06.24.16
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Taking Army Seriously

Montel Harris

The greatest TU performance ever against Army: 351 yards, 7 TDs by Montel Harris (8), here singing T for Temple U.

One of the themes on social media a year ago when someone looked down the schedule to a more compelling game was to concentrate on the next one.

The players even took that approach with the subtitle season slogan “What’s Next?” and that might have been a large part of the reason Temple tied a school record of 10 wins a year ago. That, and playing two more games than the 1979 team.

Before the UCF game, which was oh for the season, I mentioned to Tyler Matakevich that the great thing about him and his teammates this year was that I had confidence they were taking UCF just as seriously as Notre Dame. “Absolutely,” Tyler said, “that’s all we think about is what’s next and not what’s after that.”

What’s next is Army and hopefully these kids take the same approach that those kids did.

A good indication that they are is that the coaches are because Matt Rhule made a side trip to Air Force Academy last month to pick the braintrust there on how to stop the triple option. USAFA runs a more polished version of Army’s triple option. Temple was embarrassed against Navy’s version two years ago and did not seem to have an effective counter. A Temple defense that finished No. 4 in the country in points allowed gave up 31 to Navy that day and the loss—coupled with a 16-13 loss to Memphis—probably cost the Owls a bowl bid.

Not only is Temple making an investment in research and development, but the Owls also dedicated at least a half-hour to defending the Army triple option in spring practice. The Army game is well-placed from the Owls’ standpoint because they don’t have to cram triple option preparedness into a short work week.

The Owls are anywhere from 16.5 -22-point favorites on opening night, but they are approaching this like it’s a pick-em and that’s the best sign of all.

Monday: 5 Things We’d Like To See By Opening Day

Wednesday: Immediate Help Is On The Way

Friday: Temple Football Forever Goes On One-Week Summer Hiatus

 

06.22.16
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Going North To Go South

burn

If doing this a lot does not cause burnout, nothing does.

Sometime in the first year of Al Golden’s tenure at Temple University, I stopped at the SAC to purchase some Temple gear and, much to my surprise, I saw the coach jog by me in the general direction of leaving the green zone, near 12th and Montgomery.

It occurred to me then that if there was ever a time for a coach to “burn out” that was it. Golden had to deal with a 20-game losing streak, a nationally low APR, and had to weed out so many of Bobby Wallace’s mistakes that it was a wonder he would field a team.

dazio

This may have been the greatest day in Temple football history.

He didn’t, and somehow found as much strength to rebuild Temple that he showed courage in jogging toward 12th Street and who knows how far East. The 20-game losing streak would end the next week, and a bowl game came not all that much longer after that.

Now, we have learned from this story that Golden was “burned out” from the combination of coaching at Temple and dealing with unrealistic expectations at Miami. If Golden went 33-25 at Temple, like he did at Miami, there would be a statue of him in front of the E-0. Instead, for being a winning coach, he got fired. Now he is the tight ends’ coach with the Detroit Lions.

Golden went North to go South, which means that he will end up at a better place as a head coach and should be able to recharge his batteries. It’s ironic that both Golden and Steve Addazio saw fit to leave Temple and ran into tougher times elsewhere. Temple caught a huge break when Daz left on his own, because Temple does not fire coaches. Sometimes, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence. Acres of Diamonds means something here.

No one knows when or if Matt Rhule will get burned out at Temple, but he does have the advantage of not having to deal with those same APR troubles as Golden did. He seems to like Philadelphia, and has enough perspective to know that coaching his kid’s baseball team will somehow keep those batteries on constant recharge for Temple.

Knowing what happened to the two coaches who left before him might keep him grounded for awhile. At least it has got to be part of any thought process, as Golden used to say, going forward.

06.20.16
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A Rarity: Game Times In Advance

Only thing that will top 10 wins is 11 … or more

At this time last year, we knew the starting time for just two Temple football games, and those were the high-profile ones involving Penn State and Notre Dame.

Now we know five.

That’s a huge leap in an era where almost all of the game times are kept open due to the whim of various television contracts and a double-edged sword for Temple because it is a nod to the Owls’ 127th-ranked schedule.

emoji

I wonder if “Unfinished Business” will fit on this?

The Owls open the 2016 season at Lincoln Financial Field against Army on Friday, September 2 at 7 pm. (That’s good because any shore people can leave after the game and enjoy the Labor Day weekend of Saturday, Sunday and Monday.)

Temple’s game against Stony Brook, to be played on Saturday, September 10 at Lincoln Financial Field, will kick off at 1:00 p.m. and be televised live by ESPN3.

