Temple as the dream school


You can erase that “WVU commit” line from the tape above for Zaire Williams (video now works in internet explorer, but not Google Crome).

In the past three months, we’ve heard the quote “Temple is my dream school” from at least three incoming recruits.
I’ve heard it from one basketball recruit, Josh Brown, and at least two football recruits, first-team All-American kicker Jim Cooper, Jr. and Atlantic City wide receiver Dayshawn Reynolds.
I don’t know if its the dream school of Timber Creek three-star running back Zaire Williams, but it certainly looks that way after he flipped his commitment from West Virginia to Temple this morning.

“I don’t know why I started liking Temple but that’s been my dream school forever. I can’t even explain it.”
_Dayshawn Reynolds 

  That might surprise some people, but not me.
Heck, Temple was MY dream school some 40 years ago and I told myself as an 8-year-old kid that  if I ever had a chance to make that happen, I would.
So I did.
When you think of Temple with its unique recruiting advantages, it should not be surprising.
Temple is in the nation’s fourth-largest market and within easy five-hour driving distance from 46 percent of the nation’s population, which as Mitt Romney can tell you, is nearly half of the nation’s football talent.
You can go to school at Temple if you want to be away from home, but close enough that the family can get to more than half of your games.
Plus, surveys have shown over the past 10 years that the general student population wants an “urban” college experience over a “rural” one and Temple is one of the few big-city schools that plays big-time college football. Football players are also part of the general student population and generally want the same thing.


‘It’s a cool coincidence that my dad went to Temple, but he could have gone to Florida, USC or Alabama and I’d still be going to Temple. I know that’s where I want to be.’
_ Jim Cooper Jr.

So urban, check.
Easy driving distance for family, check.
Away from home? Just far enough, check.
A place that regularly puts its players in the Super Bowl? Check.
That makes it a dream destination for a lot of players.
I can remember what made it my dream school because the Temple games were on TV every Saturday night on Channel 17 with Al Meltzer doing the play-by-play and the late Charley Swift doing the color.
I became a fan immediately and begged my dad for the tokens to take three buses to get up to Mt. Airy to see the games.
When Wayne Hardin took over as Temple coach, I made the trek down to his McGonigle Hall office to interview him for the Raiderscope, the Archbishop Ryan student newspaper. I watched as Hardin took Temple from a team that was beating the Bucknells of the world to beating the West Virginias and Syracuses on a regular basis.
The other parts of Temple, from founder Russell Conwell’s “Acres of Diamonds” story, the top 10 journalism school, the nationally prominent basketball program, the five-day-a-week Temple News, only made me love it more.
Temple is a dream school because it offers opportunities for those dreams to be realized.
No one can tell you that more than Randy Grossman, a tight end who has three Super Bowl rings.


‘I’ve always loved Temple.’
_ Averee Robinson

Dan Klecko, a WIP radio guy who played football at Temple, used his opportunity to get two Super Bowl rings as a player for different teams (Colts, Patriots).
Bernard Pierce, a running back from the Baltimore Ravens, has that same opportunity this Sunday to achieve a dream. Temple gave it to him.
All three, along with many others in different fields, have proven that if you put in the work at Temple, there are dreams to be realized down the line.
Dream school?
I think that’s what Russell Conwell had in mind from the beginning.

The Greatest Super Bowl Story Never Told

“If we win the Super Bowl, I want to see TEMPLE back on the helmets, coach.”

Jim Harbaugh’s Temple connection:
1) Applied for Temple job in 2005
2) Finished behind Paul Palmer in ’86 Heisman balloting
3) Dad’s team was awarded a forfeit over TU in same year
4) Faces Bernard Pierce on Sunday

