09.19.15
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Gameday: Leave No Doubt

New York Jets' head coach Todd Bowles rocks the Temple gear on Friday night's show.

New York Jets’ head coach Todd Bowles rocks the Temple gear on Friday night’s show.

If you are tuning into ESPN College Football’s Gameday this morning looking for extensive talk about  Temple, don’t bother. The Owls will have to take care of business not only today against UMASS, but also in the four weeks after that just to get something other than the casual mention they got this morning.

Money talks, bullbleep walks is the saying and, when it comes to college football, the most important thermometer to measure the temperature of the sport is ESPN’s College Gameday Show. Simply put, if you are a fan of a Power Five team, they talk about your squad. If your team is in the Group of Five, they do not.

There is little wonder, then, when it comes time for the musical chairs to start again, a relatively small number of the current G5 teams are pressing their noses against the window like a shopper on Black Friday waiting for the doors to open.  To be sure, networks like ESPN have a vested interest in talking about only the big conferences because TV contracts have been signed far into the future. In college football, though, the issue runs a little deeper than that because there is a substantial fear that sometime within the next decade, the teams in the Power 5 will break away and make the rest of the schools in the NCAA as irrelevant in college football as today’s Ivy League is.

espn college gameday,

That’s why, for schools like UConn, Boise State, Cincinnati, Houston and Temple – the top G5 candidates for P5 expansion — how football does this year and next is so important. In college football today, it’s all about TV markets and eyeballs, and at least three of those schools (Houston, Temple and Cincinnati) can deliver both a decent football program and a big-time market. For Boise State and UConn, it’s not so much about the markets as it is about the programs. Boise State might have the most consistent football program of the five, but the TV market is so small that it’s irrelevant. UConn has a terrible football program, but a great basketball one.

Cincinnati and Temple are comparatively strong in both sports and Temple can deliver the largest available TV market of any of the five top G5 schools, the nation’s fourth-rated one. There are P5 teams in the New York market (Rutgers), the Chicago market (Northwestern and Notre Dame) and the third-ranked market, Los Angeles (UCLA and USC), but none in the fourth. Temple would complete a chain that includes the fifth-ranked market, Dallas-Fort Worth, which has Waco suburb member Baylor. Houston is No. 10, while UConn (Hartford-New Haven) is No. 30 and Cincinnati 34.

Whatever happens, all of those schools are on the outside looking in because ESPN College Gameday is not talking about them now. The G5 is dying and the evidence is on TV every Saturday morning for all to see.

Temple has a chance to pump some life into it by going 7-0 into the Notre Dame game, but the Irish will have to keep their end of the bargain by beating Georgia Tech today. So those are at least two teams to root for, another would be Penn State to add further legitimacy to the opening-day win. If you are a G5 team like the Owls are, a lot of dominoes have to fall your way.

Depth Charts

Here is the depth chart for UMASS with no changes from last week and the depth chart for Temple follows below.

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09.18.15
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One-Word Game Plan: Pound

Visual proof that Mike Sielski, who wasn't at the game, went on WHIP and flat-out lied. Written proof below.

Visual proof that Mike Sielski went on WHIP and flat-out lied. Written proof below.

There might or might not be a LaSalle University bias against the recent success of the Temple football team, but the evidence is there that at least a jealously exists among members of the media who were graduates of that institution.

Inquirer columnist Mike Sielski wrote a curiously timed column that implied the Owls’ paid the devil for the win over Penn State by cutting seven sports to benefit football. He neglected to do two things that every good journalist does—reach out to get the other side of the story and fact-check his assumptions. Had he done the first, he would have been able to kill two birds with one stone.  He would have been informed that not a single penny of the cuts went to football and had been reinvested into the other Olympic sports.

Sielski compounded his problems by going on the Zach Gelb Show on the Temple student radio station WHIP with this uninformed statement, “let’s be real, there were a lot more Penn State fans there” to Gelb, who, to his credit, shot back and said the stands were a sea of Cherry. Sielski, who wasn’t there, let the issue die but it was easy to picture him smirking and thinking at the other end of the line: “This is just some naive kid who sees the world through Cherry-colored glasses.”

Too bad his colleague, Mike Jensen (who was there), waited a couple of days before objectively settling the issue with this line from a column he wrote on the Owls:

jensen

The case on LaSalle’s jealously might have been closed with those few words until Temple fans picked up the Daily News yesterday and saw David Murphy’s “best bet” in the weekly predictions was UMass to cover the 10.5 against the Owls. You know Murphy is hoping and praying he is right.  Coincidently or not, Murphy went to the same college Sielski did. There’s not a whole lot of objective football analysis out there to indicate that UMass will even be in the game tomorrow against the Owls and certainly far less to make them a “best bet.”

