All Temple fans will miss Keith Pompey

Full disclosure.
I know Keith Pompey.
I worked with Keith Pompey at the Inquirer.
I don’t know John Mitchell at all, but I’ve read his work.
Keith Pompey is that rare journalist who combines caring and passion with writing ability and knowledge. He was that way covering high school sports and he was that way with Temple.
All Temple fans are going to miss Keith Pompey, the old guy, who is replaced by Mitchell, the new guy.
That’s because, judging by his work with the Sixers, I put Mitchell in the category of a guy who does just enough to skate by, like Pompey’s predecessor, Kevin Tatum.
While Pompey typically did two and three stories on every Temple football game, Tatum just did one.
Often being at the games Tatum covered, I saw the game notes.
Tatum used quotes handed to him in the game notes, while Pompey dug for fresh stuff.
Mitchell covered the Sixers pretty much the same way Tatum covered the Owls.

Mitchell’s first story AFTER being switched to the Temple beat was on the Sixers.

That should tell you something right there.

When Mitchell was asked by a fan why no Temple stories, he replied “there’s nothing much happening” yet the same fan was able to come up with eight stories on University of South Florida football in the same time frame written by that school’s beat writer for the Tampa Tribune. The same kind of stories are happening at Temple.
While moving onto the Sixers’ beat is a promotion for Pompey, I get the strong sense that Mitchell views his new Temple assignment as a demotion and won’t do the job with the same vigor as Pompey did.
I hope I’m wrong.

Zaire Williams has never played a game for Temple, not even a spring game, yet he has become one of my favorite players on this year’s team.

Williams, who will be wearing No. 23 for the Owls this season, has declared early for the NFL draft.

Do the math.
Williams promises his father that, after three years, he will be the provider in the family.
That means Zaire will forego his would-be senior season at Temple.
I see this as a good thing, not a bad thing.
Temple got three terrific years out of Bernard Pierce.

Bernard Pierce’s records at TU, all accomplished in 3 years.

If Williams, a late Temple commit who decommitted from West Virginia, is fortunate enough to get drafted, like Pierce was, chances are he’ll be putting up the kind of numbers that Pierce did.
Had Pierce stayed for his senior year, he would have broken all of Paul Palmer’s running records. As it was, he broke most of them.
If Williams is drafted, he’ll likely put up Pierce/Palmer-like numbers and, if that happens, Temple will have some very good seasons.
Remember, this was a guy who in a high school game ran for 386 yards and six touchdowns. Those are Montel Harris-vs.-Army-type numbers.

You’ve got to love Williams’ confidence, a swagger if you will. To me, one of the biggest disappointments in last year’s 4-7 season for the Owls was that they didn’t play with the swagger they showed in previous years.

I think Matt Rhule’s brought the fun back. Guys like Williams  are raising the entire team’s confidence level.

Plus, got to love a guy who shows that kind of love and respect for his father, who will probably be his biggest fan this fall.
I might not be the second-biggest fan or the third, but I’ll definitely be in the top 10.

After eight years of Temple Football Forever on blogger, I thought it was best to move to a WordPress format.

The reason I’ve done that is in my other job I work almost exclusively in wordpress and it’s easy for me to hit the same buttons for images, text, etc., going back and forth to this hobby I love, Temple Football Forever.

We’ll get back to regular posts soon.

The only thing I liked about the former website was the design with the black background and all of the sidebar items I was able to use.

We’re working on the design and hopefully some of the sidebar items will return. (If you want to see the countdown clock, etc., or donate to Temple Football Forever, please visit the old website at: templefootballforever.blogspot.com … all the buttons work there).

Meanwhile, the Owls are practicing for Notre Dame and we’re here practicing to get this website up in tip-top condition within the next few days and hopefully not weeks.

Bear with us.

Thanks.

Coming Soon: TEMPLE FOOTBALL FOREVER ON STEROIDS!
(by that, we mean bigger and better and more frequently updated than ever, not using banned substances …)
Same great content, probably not with the same design. (Looked at the new templates and it probably won’t look anything like this site, unfortunately.)
We’re going to a new platform coming over the next few days and you may be either redirected or asked to  bookmark a new website.

We’ll iron out these technical details soon.

Thanks for all your support since 2005.