If you pick up a newspaper this week, any paper in any town, you’ll  have to thumb through several pages of  Super Bowl coverage.
Pick a day, any day, and you’ll probably find out several times that this is the first Super Bowl ever that brothers have been opposing head coaches and they’ll probably find seven ways until Sunday to write the same story.
Yada, yada.
That’ll be the most over-told Super Bowl story of the week.
The greatest Super Bowl Story Never Told is The Temple Connection. You won’t read about that anywhere but here.
On one side, you have Jim Harbaugh, the 49ers’ coach, who once applied for the open head coaching job at Temple and called it a “great job.”
Harbaugh made to to Temple’s campus, went through an interview and was in the top three for the job that went to Al Golden, now the University of Miami head coach. (Brian White, a Syracuse assistant, was another finalist then.)
That wasn’t Jim’s only connection to Temple, though.
Harbaugh, then a Michigan quarterback, finished third in the Heisman Trophy balloting in 1986.
Ahead of him was a running back from Temple: Paul Palmer. A guy named Vinny Testaverde, also from Miami, won it.
In that same season, Harbaugh’s father, Jack, the head coach at Western Michigan, was spanked, 49-17, by Bruce Arians’ Temple team, only to be awarded a victory when Temple voluntarily forfeited the game.
So Harbaugh’s deja vu with Temple involved finishing in the top three of something 25 years apart and a guy from Miami figuring in the top three.
On the other side of this story is a Baltimore rookie running back named Bernard Pierce.
It’s no secret to any visitor of this website that Pierce was and remains my favorite Temple player of the post-Hardin/Arians’ Era.

Pierce shows future TU RB Bryant Rhule how to do it.

After writing the “Who’s Paul Palmer?” story that appeared on this website, Bernard’s mother, Tammy, sought me out in the Lincoln Financial Field concourse to thank me for all the nice words I’ve written about her son. She didn’t have to do that, but I appreciated the fact that she and Bernard noticed.
To be sure, Henry Burris was an outstanding quarterback and so was Adam DiMichele, but Pierce was the guy who brought back “winning” and Temple in the same sentence, so he edges both of those guys out. (Although DiMichele was screwed out of a winning season by some bad coaching in both the Navy and Buffalo games his senior year.)
There was a direct correlation to Pierce’s playing and the Owls winning.
When Pierce was out in the MAC East championship game with Ohio in 2009, the Owls lost, 35-17.
With Pierce playing in the first half of the Eagle Bank Bowl, the Owls had a 21-10 lead. Without him in the second half, the Owls lost, 30-21.


Since 1975, 12 Temple football players had made 19 appearances in 15 Super Bowls with 14 winning championship rings. Pierce, a third round pick of the Ravens, is just the sixth Temple player to advance to the Super Bowl during his first season. The last Temple player to get to the Super Bowl was linebacker Rian Wallace (2002–04) who won a ring with the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XL.

With Pierce playing in the first half of the Penn State game (2010), the Owls had a 15-13 lead. Without him in the second half, they lost, 22-15.
Had Pierce played 60 minutes in all three games, I think the Owls would have won two and possibly taken Ohio down to the wire in the other.
Penn State might be Linebacker U, but Temple can make a strong case for being “Super Bowl U” because, since 1975, 12 Temple players have made 19 appearances in “The Big Game” and the 12 have a grand total of 14 rings. Dan Klecko, the 2002 Big East Defensive Player of the Year, has won with two teams (Patriots and Colts).
For the record, I think Temple made the right move in hiring Golden, who had East Coast recruiting connections and the kind of temperament required to right a sinking football and academic ship. Harbaugh, while a brilliant coach, probably did not have the patience to clean up the mess that Golden found left by Bobby Wallace.
Had Pierce played with Harbaugh instead of against him, who knows what would have happened?
That’s a story that will never be told but might have needed to be.

Bring back the College vs. NFL all-star game

Eagles’ Sonny Jurgensen leads the NFL champs to a solid, but not embarrassingly easy, win over the College All-Stars.

Temple’s Montel Harris wasn’t quite the force I expected him to be at the East-West Shrine game in Florida last week.
Three carries, eight yards in a 28-13 loss to the West last Saturday.
I didn’t expect the 36 carries, 351 and seven touchdowns he had against Army, but definitely more than three carries.

Temple’s Brandon McManus practices a kickoff in
preparation for Casino-Del-Sol College All-Star game.