More proof.

More proof.

Wishful thinking on his part, yes, and maybe a huge case of football-envy from guy whose school dropped football over a decade ago.

The Owls cannot afford to stub their toes the next few weeks for a number of reasons, the above two being relatively unimportant given the bigger picture, but they should know that, if they do, there are a lot of unscrupulous people just waiting to pound on them.

So, in a word, the game plan tomorrow against UMass: Pound. Pound the rock to keep Blake Frohnapfel off the field and, when the Minuteman quarterback finally gets on the field, pound him like they pounded Christian Hackenberg.

Because, Temple should know now, there are folks waiting to pound on the Owls should they misstep and many of them are consumed by jealously even in their own hometown.

Tomorrow: ESPN Gameday and Depth Charts

09.17.15
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What Were They Thinking?

As long as the Owls don't let the hype get to their heads, this game should be over by halftime.

As long as the Owls don’t let the hype get to their heads, this game should be over by halftime.

Sometimes, quoting a Deity sums everything up in a nice tight box with a ribbon on top: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Or, at least in this case, write.

Under the “what were they thinking” comes this little prediction from a University of Massachusetts’ fan named Daniel Malone disguised as a journalist: “I think the fan turnout at Gillette will be strong, helping UMass earn its first home win of the year.”

First off, even though the article was written a month ago, going off what he knew from last year it doesn’t make any sense. UMass was 3-9 last year in a weaker conference. Temple was 6-6 and a “strong” fan turnout at Gillette is about 12,000 spaced out in a 70,000-seat stadium. That faux “crowd” didn’t figure to intimidate anyone even then.

Knowing what we know now, though,  it will hardly would phase a Temple team that played in front of a near-capacity bandbox of nearly 40,000 fans in Cincinnati a week ago.

Not very much thought went into this pick, obviously.

Not very much thought went into this pick, obviously.

Secondly, much has changed in the first two weeks. The Owls have pummeled a Big 10 team, Penn State, that many had winning 10 games before the season started. Then they had a 34-12 lead into the fourth quarter over a Cincinnati team that was the consensus preseason favorite to win the AAC. As a point of reference, last year, a 6-6 Penn State team beat UMass, 48-7.  Other than Penn State, the two teams had one common opponent a year ago, Vanderbilt. The Owls handled Vandy, 37-7. UMass lost to Vandy, 34-31.The Minutemen lost to Boston College (30-7), the fake Miami (42-41), Akron (30-6) and Buffalo (41-21).

UMass lost its only game of this season to Colorado, 48-14.

Yes, a strong fan turnout will be the difference in this one.

Not.

Tomorrow: A one-word game plan.

Saturday: ESPN Gameday and Depth Charts

Sunday: Game Analysis

Monday: Photo Essay

09.16.15
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Time Travel, Temple Style

return

Time travel is supposed to be impossible, something only Rod Taylor and Alan Young did in the great H.G. Wells’ inspired movie, The Time Machine.

Well, for any Temple fan motivated to make the six-hour trip to Foxboro, it will be like sitting in that time machine and punching the coordinates for 2005 or maybe 2006. The University of Massachusetts’ football program now is where Temple’s was then in more ways than one. The Minutemen are 10 years behind Temple, and it’s not just on the field of play.

In 2005, Temple football made regular appearances in bottom 25 (and 10) polls; now UMass does.

In 2005, Temple football made regular appearances in bottom 25 (and 10) polls; now UMass does.

UMass will have a nice little tailgate thing going on, with maybe a couple of thousand hardcore fans but nothing like the 30,000 fans Temple gets these days for tailgating. Once inside the stadium, about 15,000 UMass fans will look like a couple of hundred in the cavernous Gillette Stadium and the home field advantage will be pretty much negligible. It will be nothing like the 12,500 Temple students and 25,000 more Temple alumni that gave the Owls a solid home field advantage in a packed Lincoln Financial Field on opening day against Penn State.

UMass as a program will be coming off a bottom-feeder year in a bottom-feeder league, the MAC, and not a bowl-eligible year in a big-market league like Temple did. Now, Temple is knocking on the door of the real top 25, while UMass is firmly entrenched in the bottom 25, like Temple was back then.

A typical UMass crowd these days.

A typical UMass crowd these days.

