t violently cursing at the kids, he just ran the football.  Fortunately for him, he inherited a massive offensive front line.

 

I remember walking out of the bowl game in Albuquerque, and being asked by a former Owl and NFL kicker what I thought.  I said this team should have had at least two more wins.

 

Matt Rhule was a fantastic administrative head coach and recruiter, and a lousy game-day coach.

 

How many times did we watch Matt call a timeout because he couldn’t decide on the play?  Then, after the timeout, run up the middle. 

 

What I’m trying to say is, I haven’t seen an imaginative, game day coach who possesses “magic” in  well, forever.  It’s not hard to identify the magic, you know it when you watch the game and see the continuous flow of the offense where play calls are unexpected, and keeps the defense on their heels.  Right now, Doug Pederson has magic.

 

So can Geoff Collins ever capture it?  Maybe!  Doug Pederson’s play calling after the first three games last year was lousy.  I’ve seen any number of coaches turn it around after they get a year under their belt.  Dave Patenaude’s last three games were head and shoulders above the beginning of the year.  If he’d just done that earlier, we’d have been fine. Maybe, just to please me, Dave will run one reverse, and one bootleg at the goal-line, each game.  And our defense will figure out how to rush four, play a five man zone across the field with two deep safeties on either side, for an end-of-the-game prevent.

 

Thanks for reading my stuff this season. Writing helped me sleep at night.  –  Fizz

Saturday: Bowl Scenarios

Monday: The Bowl Reality

 

11.28.17
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Reversing Field: Getting Temple Football on YouTube

Today’s post was supposed to be about the LIKELY bowl destinations of the Temple Owls.

Since those likely bowl destinations are the same bowl destinations today as they were on Saturday, we’ll make that post on Thursday—when we’ve been assured by a trusty source that more will be known tomorrow and the four possible destinations could be narrowed to one or two.

So like Ryquell Armstead without Nick Sharga to follow through the hole, we will be reversing field today. Hopefully, like Rock, this post will also result in a Temple touchdown, this time a figurative one.

One of my Pet Peeves for years has been that other schools have their past games on YouTube but it’s almost impossible to find Temple football footage from past years. Temple really hasn’t had a video crew since Fran Duffy (not to be confused with Fran Dunphy) arrived on the scene with Owl Golden in 2006. Duffy is now the video coordinator with the Philadelphia Eagles. The guys who are played with Temple the last decade or so are in good shape.

1123171203a

Frank McArdle’s Ryan team less than a week ago.

It’s the other guys, the ones who played before them, we’ve always been more concerned about from a historical footage perspective.

Thanks to Archbishop Ryan head coach Frank McArdle that could all change. Little did I know I’d be watching Frank’s team from the stands on Thanksgiving Day beat Washington, 38-14, and then have him contact me a couple of nights later, but that’s exactly what happened.

Frank sent us this email out of the blue on Sunday night and we were very grateful to receive it:

Mike,

Hope all is well. I have read the blog for a few years now and have enjoyed it. I have been going to Temple games since I was a kid and consider myself a Temple fan. I writing to you to see if you wanted to pass this on to former Temple players. I was recruited to JMU  and coached by former Temple asst. Eddie Davis (Bruce era) , after college Eddie got me into coaching at Northeastern University. Eddie and I developed a very close relationship We lost Eddie in 2013. Today Eddie’s wife gave me hundreds of films and other coaching keepsakes of Eddies. Among the films are 8mm Temple Coaches films from his time with Coach Arians. I have

1985 TU vs BYU

1986 TU vs VA Tech

1987 TU vs Penn State & Akron

1988 TU vs BC & Rutgers

I am not looking to sell the films just passing this along to see if any former players wanted a copy of the games.

_  Frank McArdle

 

 

My thought process here are not just to get these to a few of the players but to get them to someone who is able to transfer them to YouTube so the entire Temple football community—fans, current players, past players—can see and enjoy them whenever they want.

I know there is a service out there that transforms old eight-millimeter film into a DVD and someone reading this surely must have the ability to transfer that to YouTube. That

If so, contact me at templefootballforever@gmail.com and I will get you in touch with Frank and we can get this process rolling.

Thanks, Frank.