I blame the game, not the player.
The way all-star games are set up now, it’s not to simulate real football, either in the NFL or colleges.
Sunday’s All-Pro game in Hawaii is even a bigger farce that becomes more farcical every year. It’s nothing more than a glorified Flag Football game.
I have proposed a trade that would benefit both organizations.
Play a combined group of the best college all-stars (an East-West Shrine and Senior Bowl combined team, if you will) against a REAL all-pro team (minus Super Bowl participants, of course).
Ditch the pro bowl.
Ditch the East-West Shrine game.
Ditch the Senior Bowl.
A similar game was played up to and including 1977 and the pros dominated, winning 31 and losing nine. There were two ties. The college team won enough games to make it interesting enough to attract viewers, a ratings’ bonanza in the  early days of television.
One of the differences was that most of those games were in August against the defending NFL champs.
Another, more important, one was both teams were actually TRYING to win.
That’s really the name of any game and something that has been lost in recent all-star football years.
My late father and guys from his generation said that the college vs. pro all-star game was one of the highlights of the football season in those days, right up with big games in college football and NFL playoff games.
You could still have the satellite college all-star games for the lesser stars, but this gets football fans a chance to see the LIKELY first- and second-round picks tested against the best available NFL talent.
This is the perfect time to do it as the all-star season for both college and pros comes to a zenith during the last part of January.
I know the college kids would play hard and I suspect pride alone would make the pros play a real game as well.
I can’t think of a better way for the NFL to break out of its Sunday-before-Super Bowl malaise and  it would certainly be a booster shot for college football.
A win-win for all fans of this wonderful game.

Philly and Boston: Recruiting tale of two cities

Players like Arkum Wadley (N.J.) have helped Matt Rhule jump over Steve Addazio in recruiting.

Today’s guilty pleasure is a story of two cities, Philadelphia and Boston.
In one, a school is holding on to a group of pretty solid recruits, despite losing its head coach during the first week of December.
In another, a new coach is scrambling for recruits and, as of Tuesday, did not land a single new commitment despite being on the job for over a month.
One of the schools had to wait for a guy coming off a long NFL season.
The other guy, named a “National Recruiter of the Year” (NROY) three times, jumped right in and hit the ground running.
So it figures the NROY is beating the NFL guy, right?
Think again.
Matt Rhule, the NFL guy, pretty much kept most of his commitments in Philadelphia for Temple University.
Heck, he even made a phone call to a recruit three hours before his New York Giants were scheduled to play in Atlanta.
Steve Addazio, the NROY guy, had yet to land his first commit for Boston College as of Tuesday.
It’s OK not to suppress that guilty smile.
It appears to be a solid class of guys who can help right away. I’m penciling in Mainland (N.J.) kicker Jim Cooper already as a starter for next season. New Jersey player of the year P.J. Walker is the quarterback of the future, starting no later than 2014, and running back Jihaad Pretlow’s junior highlights can be found here.
In the chart below, compiled by loyal TFF reader Steve Sipe (yes, the brother of Berlin attorney Brian Sipe),  Temple has only lost one commit so far, Clearwater tight end A.J. Sattinger.
As always, I hesitate to publish charts because this two-week period before signing day can be tricky but this gives Temple fans a general idea of how things are going and they are going pretty well.
I’d like to see a second quarterback in this class since all three Temple top quarterbacks are graduating at the end of the 2013 season. A pass rusher with about 80 sacks, preferably a ready-to-go JC one, would be a nice addition to bringing in DTs like Averee Robinson and Tyler Haddock-Jones (only Haddock fit on the google spreadsheet).
“Other than that” as sports talk caller Jose from Norristown might say, Temple fans should be all set for a nice signing night film session party. (Or a day after film session party in Philly, New York or Scranton.)

Haddonfield (N.J.) WR Zach Grant should also appear on this list., as should Arkum Wadley, whose video appears at the top.

In between finishing up his duties as an assistant offensive line coach with the New York Giants, Rhule had to   keep a diverse group of Addazio recruits in the fold and, for the most part, it appears that he’s done that.
On the other hand, Daz is having trouble bringing guys north to Boston.
I must give Addazio some credit, though, for not “stealing” Temple recruits. The thought crossed my mind maybe, oh, five minutes after I heard Daz was leaving Temple.
So he’s got to be given points for restraint.
At least so far.
And, in the recruiting battle between the two, it looks like this kid Rhule has NROY potential.

Sipe has this list of guys either coming in or recent visits. Moody is off the table (Pitt commit)

One word for the new staff: Interesting

New Temple WR coach  Terry Smith could provide a, err, Gateway to  WPIAL recruits.
Temple’s loss is Arizona’s gain.