There is a huge favor in there, though, and that’s the dreaded Stony Brook game. Not because it is going to be Cupcake City, but because it is removed from “real television” which might be Temple’s biggest attendance foe.  We were able to research the attendance for the five Temple games which were off “real television”—meaning the television you can see on your TV set—versus the other home games. Temple home games averaged 25,985 between 2010 and 2015 when it was off the air; 17,675 for the games where Temple was on Philadelphia TV (this is taking out the ND and PSU games, which would have skewed the sample).

The evidence is pretty clear. Temple has a softcore fan group that only gets off the couch and into the car when all other options are exhausted. So the Owls need all the help they can get for to put fannies in the seats for Stony Brook, and it looks like the TV situation has helped immeasurably. That win should send a confident 2-0 Owl team into Penn State, a noon kickoff (Big 10 Network).

Other times set are:  at Memphis (Oct. 6, a Thursday night, 8 p.m., ESPN); home against USF (Oct. 21, 7 p.m., ESPN) and at UConn (Nov. 4, 7 p.m., ESPN2).

The championship game will be played on Dec. 3, hopefully at Lincoln Financial Field (noon, ESPN). There is no Navy game to worry about this year. That game with Army is Dec. 10 in Baltimore.

Wednesday: Going North to Go South

06.17.16
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Camp Rhule

grind

One of the tried and true methods of keeping young people out of trouble is getting to them young. There are all sorts of educational programs directed at young people and some of them really work. Heck, when I was a freshman in high school, we had a heroin addict come in and speak to us in the auditorium. His story was so scary that I never even had as much as a cigarette.

There is positive reinforcement, too, as an incentive for young people. In a football sense, Camp Matt Rhule—officially called the Matt Rhule Football Camp—is one of them.

Temple is lucky to have a guy like Rhule, who rolls up his sleeve and gets to the recruits while they are young and impressionable.

Rhule recently tweeted over 2,200 students and prospective athletes interested in Temple attended camps on campus this year. In between camps, Rhule has made trips to Virginia Tech and the Air Force Academy to pick the brains of the head coaches there.

drills

One of the drills at the MRFC.

Temple fans know Rhule is a workaholic, but the level of offseason commitment to the program should pay off during the regular season. Short term, the trip to AFA should help the Owls prepare for Army’s triple option on the night of Sept. 2. Long term, the camps are giving young people the idea that Temple’s campus, program and facilities are top notch and that should pay off dividends.

The Owls have come a long way from the time where Bobby Wallace would vacation three—some say more—months of the year in Gulf Shores, Alabama, all while collecting a Temple paycheck.

There is a direct correlation between winning in the offseason of winning in the real season, and Owl fans have to feel good about what their head coach is doing this offseason.

Monday: What Temple’s TV schedule means

Wednesday:  Differences Between Al and Daz

Friday: New Approach for Army

06.15.16
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UAB: The Temple of The South

uab

UAB is spending $250 million on its stadium, twice as much as TU.

When I was working at the Philadelphia Inquirer, two cubicles down from me was a guy who, like me, was born inside the City Limits of Philadelphia, went to a high school inside the city limits and, also like me, graduated from Temple University.

The difference between the two of us was that he wore Alabama apparel to work and went crazy with each play every time Alabama was on the newsroom television and I did the same for Temple.

uabgraphic

 

Years after that played out every night at work, I am now an Alabama fan. Not the Roll Tide version, but the 2.0 rollout version of Alabama-Birmingham. (Don’t worry, unlike my fellow co-worker, Temple still comes first.) Unfortunately, the rollout doesn’t come until the 2017 season, but this is a story that is worth following nonetheless.

There are at least five reasons for this:

  • UAB is bringing back football after dropping it.
  • UAB is trying to do it by bringing in ready-made JUCO recruits.
  • UAB is trying to build an on-campus stadium after years playing in a stadium too large for its fan base.
  • Tyler Haddock is on the roster.
  • Mark Ingram is the athletic director.

All good, solid reasons to follow the Blazers, as Ingram was the assistant athletic director at Temple recently and Haddock held the Temple recruiting class together almost single-handedly between the time Steve Addazio quit and Matt Rhule was hired.

Haddock never got a chance to play for Temple, but it should be interesting to see what kind of impact he makes on the field. In order to get up to speed, the program recruited JUCO players with the promise of playing right away.

It should be interesting to see how well they do. I will be rooting for them, just not as hard as my former co-worker rooted for the Crimson Tide.