Just a couple of days before the nation celebrated the anniversary of the signing of The Declaration of Independence, another American Revolution was taking place.
Instead of throwing some tea overboard in Boston Harbor, American Athletic Conference (AAC) football fans bombed Stanford.
No worries.
No real explosives were used, just an internet bombing of the Stanford blog.
For some reason, ESPN pulled the plug on its AAC blog, written by Andrea Adelson, who was transferred over to the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) to do that blog.
Apparently, ESPN plans no blog-specific coverage of this new conference, a move that outraged the fans.

Orlando Sentinel reports on AAC fan revolt.

This is the same ESPN that has TEAM-specific blogs for both Notre Dame and Stanford.
I could see Notre Dame, but not Stanford.
Neither could the fans of the AAC, who have taken over every discussion at the Stanford board.
I think it’s a brilliant move.
While it will drive more traffic over to Stanford, the discussion will be dominated by AAC fans.
A topic on the quarterback controversy at that school, say, will turn into a discussion about the AAC from the comments below the story.
If ESPN was smart, they would rid themselves of this problem by assigning a guy (we suggest Matt Fortuna)  to start an AAC blog.
Then the Stanford fans can get back to commenting about Stanford and the AAC fans will have a place to go.

Hopefully, the Owls will be smiling like this after the RU game in November. Photo by Patrick Rosenbaum

After the 2012 Temple spring game, I talked to a couple of Temple players in the parking lot at Lincoln Financial Field.
I asked the two guys to do me one favor.
“If you do anything this year, please beat Rutgers,” I said. “I’ve never seen more obnoxious fans in my life.”

This is how every RU-TU game should go. ….interesting use of the possessive in headline.

“Don’t worry,” one of the Owls’ said, “we’ve got something special planned for them.”
Their fans are at it again today, calling the Owls’ recent recruiting surge into New Jersey “getting RU leftovers” and saying that the Owls’ recruits are “RU Plan B” guys who Piscataway can pooch on signing day if needed.
I don’t get this RU fixation with downplaying Temple’s recruiting successes, but it does stir the rivalry juices.
I guess if Kent State didn’t teach RU a lesson in humility, Temple is going to have to come the first Saturday in November.

Not all RU fans are like this, to be fair, but from the 54 plus replies to that thread, a good 50 of them give Temple no credit.
Last year, it was Temple’s fault.

It’s football, not rocket science, so:
On offense, look for the Owls to use guys like Khalif Herbin and Jalen Fitzpatrick on quick slants to open up the running game for, say, Zaire Williams, on wraparound draws.
On defense, use the Owls’ speedy LBs to get in Nova’s face one second after he snaps the ball.

After Temple blew a 10-0 halftime lead and went on to lose, 35-10, last year I could not blame the kids.
They could have not known that the “something special” their coach had planned for Rutgers was to run the ball up the middle all day against the then top-ranked run defense in the country.
Nor did they figure the Owls would play defense passively, dropping eight into coverage at times and allowing the Rutgers’ QB all day to throw the ball in the second half.
As far as Temple games go, it was the worst game day strategy I’ve seen since Ron Dickerson and that’s pretty bad.
Yesterday, the Owls spent all dayhelping build a house in Philadelphia as the Habitat for Humanity program.
I hope when they go to Piscataway in the fall they help tear down one.
Just judging by what new coach Matt Rhule wheeled out in this spring’s game, I think Temple will have a much better plan of attack this fall.

A week later, Kent State showed Temple what should have been the blueprint for beating the Scarlet Knights _ use ultra-quick linebackers in blitzing situations and force Gary Nova, the QB with happy feet, into  six interceptions.
That should be the plan this year.
It’s football, not rocket science, so:
On offense, look for the Owls to use guys like Khalif Herbin and Jalen Fitzpatrick on quick slants to open up the running game for, say, Zaire Williams, on wraparound draws.
On defense, use the Owls’ speedy LBs to get in Nova’s face one second after he snaps the ball on both gap and edge blitzes.
I’m looking forward to Notre Dame, like every other Owl fan, and I fully understand the “one game at a time” mentality in a 12-game season.
With apologies to Thomas Jefferson, though, not all wins in a 12-game season are created equally and the first Saturday in November certainly qualifies under that declaration of war, not independence.

Another great Temple football trailer by the TU video staff. Fran Duffy’s legacy lives.

In football recruiting, it’s one thing to say you are recruiting with the big boys and another thing to be actually doing it.