My Sainted mom, in Heaven since Jan. 14 of 2011,  used to tell me that if I don’t have anything nice to say about someone don’t say anything.
Most times I remember what she said but the few times I don’t, I usually regret it.
So, with that in mind, I’m going to write about the new Temple football coaching staff today and, to borrow a phrase from the Four Tops, this is going to be short.
It looks pretty much complete with a tweak or two remaining.
One of the current recruits used the word “genius” when new coach Matt Rhule informed him of the potential members of the staff back in December.
I prefer the word “interesting” instead.
So far, the people who’ve told Rhule “I’ll be there” include Brandon Noble (defensive line), Allen Mogridge (special teams), Ed Foley (assistant head coach) and Fran Brown (promoted from graduate assistant, probably DBs).
Genius might have been a more appropriate word if names like Bill Cubit (now offensive coordinator at Illinois), Nick Rapone (now DB coach of the Arizona Cardinals), Chuck Heater (now defensive coordinator with Marshall) or Nick Rolovich (now OC with Nevada) were either coming to or staying at 10th and Diamond.

Hopefully, Marcus Satterfield points TU in the direction of the end zone

Heck, I know for a fact that Heater, Rapone and Rolovich gave the jobs some serious consideration and Rapone, whose daughter goes to Temple, really wanted the DC job. A guy who runs the Western Michigan website assured me that he had word from “a very good source” Cubit declined the head coaching job at Western Illinois to pursue the OC job at Temple. Cubit is from Sharon Hill, so that makes sense.
Whatever happened in all of those cases is now water under the bridge.
All I care about is the Temple bridge holding up.
The good news is that I’ll take Rhule all seven days of the week and five times on Saturday over “we have to be able to run the ball for 200 yards a game” Steve Addazio.
It’s the rest of the staff that has me scratching my head.

Matt Rhule could have endeared himself
to hundreds of ex-Temple players and
probably thousands of Temple fans
and given himself a great DC by hiring
Nick Rapone, who was interested in the job.

So that’s why I’m calling this staff interesting.

There’s a lot of ifs involved.
If new wide receivers’ coach Terry Smith, former highly successful Gateway head coach, can build a pipeline to some of the better WPIAL talent that Pitt had been getting in the past and redirect the flow East to Temple, that could  be a significant hire. Temple has been getting talent out of the WPIAL in the past, but prospects who typically held offers to only schools like Kent State and Bowling Green. Pitt plucked a kid out of George Washington High in Philly last week. It’s time for Temple to launch an effective full retaliatory strike in Pitt’s backyard.

If anybody can get that done, it’s Smith.
Still, this is the first time I can ever remember Temple hiring a high school coach for its staff.
My thoughts on Phil Snow are well-chronicled below. I’m crossing all eight fingers and two thumbs that Temple is getting the 2001 Snow, not the 2012 Snow.
If Temple is getting the 2001 Snow, who had the UCLA defense ranked near the top of the PAC-10, that’s a plus.
Marcus Satterfield took obscure Tennessee-Chattanooga into the national rankings in points scored and total offense in 2011, so I’m hopeful there. Yet the Mocs (yeah, that’s their nickname) slipped back into the middle of the pack offensively in the Southern Conference in 2012, so that’s a concern.
If Temple gets the 2011 Satterfield, not the 2012 one, things could get interesting for the Lincoln Financial Field scoreboard operator in 2013.
And that’s the nicest word I can use for now.
Interesting, not if.

Temple and the coaching dominoes

Bruce Arians’ first HC job was at TU in 1982 and now, 30 years later, gets his next one.

Round and round the coaching Merry-Go-Round goes and where it stops nobody knows.
Well, at least until a couple of hours ago.
For those who have Temple football connections, it appears to have stopped for awhile now.
Former North Carolina offensive coordinator John Shoop is actively seeking a NFL job. If he doesn’t get one, he reportedly told Matt Rhule he will accept Rhule’s offer to be OC.
Geez, I hope he gets an NFL job because I don’t really want someone here who says, “Well, if nothing pans out, I’ll have to take the Temple job, honey.”

Snow’s defenses gave up 44 points per game in 2010 and 38
points per game in 2012.

I’d rather have Marty Mornhinweg. First, he lives here already, his kid went to St. Joseph’s Prep and his presence might beget a five-star quarterback named Skyler Mornhinweg, currently at Florida.
When was the last time Temple recruited a five-star quarterback?
(Answer: Paulsboro’s Kevin Harvey, recruited by Ron Dickerson.)
Instead, Temple fans will end up with a DC, Phil Snow, whose best days were in the last century at Arizona State. Since 1996, his defenses have not posted a single shutout or had more than three games (in 72 tries) of limiting FBS foes to single-digits. He’s lost a lot off his fastball. In Snow, Rhule sees the 1952 Robin Roberts, not the 1967 Roberts, who ended his career with the Reading Phillies. I hope I’m wrong, but I see similar decline in important career numbers with Snow.
I must admit, after hearing names like Bill Cubit, Nick Rolovich and Nick Rapone thrown out there, ending up with Marcus Satterfield and Phil Snow as Rhule’s top two lieutenants is a bit underwhelming.