Friday: Camp Rhule

06.13.16
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Early Commits: So Far, So Good

daily

The Owls Daily List so far.

According to OwlsDaily.com, the early commits that Temple’s football team has been able to garner include a quarterback, an offensive lineman, a tight end and a running back.

So far, so good in more ways than one.

It looks like the Owls are following the Al Golden method of recruiting; that is, recruit an entire team every season. One player at all 22 positions, plus a couple of spots for specialists. That way, you both build depth and quality across the board and are not left short at any spot.

The Steve Addazio Method was more scattershot, often over-recruiting one position, say, offensive line, leaving the Owls short in other areas. That caused Matt Rhule to start out recruiting behind the eight ball, scrambling to fill areas of need rather than an equal group across the board. Looks like the Owls will be recruiting two quarterbacks this class. You might question that because they have a solid one for the next three or four years in Anthony Russo, but there are pesky things like injuries that the Owls need to insure themselves against.

As far as individuals, we do not get too much into the players before the signatures are on the dotted line because the nature of the business is that Temple will lose a few commits, but be able to poach a few more. If they are able to poach more P5 guys than lose guys to P5 teams, they will be ahead of the game.

Right now, I will be following the above four—there may be more soon—and hope the quarterback throws 30 or more touchdown passes (he threw nine last year) and the running back goes for more than 2,000 yards.

Then Temple will have something.

Wednesday: The Temple of the South

06.10.16
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Power 5 Health Care

 

nonpower

There are 64 teams in five FBS conferences who pretty much have it made when it comes to their financial health.

There just a little bit more on the outside of the hospital looking in, with their noses pressed against the window of the emergency room. Some people say Temple has no shot, most say Temple has an outside shot, and then there is this website called the Big 12 Fanatics that raves over the Owls.

He gives Temple high marks for financial health and rates Temple ahead of a number of Power 5 schools as an attractive Big 12 candidate. I don’t know about you, but I hope Dr. Pat Kraft finds this guy and has him make the Power Point presentation for Temple to the Big 12.

The factors he looks for is total revenue, the profit of the athletic department and the total fan base. My guess is that he placed a little too much weight on Temple’s football season average attendance (an AAC-best 44K), but the Owls probably should make their case while the iron is hot. One thing they do have is the largest TV market available to a Power 5 school (fourth, all other top 20 markets have a Power 5 team in the metro area). No one knows if Temple is actively lobbying for a P5 spot, but UConn, Cincinnati, Memphis and UCF are. The AAC can probably survive the loss of UCF, but not of the other schools.

There is a significant portion of the Temple fan base that says the school does not belong in the Big 12 and, while that may be the case, the stronger argument in my mind is that the Big 12 is the only Power 5 conference considering expansion for the next few years. Temple has got to get in the Power 5 while it can or risk never getting into the money-making group. While they have tabled the expansion talk for this season, this is the only conference that will probably expand next season or the year after and Temple better be ready. Yes, the ACC makes more sense, but P5 conferences rarely make sense.

Waiting for a call that might never come from the ACC is just too risky.

Monday: Some Intriguing Early Commits

Wednesday: The Temple of the South

06.08.16
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Paul Palmer: Waiting Hardest Part

Temple Owls Paul Palmer

Paul Palmer

One of Bernie Sanders’ favorite sayings this campaign year has been: “Enough is Enough.”

It could be Paul Palmer’s as well.

lawhorn

Temple’s D1 national leaders.

In my mind, Temple’s all-time greatest player has waited long enough to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame’s 2017.

If he’s not Temple’s best player, to use another Sanders’ analogy, he’s in the top tenth of the top one percent of players who ever wore the Cherry and White. That should be enough to get him into the Hall of Fame.

Another good reason is that this is Palmer’s sixth year on the ballot, joining a group of just 81 players who have been on the ballot that long.

The wait is not over and will not be for a long time. It will be until Jan. 7th before Palmer hears whether he is a member of that class. Nothing has changed since the first time we heard Palmer was a candidate a few years ago when we wrote this story for Rant Sports.com.

He had done enough then, and enough should be enough now.

Friday: Power 5 Health Care

06.06.16
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Bill Lyon: Always A Friend Of Temple

book

A must read for anyone who loves sports.

In this space today was supposed to be another story on how the Power Five might view Temple football.