UMass fans have a similar bond with Temple fans of a decade ago based on the road experience, too. Ten years ago, Temple fans had to sit in front of their computers—some with dial-up connections—to watch road games flicker on and off on the MAC access network. Now, all Temple road games are on real television. The only exception to that rule is this week at UMass.

In other words, the experience will be Temple football, circa 2005.

Or, in just one word, Hell.

College football Hell, the same Hell the Owls escaped from with a 2012 invitation to the then Big East. Time and circumstances allowed the Owls to hit the forward button on the time machine, but those same ingredients are working against upward mobility for the Minutemen. The MAC only accepted UMass as a travel partner for Temple. When Temple left for the Big East, the MAC had no need for UMass. The school and the MAC parted ways by “mutual agreement” but the MAC had all of the leverage here and now UMass is left out in the cold of independence, an almost certain death sentence.

When you are rejected by the MAC, there is no place to go but down.

Maybe there is hope for UMass in the next round of major conference expansion. There is no room in the AAC Inn now. Once Temple or UConn or Cincy is, say, promoted to the ACC or the Big 12, something in the AAC might open for the Minutemen but, right now, it looks like they are stuck in football Hell.

There’s no forward button on this Time Machine for the Minutemen but, once the Owls escape Gillette, they can safely return to 2015 with UMass still stuck in 2005.

If anyone can understand where UMass is now, it is the Temple fans who will make the trip on Saturday. If they experience a strong feeling of de ja vu, they will know why.

Tomorrow: What Were They Thinking

09.15.15
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First Test of #LeaveNoDoubt is UMASS

The complete game vs. Cincy. It’s OK for the fans to look back and look ahead. Really.

One of the amusing things about being 2-0 at this point of the season is to read the reaction of Temple fans who keep responding to other Temple fans’ dreams of an unbeaten season or even 7-0 by Notre Dame by saying, “Let’s take one game at a time.”

Like Temple fans thinking ahead is going to have an impact on the team looking ahead.

As they used to say about 100 years ago, Poppycock.

These are heady times to be a Temple player and fan but the first true test of #LeaveNoDoubt is the game at the University of Massachusetts (3 p.m., ESPN3) on Saturday. The whole point of #LeaveNoDoubt is games just like this one. While #LeaveNoDoubt applied a little to the games against Penn State and Cincinnati, it applies a lot to games like the ones this week and the next few gamedays after that. Great things are ahead for the Owls and they are right there for the taking. If the Owls play as hard or harder against UMass, there is a Top 25  ranking waiting for them when they come home … a real one, not one like this:

This from the Washington Post.

This from the Washington Post.

Kenny Harper’s whole point that he wanted to drive home to the team was to leave no doubt because of games just like this one. If the Owls take care of business in games like UMass, Charlotte and Tulane, they will not be sitting home and wondering what could have been like they were at the end of last season. The faux polls are nice recognition of what the team has done in the first two games, but wins over UMass, Charlotte and Tulane mean a steady rise up the real polls and that’s what’s important.

This ranking is from the Oklahoman.

This ranking is from the Oklahoman.

The players and coaches have to take one game at a time, but the fans can take five games at a time. Imagine the Owls coming into the Notre Dame game with a 7-0 record against an Irish team with a 6-0 record. A strong case can be made that it will be tougher for the Irish to keep their end that bargain than the Owls.

For the Owls to do their part, they will have to show that #LeaveNoDoubt  is more than a slogan. This Saturday is the first real test of that.

09.13.15
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Temple Football’s Jahad Thomas Leaves No Doubt

At the end of last season, Temple’s football team was one of six qualifiers left out of a rather large feast where everyone but the poorest of the poor seem to be invited and they call it college football bowl season.

When there are only 126 teams and 76 go to bowls, even the six left out have to look introspectively and figure out what they had to do to join the club.  Even though the Owls qualified for a bowl, they knew they had to do better and it was left for a departing team leader to carve out this year’s rallying cry: “Leave No Doubt.”

final

Kenny Harper, a fullback converted to tailback for the 2014 season, made a speech that left an indelible impression on his returning teammates, saying things like that even though 6-6 was good enough for a bowl it was not good enough for Temple and to “leave no doubt” next year.

This year is next year and it fell to Harper’s replacement, the appropriately named Jahad Thomas to be the chief doubt-buster this season. In a 27-10 opening-game win over Penn State, Thomas rushed 29 times for 135 yards and scored a pair of touchdowns. In what could be the marquee game of the season, a 34-26 win over AAC pre-season favorite Cincinnati, Thomas rushed for 197 yards and added a 102-yard kickoff return. Temple led, 34-12, in the fourth quarter before holding off a late rally by the Bearcats.