In the pros, former Temple head coach Bruce Arians landed as head coach for the Arizona Cardinals. To me, that’s the hire of the NFL year and Bruce having coached at Temple has really nothing to do with it.
Was there a candidate out there with two Super Bowls under his belt as an OC, a reputation of turning young quarterbacks into all-pros and someone who turned a losing culture into a winner as a head coach?

I think Rhule is in love with the 2001 Snow, not the Snow of 11 years later. If you take a step back and look at Snow’s resume objectively, he has not done much since 2001. He had a decent year for a non-winning Eastern Michigan team in 2011, but even then the Hurons didn’t limit any offense under double-digits.
I think Satterfield could be very, very good but I don’t know for sure.
But Rhule built that squeaky bed and now he’ll have to sleep on it.
In the pros, former Temple head coach Bruce Arians landed as head coach for the Arizona Cardinals. To me, that’s the hire of the NFL year and Bruce having coached at Temple has really nothing to do with it.


“Coaching is relationship-building
not just great players
but ballboys, managers
kids at Temple that I still
stay in touch with today
and they are my family.”
_Bruce Arians
head coach
Arizona Cardinals


Was there a candidate out there with two Super Bowls under his belt as an OC, a reputation of turning young quarterbacks into all-pros and someone who turned a losing culture into a winner as a head coach?
Other than Bruce, who got his last full-time head-coaching gig 30 years ago, I know there wasn’t.
I can’t imagine Chip Kelly bringing much more than suspect college assistants to Philadelphia.
Arians’ 20 years of contacts is going to build a solid NFL-ready staff and his first staff member is Todd Bowles, a former Owl player of his, as DC.
Good move by Bruce.
Bowles was unfairly blamed for the Eagles’ defensive woes because he inherited a backfield that was on strike and bereft of talent  all season. Bowles will have plenty of defensive talent in Arizona.
Speaking of Bowles, had he been hired as Temple head coach head coach instead of Rhule, his two coordinators would have been Mornhinweg and Rapone. That would have given Temple a guy who posted 11 shutouts since Snow’s last one as DC, an NFL OC and (possibly) a five-star QB recruit.
A little birdie, a red one, told me.
Funny what happens on the coaching Merry-Go-Round before it comes to a complete stop.

Meet your new (likely) coordinators


Phil Snow (left) might be looking at Marcus Satterfield to produce gobs of points.


“While at TU, coach Rapone had a string of DBs drafted or going to the NFL. Kevin Ross, Anthony Young, Todd Bowles, Larry Brewton, Terry Wright, Eddie Parker. ‘Nuff said.”
_ Paul Palmer, Heisman Trophy runner-up
Temple University

What if I told you Matt Rhule’s first two coordinators at Temple are responsible for units that allowed and produced numbers of 38 and 28 last year?
“Geez, Mike,” you’d probably say, “I would have liked the defensive coordinator to give up less than 28 a game, but I’m really excited about the OC he’s bringing in who’s putting up 38 per.”
“Try again,” I’d say.
Yeah, it’s the defensive coordinator coming off a season where his unit allowed 38 per and the offensive coordinator who is coming off a 28-point-per-game season.
What’s that Emily Latilla was noted for saying?
“Never mind.”
We’ve gone 2-for-2 with our most recent ahead-of-the-curve hunches (that Nick Rolovich would never show up at Temple and that Chuck Heater would head to Marshall) and, at the risk of sticking my neck out again, I think we’re going to go 4-for-4 in a two-week time frame.
Unfortunately, in this case.
It looks like Marcus Satterfield goes from OC at Tennessee-Chattanooga to the same role at Temple, while Phil Snow goes from Eastern Michigan DC to Temple DC.

Wikipedia is occasionally amusing, as was this last sentence.