Thursday: Bowl Scenarios

 

11.26.17
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Temple Owls: Bowl Bound


Unfortunately, there are still some Temple football fans around rooted in the mindset of the 1990s.
That is, Temple football is not Alabama and that we as the unwashed Temple fans should be able to accept any scrapes of food that come our way because we are starving for success.
That all changed, though, when Al Golden came to town roughly a decade ago.
Those of us who have followed the program know that Temple has turned the corner and that bowl games should be the norm, not the exception.
So, as in vitamins, consider what happened yesterday to be the adult minimum yearly requirement: A bowl game with expectations of a brighter future.
I don’t know about the brighter future part–new coach Geoff Collins says that next year is going to be, umm, to use his word “ridiculous”–but we’ve achieved our minimum yearly requirement of a bowl game and I guess a lot of us should be thankful for that.

greatness
I will say one thing: This season will be a success if Temple, not Wake Forest or Toledo, is hoisting a bowl trophy no matter who the opponent.

The fact that it should have been better cannot be changed now. Beat UConn and Army, as the Owls should have, and the Owls would have finished 8-4 and gone to a similar bowl that they will go to now so it’s a wash.
As far as the 43-22 win over Tulsa goes, the Owls made Nick Sharga disappear again and that’s sad because he’s not only the best fullback in the country but one of the four best fullbacks I’ve ever seen in my 40 years of watching Temple football (right up there with Henry Hynoski, Mark Bright and Shelley Poole) and maybe, with Poole, the best blocking fullback I’ve ever seen at Temple.
If there’s a God, there will be a game plan featuring Ryquell Amstread following Sharga through the hole against the bowl opponent and a similar role for Rob Ritrovato next year. The Owls have a Heathen OC, Dave Patenaude, though, and he seems intent on doing things his way.
That way worked against Tulsa. It did not work against Villanova, UConn or a myriad other games.
Collins delivered the minimum his first year, which fit the definition of ridiculous in one way in that you are not supposed to go from double-digit-win seasons to a six-win one.
Seven wins would be better and the Owls have a chance to do that in a couple of weeks.

That would be exceeding the minimum by one.

Thursday: Fizzy Wraps Up The Season

Saturday: Bowl Scenarios

Monday: Bowl Reality

Wednesday: Ridiculousness 

 

 

11.25.17
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Tulsa Preview: Setting Up Next Year’s Slogan

emoji

Anyone who thinks a 2-9 Tulsa this afternoon (4 p.m., ESPN NEWS) is going to be a pushover for Temple is sadly mistaken.

Exhibits A and B are two scores: Tulsa 45, Houston 17 and USF 27, Tulsa 20.

Both of those are real scores and both happened this season, not some season long ago. The Hurricane beat one good team badly and hung tough with the second- or third-best team in the league on the road a week ago.

Yes, Temple is 5-6 and Tulsa is 2-9 and ostensibly playing for a lot more than the Hurricanes. Still, this is Senior Day at Tulsa and 19 seniors are saying goodbye. They will not quit.

unfinished

So Temple has to execute. In our minds, maybe not Dave Patenaude’s, that means establishing the run with the tailback following the best fullback in the country through the hole, then hitting on explosive plays in the play-action passing game. Really, that’s the only way Temple has won the prior two seasons and the only way Temple can win today.

This game is as much for Temple setting up next year’s slogan as much as anything else. When the Owls finished 6-6 at the end of the 2014 season, fullback and team leader Kenny Harper got up on the podium at the E-O and said, simply: “Leave No Doubt.”

He and the rest of the seniors were leaving the unmistakable slogan for the next year that six wins would not be good enough; that six wins would be putting the Owls’ fate in someone else’s hands. Harper’s words carried the Owls through one 10-win season and an appearance in the AAC championship game. The next year’s slogan was “Unfinished Business” and that was also fulfilled with the business being an AAC title.

This year, though, is different.


.. .that means establishing
the run with the tailback
following the best fullback
in the country through the
hole, then hitting on explosive
plays in the play-action passing
game. Really, that’s the only
way Temple has won the prior
two seasons and the only way
Temple can win today

Six wins would MOST LIKELY put the Owls in a bowl and give them the chance to finish the season with the kind of exclamation point they were not able to even in 10-win seasons the last two years. From our algorithms, we have been able to determine that there is a 99.5 percent chance for this year’s Owls to reach a bowl with six wins, while the six-win team of 2014 stood no more than a 45 percent chance.

Winning a bowl this year would be a welcome difference compared to the last two seasons but to win one you’ve got to get to one first.

Owls had trouble with that minor detail in their last six-win season  because the AAC had four bowl-tie ins in 2014, having sold their fifth–the Bahama’s Bowls–to the MAC. This year, the conference has seven bowl tie-ins and since the winner of the league, probably UCF, will be going to a New Year’s Six Bowl, any six-win AAC team will qualify for some bowl. Even in the unlikely event that the AAC has eight six-win teams, the profile of the league is such that any qualifying team will not be snubbed.

At least, that’s the way we see it.