There is no doubting Thomas’ impact on the Owls’ offense, which was the worst in the AAC a year ago. With a renewed emphasis on the run to set up the pass, the Owls have now soared to near the top of the league in every offensive category. Last year, they tried to spread the field with five wide receivers but that approach never was going to work, but Temple’s coaches tried forcing that square peg into a proverbial round hole. Even after Thomas rushed for a season-high 157 yards in last year’s 35-24 win over Tulsa, the Owls went back to the five wides the next week and Thomas inexplicably joined witness protection and disappeared the rest of the season.

Now that the coaches have figured out they have weapon in Thomas, there can be no doubt that they are going to keep feeding this beast in what could become a very special college football season in Philadelphia.

Will never understand why the coaches went back to five wides last year after Jahad went off against Tulsa, but we are glad the coaches were flexible enough to understand that error and fix it this year.

Will never understand why the coaches went back to five wides last year after Jahad went off against Tulsa, but we are glad the coaches were flexible enough to understand that error and fix it this year.

Tomorrow: Photo Essay

Tuesday: National Reaction

09.12.15
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A Logical Look at the Cincinnati Defense

captain

As bad as the Temple offense was a season ago, that’s about how bad the Cincinnati defense was over the same four months.

If Mr. Spock or Leonard Nimoy or anyone taking a logical look at this game tonight might conclude, how much Temple improved on offense vs. how much Cincinnati improved on defense really  are the only important variables in determining a winner. The Bearcats were the nation’s 54th-rated defense in 2013 but followed that up by dropping to the No. 69th-ranked defense.

weather

It’s hard to judge anything by a 52-10 win over Alabama A&M because that was a 4-8 FCS team a year ago. Last year, though, Cincinnati gave up 34 points to Toledo, 24 to Miami (Ohio), 50 to Ohio State, 41 to Memphis, 55 to Miami (Fla.), 46 to East Carolina, 31 to Houston and 33 to Virginia Tech. The fact that Temple scored only six was more of an indictment against Temple than praise of anything the Bearcats did.

Obviously, head coach Tommy Tuberville knew defense was the side of the ball he had to address last year so he either didn’t address it or the bandages he applied to the defense did not stop the bleeding. Let’s work on the first part of that theory. Tuberville, at Texas A&M, was a noted offensive mind and his teams won by concentrating on that side of the ball. Maybe he doesn’t place a whole lot of emphasis on defense.

Great photo of Temple AD Pat Kraft (with tie) going nuts. Those Thomas sweeps should be there tonight.

Great photo of Temple AD Pat Kraft (with tie) going nuts. Those Thomas sweeps should be there tonight.

The second part of the theory is that maybe the Bearcats do not have a whole lot of good players on that side of the ball and that seems to be also true. The strength of the defense appears to be the two interior tackles, while the Bearcats have not had acceptable play from the ends. That probably means the same kind of sweeps that worked for Jahad Thomas against Penn State will be there in abundance tonight.

In the secondary, Zach Edwards is arguably the best safety in the conference and will probably take away the middle of the field but those sideline patterns that worked so well for P.J. Walker to Robby Anderson in 2013 will be big-play opportunities.

If the Owls attack the edges with Thomas, then hit Anderson and Adonis Jennings with play-action plays away from the middle of the field, they should be able to get points off of this defense. Those quick outs that Anderson got tackled on against a good Penn State defense could turn into explosive plays downfield for Temple.

Hard to believe that a Cincy defense that dropped from 54 to 69 is going move from 69 to decent any time soon. At least, as Spock might say, it’s just not logical. Expect Temple to score 31 points tonight. Hard to believe even a good Cincinnati offense is going to get more than three scores against the Owls’ defense and probably less.

09.11.15
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The Concept of a Letdown

There should be no such thing as a letdown in college football, but we all know it exists.

There should be no such thing as a letdown in college football, but we all know it exists.

One of the things I’ll never understand about college football is the concept of a letdown. A typical college player works like a madman for 353 days a year to perform 12 days a year and you would think the goal would be for optimum output just for those 12 days. In the other 353 days of the year, it’s OK to have a letdown.

The dozen game days are no time for a so-called letdown.