I wish I could say Matt was going to do better than 1-for-2 here, but the evidence suggests otherwise.
I’m good with the Satterfield hire. I don’t mind hiring FCS coaches, as long as they are accomplished ones like Marcus Satterfield, who looks like he’s got a solid past and a bright future.
If I were the lone Eastern Michigan fan left, though, I’d send Rhule a thank you card for taking Snow off my hands. Judging from the numbers his most recent team gave up, I think his defensive philosophy is to give up seven as quickly as possible and pray his offense can score eight.
Four-hundred-and-fifty-one (that’s 451) points in 12 games is 38 points a game. OK, make it 37.58 but I’m rounding it out.

Looks like Snow’s defensive philosophy is to give up 7 as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, another FCS coach who is confirmed to have expressed interest in the job, Nick Rapone, probably won’t be hired and the reason we’re told is that Rhule promised the job to Snow, an old buddy from his UCLA days.
I’m all for hiring old buddies, but not old buddies who give up 38 points per game.
Every young man who ever had the good fortune to have played under Rapone at Temple will tell you they love Rapone and Rapone was the greatest Temple defensive coach they ever knew when he was the defensive coordinator for Bruce Arians at Temple. Rapone has continued his stellar coaching at Delaware, being named FCS coordinator of the year as recently as 2010. That was a year his defense gave up 181, not 451 points, in 15, not 12, games.
You do the math.

My fervent hope is that the first time Snow’s defense gives up 38 points, the 25K Temple fans walking out of the stadium that day won’t be saying “we could have had Nick Rapone and instead we have this Eastern Michigan guy”

SINCE he’s a Penn State-person, I’ll give Matt the benefit of the doubt for being, err, Snowed by a bullbleeper. I like Matt. I really do. I freaking HATE this hire. This is not a rah-rah Temple site. I’ll call it as I see it and I just don’t see this. I didn’t see Daz as right for Temple midway through the season and I called it then. I do think Matt can overcome this, but he’ll have to become the DC himself about 2 games into the season. He needs to concentrate on being a CEO and not doing other people’s jobs.
That’s why Rapone would have been perfect. He’s the type of guy you could hire and put the defense on auto pilot. He’s that trustworthy.
It’s a gold mine that Rapone became available for this job. Gold for Temple.
Telling him “I-can’t-hire-you-because-I-promised-the-job-to-a-2-10-coordinator” rates right up there with “the dog ate my homework” on the excuse meter. That’s like Johnny Football reneging on his original commitment to attend Texas A&M to be The Man at Temple, but the coach saying, “Geez, sorry Johnny, we gave our last scholarship to Spencer Reid.”
Rapone is the very definition of Temple-made. Snow is the very definition of bullbleep-made and, as a Temple-made person myself, I have a very good bullbleep-made antenna.

Snow Fun Fact No 1:
Phil’s last shutout as DC was in September, 1996. Chuck Heater had consecutive shutouts for Temple in 2011, while Nick Rapone has pitched six shutouts since 2006

So does every Temple-made person.
Rapone’s only shortcoming in this case was that he didn’t know Matt in the past. That’s Matt’s loss, not  Rapone’s.
If not Nick, why not Tom Bradley who has at least stopped an offense during the last three seasons?
My fervent hope is that the first time Snow’s defense gives up 38 points, the 25K Temple fans walking out of the stadium that day won’t be saying “we could have had Nick Rapone and instead we have this Eastern Michigan guy.”

Snow Fun Fact No. 2:
In the last 70 games Phil has been DC, he’s held FBS teams to single digits just 3 times

Or that the second time Snow gets torched for 38, the 20K Temple fans say the same thing, followed by 15K Temple fans, and 10K Temple fans the third and fourth times.
Don’t blame the kids, either, because Snow will be inheriting the same kids who allowed UConn only 14 points, none after adjustments the DC made at halftime.
Yeah, the same UConn team which beat Louisville and you know what Louisville did.

Former Temple Owls talk Nick Rapone:

Rolovich gone, Heater not forgotten

Nick Rolovich’s decision was a case of Reno 911 meeting 10th and Diamond.

With the announcement yesterday that Nick Rolovich was staying at Nevada comes the news today that Temple defensive coordinator Chuck Heater is leaving for Marshall.
Both developments, while disappointing, are not surprising.
We speculated in this spot a week ago that Chuck was going to Marshall and this is what we said when Rolovich was rumored to come to Temple as offensive coordinator:

I’ll believe Rolovich comes when I see him on North Broad Street. It might be a culture shock for someone who has worked in Hawaii and near Vegas the last two years to work at 10th and Diamond.