Judging by the company first-year Temple head coach Matt Rhule keeps, he’s doing it.
According to the latest recruiting rankings posted by Rivals.com, Temple is in the middle of a very impressive list of schools.
The Owls’ 2014 recruiting class is about half finished and they rank ahead of USC and Stanford and just behind Wisconsin and Arizona, currently ranked No. 43 in the country.
That’s about as impressive as these things get at Temple.

The hat is worth $150 alone. If it was a Temple ‘][‘ hat, it would be worth $200.

In all of my years of covering the Owls, I don’t remember them ever recruiting at that level.

Sure, Bruce Arians was a great recruiter and, on the day he was fired in 1988, defensive end Alonzo Spellman (Rancocas Valley) and quarterback Glenn Foley (Cherry Hill East) de-committed from the Owls to sign with Ohio State and Boston College, respectively. Both became NFL players.
Who knows what would have happened to Temple football had Arians been retained, but my guess is that the Owls would not have entered a 20-year black hole.
Now, thanks to Al Golden, Rhule and, even Steve Addazio, the Owls have climbed out of that hole and show no signs of going back into it.

Addazio got up in front of the assembled press on Feb. 4, 2012 and said that the Owls’ No. 54 class was the highest-ranked ever.

France checking in. Thanks, France.

He was right.
For all of Al Golden’s No. 1 MAC recruiting classes, he never had a class rated as high as No. 54 nationally.
If Rhule keeps up at this present pace, the Owls could move up a tick or two or down a tick or two but I don’t see him falling as low as 54.
There are a couple of reasons for this.
Rhule had a month to recruit his first class.
He’s had a few months to recruit this one.
He’s a dynamic, young guy who the kids relate to well.
In assistant Terry Smith, he’s got a guy plugged into the fertile Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League (WPIAL).
The next step for Rhule is to sign one of these superstar Philadelphia kids who keep getting away. One of these days a Sharif Floyd won’t feel the need to go to Florida or David Williams would rather play in South Philadelphia instead of South Carolina or a Matt Ryan clone would like to chuck it around the pitch at LFF, rather than hand it off to a running back in Boston.
That’ll happen, too.
It’s just a matter of time.

Neil Young’s Heart of Gold (original studio verson).

Time marches on and, for me, I got another year older on Wednesday.
I must admit, I don’t feel any different.
Age is just a number until you find yourself in a wheelchair and, fortunately, that hasn’t happened for me.
Yet.

I keep active.
I jog every day and, this time of year, three hours a day, always rocking some sort of a Temple T-Shirt.
Heck, I even ran into a young Temple assistant when he was jogging the other way one spring afternoon at Mondauk Commons in Upper Dublin Township.
That assistant was a guy named Matt Rhule.
We were two Temple football T-Shirts passing in the middle of the afternoon, a couple of days before I thought Bruce Francis was going to get drafted.
I don’t think Matt does the Mondauk Commons trail anymore but, then again, neither do I.
He’s come a long way since then.
I’ve just gotten older.
Sometimes, though, things happen that make you wonder if someone is trying to send you a message.
True story: Jogging Wednesday around 5:45 listening to 98.1 (WOGL) and, out of nowhere, the second song comes on by the Beatles (or was it Paul by himself?), “I hear it’s your birthday.”
Usually when you hear that song, it’s preceded by an explanation about someone’s birthday and why they are playing it but not this time.
No dedication.
No request.
No explanation.
Nothing.
Then the next song is Neil Young’s Heart of Gold.
“Keep me searching and I’m growing old.”
Now I’m figuring out that some sort of crazy Poltergeist got into my old AM/FM radio (I don’t do the IPOD thing).
That had me REALLY down, but then I got home and read James Gandolfini died.
Not happy to hear that, but I had a better day than he did. RIP James, one of my favorite one-role actors of all time.
I’m sure Gandolfini would have been good in a number of roles, but he made Tony Soprano a cultural Icon in the same kind of way Jason Alexander made George Costanza, Carroll O’Connor for Archie Bunker and Henry Winkler for The Fonz.
So while birthdays now are far from my favorite days of the year, this one more than the last few taught me a good lesson in perspective.
That, and to stay away from eating too much rich Italian food.

Notes: As far as my Temple football birthday present, the Owls recruited their second consecutive lineman on June 19. … Last year, Steve Addazio gave me Matt Barone, who I think will have a very good career at Temple, and, this year, the June 19th signing was Kenny Randall of Mainland Regional (N.J.). Randall is 6-3, 290 and comes to Temple with the reputation of being a lock-down run-stopper.