Those future friends can wait for another day, a time to write about Bill Lyon, whose Sunday column in the Philadelphia Inquirer might have been his best from a pure prose standpoint. Lyon is battling Alzheimer’s Disease and, if anyone deserves to win that battle, it is Bill. I sat next to Bill in the old Veterans Stadium press box many times and he picked my brain for Temple information as much as I did his for writing information. In those days, sometimes we were the only two reporters (especially for the Austin Peay game of 1990) on press row. He was always friendly and never ultra-critical of the Temple football program like current contemporaries Mike Sielski and David Murphy are.

Here is what Lyon wrote about Al Golden’s 2010 season:

By Bill Lyon

“Temple: For a long, dismal stretch, there wasn’t a sadder program anywhere. The Owls labored just to win one game a year. From time to time, impassioned voices were raised (ahem) imploring them to simply drop football. A lot of good men were sacrificed in that coaching shredder.

Finally, in 2006, after going 3 and 31 in the three preceding seasons, they brought in one Alfred James Golden, a Yankee Doodle Dandy, born on the Fourth of July, a pup out of one of those Joe Paterno litters. Al Golden had played tight end at Penn State, and then coached the linebackers. He was undeniably young, but he had the pedigree. Still, it’s a long, long way from Happy Valley to Broad Street.

lyon

Bill’s lede on Paul Palmer’s historic game.

First, there had to be a purge. First, the culture of losing that had set in like dry rot had to be scrubbed away. When all you have known is losing, it’s difficult to envision winning. In his fourth season, last year, Al Golden got the Owls to nine wins. Nine. That used to take half a decade. And he got them to a bowl besides. And now, for the second year in a row, they are bowl-eligible again – and the prospect of 10 wins, or more, lies shimmering on the horizon.

Temple’s opponents used to line up to schedule the Owls for their homecoming. So now, payback, it turns out, really is sweet.

And when you are successful, envious eyes are cast your way. Other programs in need of resuscitation circle. Names of suitors are floated. UCLA. Cincinnati. Tennessee. So far, Al Golden has spurned them. But it is well to remember that in the college coaching game, the market for saviors never closes.”

Wow. That was the one-word response I had while finishing most of Bill’s columns. Wish Sielski or Murphy were capable of that kind of writing.

Like pretty much everything he wrote, Lyon turned out to be right in the end. Two weeks after that story appeared, Golden was off to Miami. Bill probably will never write about Temple football again, but what he did was always fair and that’s really all that matters. If life is as fair to him as he was to life, he will beat this.

Wednesday: Paul Palmer’s Wait Should Be Over 

Friday: Power 5 Questions and Answers

06.03.16
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Oklahoma at Temple Announcement Could Come Sooner Than Later

oklahoma

There are few athletic directors more engaging to fans out there than Temple’s own Dr. Pat Kraft, who joined a conversation I was having with former head coach Wayne Hardin during one tailgate last fall.

Coach and I were talking about past Temple opponents, and why we could not get some of those familiar schools on the schedule. I then threw a few names out to Kraft, including Indiana, which I thought might be a school the Temple administration might be interested in playing.

rubber

Rubber match?

“I asked,” Kraft said, “they won’t play us. We’ve gotten too good.”

(Getting too good is a good problem to have.)

Kraft later said that the days of Temple playing “2 for 1s” are over, so the news earlier this week that Temple is about to schedule a “big name” opponent that wants to come to Philadelphia and doesn’t mind whether it is at Lincoln Financial Field or the new stadium is big.

woodside

Mr. Woodside puts away the last meeting.

Temple head coach Matt Rhule indicated as much on 97.5 on Tuesday, saying that the Owls will be playing Maryland, Rutgers, “possibly” Duke and a “big name” opponent he could not divulge just yet.

It is a Big 12 school and, while West Virginia makes the most sense, it certainly doesn’t fit the kind of big national name criteria Rhule outlined.

All indications are that the opponent will be Oklahoma. That’s good news because it shows that Kraft never gave up trying to get someone and that the Owls are moving away from the Stony Brooks and the Villanovas of the world. For the Owls to get into big bowl games, they are going to have to not only win AAC titles but combine that with wins over big-name opponents. Even Houston, which beat a P5 opponent in the Peach Bowl, Florida State, did not get a Final Four invite despite a 12-1 record.

The parameters of national success are pretty clear for an AAC school. Win the league, but also beat a big name school. Oklahoma is a big name, if that is the team Temple schedules. Heck, Oklahoma might help the Owls get into the Big 12 some day.

Once the Oklahoma shoe drops in a couple of weeks, it should be big news. Maybe the Owls can schedule a road trip that includes Tulsa and Oklahoma back-to-back and stay out there and practice for a week.

Monday: Power 5 Health Care

Wednesday: A Look At Some Early Signees