It should not be possible to have a letdown in college football. In baseball, basketball, with the preponderance of travel and sheer volumes of games, a “letdown” is understandable.

tuchart

Even though a letdown makes no sense given the minimum opportunities to demonstrate skills honed the other 353 days, letdowns inexplicably exist. History tells us that. A Temple team coming off a 38-7 high with a win at Maryland in 2011 followed that up with a 36-13 loss at home to Toledo the next week.  Very few people thought Toledo had more talent than Maryland. That was the same Maryland team that beat the real Miami, 32-24, in the previous week.

You could look at it two ways in that both Maryland had a letdown against Temple and Temple had a letdown against Toledo, but those were just two instances of what could be called letdowns and proof that they do exist.

Last year,  despite saying all of the right things, there can be no doubt Temple had a letdown against Navy. While Navy was good and ran a complicated style of offense,  Temple had much more talent. Before the game, coach Wayne Hardin took time to explain to me the simple way to beat a triple option team was to blitz a linebacker or a safety from the quarterback’s blind side because the Navy offense was designed to leave that side unprotected on pitches to one side. He said that more often than not the unprotected blitzer would be able to disrupt a pitch before it could be made.

fmembers

Temple never got the memo and never blitzed to Keenan Reynolds’ blind side even once. After a dominating 37-7 win over Vanderbilt, an embarrassing loss to Navy followed.

bmembers

You could call that a letdown, too.  No one can predict what is going to happen tomorrow night, but the facts as we know them are Temple is coming off what had to be both a physically and emotionally draining 27-10 win over Penn State. The ingredients for a so-called letdown are there.  The Owls are saying all of the right things about avoiding a letdown against Cincinnati tomorrow night but the Owls said the same things after Vanderbilt a year ago (see the above headline).

Hopefully, deeds will prove stronger than words this time.

Tomorrow: Cincinnati’s Defense

Sunday: Game Analysis

Monday: Photo Essay

09.10.15
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We’re On To Cincinnati

Matt Rhule correctly set the tone last week when, while talking about PSU, said Cincy was more important.

The calendar says the AAC championship football game is scheduled for Dec. 5 in an as-yet unnamed location. Calendars cannot speak, but at least this time the calendar lied. All signs point to the winner of the Temple at Cincinnati game (Saturday, 8 p.m., ESPN News) as the favorite to come away with the league’s championship.

If there was any question of a letdown for the Owls after an emotionally and physically draining win, this trophy will probably go to the winner of Saturday's game. Win now and it's a clear path to a home AAC title game on Dec. 5.

If there was any question of a letdown for the Owls after an emotionally and physically draining win, this trophy will probably go to the winner of Saturday’s game. Win now and it’s a clear path to a home AAC title game on Dec. 5.

For Temple fans willing to make the trip, though, the game should be one of the most entertaining of the season in any league. Cincinnati came into the game as the favorite to win the AAC East and the winner of the East plays the AAC West champion for the overall title. Taking that thought process a step further, if Navy—as expected—were to win the West, it would probably be an underdog to both the Owls and the Bearcats so the importance of this game cannot be understated.

Even without the above narrative, this is an intriguing matchup of counterpunchers in that it pits the league’s top defense, Temple, vs. the league’s top offense, Cincinnati. The game will probably be determined by which of the weaker sides of the ball have improved more, the Owls’ offense or the Bearcats’ defense. The Bearcats’ major advantage is having arguably the league’s best player, quarterback Gunner Kiel.

Temple has proven to be the league’s most ready for prime time team, having pummeled two members of the Power 5 in the last two seasons. The Owls had a SEC scalp last year, a 37-7 win at Vanderbilt, and added a Big 10 one this year in a 27-10 win over Penn State last week. In that same time frame, Cincinnati’s only win over a P5 team was 42-7 over Big 10 member Purdue a year ago.  It’s hard to tell anything about the Bearcats, who beat overmatched Alabama A&M, 52-10, last week.  The Bulldogs were 4-8 at the FCS level a year ago.

Great photo of Temple AD Pat Kraft (with tie) going nuts as he watches Jahad Thomas score a TD.

Great photo of Temple AD Pat Kraft (with tie) going nuts as he watches Jahad Thomas score a TD.

There were signs last week that the Owls did more to fix their offense than the Bearcats have to fix their defense, as Jahad Thomas rushed for 135 yards on 29 carries in the win over Penn State and quarterback P.J. Walker, rejuvenated by the return of wide receiver Robby Anderson and the addition of four-star Pitt transfer Adonis Jennings, went 15 for 20 in the passing game.

Whether that is enough to overcome a home-field advantage is the key question in a game where the key answer probably means a championship for the winner.

Tomorrow:  The Concept of a Letdown

Saturday: Cincinnati’s Defense