If the Owl team that showed up for Navy shows up for Tulsa, the Owls will be one of those teams. If, on the the other hand, the Owls who lost to UConn show up in Oklahoma today, they will be sitting on the couch watching other less talented teams  and wondering just what swag, money downs, juice and #TheStandard really means.

And they will leave a lot of doubt for next year and for the entire Geoff Collins Era. So there is a lot at stake in the three hours that begin at 4 this afternoon or next year’s slogan could be a real doozy.

Tomorrow: Game Analysis

 

11.24.17
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Fizzy’s Corner: UCF Impressive

Editor’s Note: Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub checked in with these thoughts on the Central Florida game on 10:10 a.m. of Thanksgiving Day. After watching high school football, stopping off to get some turkey, we got home Thursday night and saw this always welcome contribution. We hope Fizz checks in on his thoughts after the Owls (hopefully) beat Tulsa.

By Dave “Fizzy” Weinraub

 It was a pleasure to watch; the changing offensive sets, the motion drawing the defenders to where they were most vulnerable, the sequence of plays that made the defense think they knew what was coming, and the pass patterns of the receivers aimed at drawing attention away from an excellent running quarterback.  On defense, mostly everything was under control.  There was never any panic or broken assignments, and yardage was begrudgingly given up.  The pass defenders usually were looking at the QB when the ball was thrown, which resulted in four interceptions.  All-in-all, the best coached team I’ve seen all year, in person or on TV.

fizz

Of course, I’m talking about Central Florida and their coach Scott Frost, who will probably be making 5.5 million somewhere else next season.

On the Temple side, the score would have been closer had Frank Nutile not had the horrible day he did.  But Central Florida was one of the three teams I mentioned earlier in the season, that has more talent then we do.  Coupling that talent with outstanding coaching, made a formidable task.

A win next week gets us bowl eligible, for what that’s worth.  The best thing about playing a bowl game is it gives the team extra practice for next season.  It also gives us more TV exposure, which might help recruiting.  But not if we lay an egg like we did in the last two bowl games.

 HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE…

and may your bird be bigger than mine!

Tomorrow: Tulsa Preview

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11.23.17
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Thanksgiving With (Just a Few) Words

Editor’s Note: The biggest reason I have to be thankful for (as a Temple fan at least) was to be able to write this story roughly one year ago. On this Thanksgiving Day, we republish it in its entirety.

The morning after arguably the greatest win in Temple football history, there are no words.

Literally no words are coming out of my mouth, at least in the sense of being able to talk this morning.

The throaty and hoarse condition is more than OK because it was the result of cheering for the Owls at beautiful Navy-Marine Corps Stadium as they captured what really is their first-ever major football championship. The 1967 MAC title was admirable, but that was a day when the school played to a level of football that was beneath their status even then as one of America’s great public universities.

So this was it.

ride

Walking out of the stadium and into the concourse, I let out a very loud primal: “THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN’ ABOUT!!”

Fortunately, I got a few high fives and smiles from my fellow Temple fans and not fitted for a straightjacket. It also put the voice out for 24 hours, maybe more.

When it comes to Temple football today at least, you cannot think in terms of a national championship—the deck is stacked against G5 teams in an unfair system—so what happened yesterday was the pinnacle of Temple football success. Thousands of Temple fans, easily in excess of 10,000 Temple fans, made Navy’s 15-game home winning streak a moot point by turning that stadium into a Temple home field advantage and to get to that mountaintop and look down from it is incredibly satisfying.

Hey, it’s a pretty spectacular pinnacle. The only thing that would have made it better was a G5 slot in a New Year’s Six bowl against Penn State, but that’s not happening for a number of reasons that are not important today. (Objectively, would you take a team for the Cotton Bowl that has won seven straight against this schedule and beat a Navy team, 34-10, over a Western Michigan team that struggled to beat a four-loss Ohio team? I would but I don’t expect the bowl committee to be that objective. I can also grudingly see the WMU argument.)

What is important is that the Owls have gone from being a perennial Bottom 10 team and laughed at nationally to being ranked in the Top 25 for two straight years and going to a title game one year and winning it the next. When you think of the success P.J. Walker and Jahad Thomas have had here, there is a Twilight Zone quality to the parallel between this success and their success at Elizabeth (N.J.). In their freshman year at Elizabeth, they won one game; in their freshman year at Temple they won two games. In their sophomore year at both schools, they won six games. In their junior year at both schools, they reached the title game and lost and, in their senior year at both schools, they lifted the ultimate hardware together.

Truly amazing and I will miss both of those guys.