I published those words on this site Dec. 28. My instincts proved to be correct.
Rolovich was offered a double-salary pay raise to stay in Nevada.
Good for him. He’s got twins on the way and doesn’t want to uproot his family.
Plus, it’s better he decides now than sometime mid-way through the season. After all, 10th and Diamond isn’t for everybody. Scot Loeffler was the consummate professional while here and did a great job as offensive coordinator in 2011, but I could tell his heart wasn’t into being here.
Fortunately, Matt Rhule’s heart is into it and that should bode well for the make-up of the balance of the staff.

He was one of the best defensive coordinators I’ve ever seen at Temple. Nick Rapone was the best, Chuck was the second, Vince Hoch was the third and Mark D’Onofrio was a distant fourth.

I’m sure Marcus Satterfield will do a fine job as offensive coordinator. There will not be a search for a coordinator on offense. Satterfield will be the guy.
I don’t watch too much television, but one of the few channels I do get is the Comedy one and, while The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (my favorite) was off the air last month, I watched a couple of episodes of (awful) Reno 911.
The only thing that made me laugh about that show was imagining how long those cops would last at 10th and Diamond.
Two minutes.
Maybe.
Chuck, though, was another story altogether.
He loved living in Philadelphia, loved Temple, and was a terrific person to be around.
He was one of the best defensive coordinators I’ve ever seen at Temple.
Nick Rapone was the best, Chuck was the second, Vince Hoch was the third and Mark D’Onofrio was a distant fourth.
Like Nick, Chuck was as humble as they come.
After he made the second-half adjustments to shut out a UConn team that beat Louisville, I found myself standing next to Chuck in the parking lot while waiting for the guys to board the buses. He had a big smile on his face while watching the whole scene.   I turned to him said: “I don’t know what you did or said at halftime, but you are a genius.”
“It wasn’t me,” Chuck said, “It was the boys.”
That will be my lasting memory of Chuck at Temple.

ESPN makes subliminal Daz comment in promo

BREAKING NEWS: Nick Rolovich to remain at Nevada. More tomorrow but this means Marcus Satterfield will probably be promoted to coordinator… Notice the Owl decided against the run play that didn’t work the first time, while BC kept charging up the middle for no gain. Hmm. There’s got to be a subliminal message in there somewhere about the diversified Temple offense in the future compared to what is going to happen at BC. Inadvertent or not, the comment is right on and this is a brilliant ESPN production. The Daz irony in this one is deep. If this is an accident, it’s a helluva accident. The only way this would be better is if the two birds were carrying footballs. Very proud of my fellow Archbishop Ryan grad and former girls’ basketball hoop standout Chris McKendry, who appears in this video.

The complete Reece/Rhule sit-down interview

Beasley Reece interviews Matt Rhule.

Root for old Notre Dame
To me, the rooting interest for tonight’s National Championship game is a clear choice.It really should be for every Temple fan.
Root, root, root for old Notre Dame.

Why?

Imagine the buzz around Philadelphia should Temple knock off the unbeaten national champions in the 2013 opener?Much more electricity in that scenario for Temple than it would get coming off an upset of a ND team which lost to Alabama.

It seems like only yesterday Beasley Reece interviewed a young guy getting his first opportunity to be a head coach.
Afterward, Reece reached out his hand to the young man and shook his head approvingly, “Coach, you sold me. Where do I sign?”
“We’d love to have you,” was the reply.
The coach was Al Golden.
The year was 2005 and it SEEMED like yesterday.
That worked out pretty well for both coach and school.
Hopefully, was really DID happen yesterday, a sit-down interview with another young guy in the same position, Matt Rhule, will end up with similar on-field results.

Love the way Matt mentioned a 3-4 defense, even in passing. Means the thought has at least crossed his mind. Shows me he is using his head already. Temple has never played a 3-4 defense before, but the Owls have found themselves with personnel best-suited for it due to some unforeseen over-recruiting at the linebacker position by the recently departed head coach and suspension circumstances along the defensive front.
Those hard decisions should be addressed in the period between signing day and the the March opening of spring practice.
As usual, Beasley does his usual great job with the questions and Matt was every bit as impressive with his responses as Golden was way back when.
It’s worth six minutes of your time.