Back on Cherry and White Day, I wrote that this team will be better than last year’s team while people on other websites—notably, Rutgers and Penn State fan boards—insisted that Temple would take a step back. I was consistent in my belief that this was the STEP FORWARD year, not the step back one, and that belief was rooted in knowledge that both the defense and offense were significantly upgraded despite graduation losses. Only a Temple fan who follows the team closely would know that, not the know-it-alls who make assumptions on subjects they have no idea what they are talking about.

Today at noon, the Owls will know where they will go for a bowl game. They can finish the season in the top 25 and set the record for most wins in Temple football history.

It won’t be the cake because we saw that yesterday, but it will be the Cherry on top of that white cake and it will be delicious even going down past what promises to be a future sore throat.

Friday: Fizzy’s Corner

Saturday: Tulsa Preview

Sunday: Game Analysis

Tuesday: Season Analysis

Thursday: Looking Ahead

11.21.17
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5 Things to Be Thankful For …

thanksgiving

Even in a 5-6 season (so far), there are things to be thankful for and, for today, we will run down this small list.

experience

Attendance

For all the self-flagellations of Temple fans over poor attendance, Boston College—a Power 5 team playing in Boston against a New England rival—drew slightly over 20,000 fans in 37,000-seat Fenway Park in a 38-13 win over UConn on Saturday night. Temple, having a worse season than BC, drew an average of over 26,000 fans for a 5-6 team. Last year, for a 10-win team, the Owls averaged  27,229.

sharga

Nick Sharga

The fullback returned to the modern offense for the first time since the Wyatt Benson days of Al Golden and Sharga proved the position could be the key that starts an effective offense. Jahad Thomas and Ryquell Armstead followed Sharga through the hole a year ago. That accomplished two things: Shorten the game and keep the defense fresh while chewing up clock and make the play-action passing game much more effective by bringing the linebackers and the safeties up to the line of scrimmage to defend the run and then passing over their heads. Sharga was largely a forgotten man by this staff who only gave him lip service and not the minutes he earned. Hopefully, this style of Temple TUFF football doesn’t die with the departure of Sharga because Rob Ritrovato has shown he can be an effective replacement. If OC Dave Patenaude pushes back on truly embracing a style of offensive football that epitomizes TEMPLE TUFF, head coach Geoff Collins should push him out the door no later than January.

alumnus

Atmosphere

With the satellite tailgates and the main alumni tailgate, the pre-game party atmosphere at Temple was second to none. The two strongest satellite groups were Wayne Hardin’s guys, led by Steve Conjar, and the Bruce Arians’ group, led by Sheldon Morris. The alumni association did a bang-up job with the main tailgate and, for $25 bucks, could not beat the spread or the accompanying giveaways.

graphic

Frankie Juice

Frank Nutile, the backup who became the starter, provided some juice when he was forced into action as a starter against Army, a game that was lost due to no fault of his own. (Some incredibly poor coaching defensive adjustments in Army’s last series lost that one.) Juice was the reason for a 36-13 lead over a very good Navy team, not responsible for the Middies getting back into that one. Despite the four interceptions against UCF—when the Owls should have been running the ball deep in their own territory—Nutile is determined to have the seniors go out on a good note at Tulsa and we have no reason to doubt him. (Norm Van Brocklin had four interceptions in a 1960 game against the Cowboys but the Eagles won the NFL championship that year. It’s a bad day, not a career-killer.)

falsies

The Theory of False Equivalency

Albert Einstein did not come up with it, but it was on display for the last three months on the Temple Fan Facebook page. Most fans understood that there were many starting AAC championship-level players back (Sharga, Ryquell Armstead, Ventell Byrant, Keith Kirkwood, Isaiah Wright, Adonis Jennings, Jacob Martin, Freddy Booth-Lloyd, Michael Dogbe, Greg Webb, Karamo Dioubate, Julian Taylor, Artrel Foster, Champ Chandler and Delvon Randall, three of five starters on the offensive line, just to name a few) and this coaching staff underachieved with that level talent. Yet, there were a few—they know who their names are—who insisted “this was a whole new team with new coaches” and that Matt Rhule was 2-10 and Al Golden 1-11 in their first year so Collins should get a Mulligan for this year. False equivalency. Rhule had 4-7 MAC talent; Golden had 0-11 independent talent. Hell, even Steve Addazio had a 9-4 first year inheriting a whole new group of players but he was smart enough to stick with Golden’s winning formula.

Thursday: A Throwback Story I’ll Always Be Thankful for

Saturday: Tulsa Preview

Sunday: Game Analysis

Tuesday: Season Analysis

Thursday: Looking Ahead