04.08.24
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Philly Eclipse Means a winning season for Temple

Temple’s band prior to football game against St. Joe in 1925. (photo courtesy Temple archives)

Depending upon which conspiracy theory you believe circulating around the internet, at about 3 this afternoon, all of us are going to be raptured into Heaven or sent to a hotter place. Hell (pun intended), one member of Congress floated that possibility on her twitter account.

Since I’m not a conspiracy theorist, and there is really no good way to predict the 2024 final Temple football record without knowing which big-time quarterback Owls can attract here on or around April 15, I decided to do some research on what the Owls did in prior Philadelphia eclipse years.

Good news.

While the Owls have had more losing seasons in their history than winning ones, some of their best seasons have come when solar eclipses visited Philadelphia. In fact, they have not had a single losing season in the past 100 years during an eclipse year.

No quotes in this story but an interesting lede nonetheless.

1925–Under head coach “Heinie” Miller, the Owls finished 5-2-2, beating Upsala, 19-0, at the “old” Northeast High, 8th and Lehigh. They also moved a couple of blocks West to beat St. Joseph’s College (now University), 32-0, at Baker Bowl, Broad and Lehigh, that year. The Philadelphia eclipse occurred on Jan. 25.

1932–The 5-1-2 Owls played all home games at the then new Temple Stadium including a 14-0 win against Denver (Colo.). Their only road game was a 7-7 tie against Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh. Carnegie Tech, which played NYU at Yankee Stadium that year, also finished with a winning season. The Owls also beat Penn State, 13-12, at Temple Stadium. They also beat West Virginia, 14-13. The eclipse in Philadelphia occurred on Aug. 31.

1963–After the July 20th eclipse, the Owls of George Makris finished 5-3-1 and likely would have finished 6-3-1 if they had been able to play their final game of the season. That game was originally scheduled to be played on Saturday, November 23, at Temple Stadium but was canceled due to the tragic assassination of President John F. Kennedy the prior day.

2017–On Aug. 21, the Owls were wrapping up their first camp under new coach Geoff Collins and got off the field during the eclipse that day (1:21-4 p.m.). They finished 7-6 that season with a 28-3 bowl win over FIU. QB Frank Nutile was the MVP.

2024–Maybe the Owls pick up a big-name quarterback in the portal post the Cherry and White game who leads them to a winning season. Of course, there was no transfer portal in prior eclipse years so the Owls had to settle on whoever was enrolled in the school at the time. They need an upgrade so the transfer portal could provide good news soon.

We can only hope so. They have an eclipse tradition to uphold.

Friday: Cherry and White Preview

Monday: Cherry and White Recap

Friday (April 19): Five Guys

Monday (April 22): A Possible Hail Mary For Temple

04.04.24
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McDowell proves Thomas Wolfe wrong

John Rienstra, unlike Clifton McDowell, made a name for himself at Temple and did more than OK.

The Clifton McDowell Era ended at Temple and, when the book of the Transfer Portal is ever written, McDowell may have provided the most unusual chapter.

Proving Thomas Wolfe wrong.

Wolfe, in his novel, “You Can’t Go Home Again” talked about the story of George Webber, who writes a book about his hometown that became a national success but the residents of said town are unhappy with what they perceived was a distorted depiction of them. They send him death threats and tell him he’s not welcome.

Fortunately for McDowell, he didn’t badmouth Missoula, Montana on the way out the door so his reported return to them yesterday will come with welcome arms. He wants his old job back.

Like Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone TV series, though, every good story has an ironic twist at the end.

My predicted twist–and I believe this will come true no later than September–is that while McDowell went home with the intention of reclaiming his starting job, a guy named Logan Fife will turn out to be the eventual starter. Fife was the very capable backup last year at Fresno State and Montana only felt the need to recruit him because McDowell left for Temple.

The Owls, on the other hand, don’t have a quarterback on the current roster with the resume of Fife, let alone McDowell. Fife was a much better backup at Fresno than Evan Simon was at Rutgers but that’s what Temple is stuck with at this current stage of the game. That, or a JUCO who looked like total crap subbing for E.J. Warner last year.

Maybe walking down the street in Missoula, Montana without looking over your shoulder means that much to McDowell, who didn’t turn out to be Temple TUFF.

What Temple needs now is a Fife-level transfer because, while the loyalty of the current quarterback room HOPEFULS (and we use that word loosely) is laudable, the undeniable fact is that the current leader, Forrest Brock, looked only about 1/10th as good as E.J. Warner in his lone Temple action last year. That’s even being generous to Brock. Stan, this is your one chance to get someone better than Warner. Settling for worse would be at your own peril.

I don’t know about you but I’d rather get a guy 10x better than Warner than one 10x worse.

The good news for Temple is that the transfer portal is getting ready to explode on April 15 and at least one very good P5 quarterback will shake loose from a No. 2 on his team’s depth chart to become available to Temple. If that guy is smart, he will turn down a $250,000 NIL deal to be a backup elsewhere and gamble that on himself and a very good chance to start at Temple to make a million down the road.

If McDowell’s leaving leads to Temple being smart enough to land one of those guys who can be better than Warner, and McDowell ends up as a backup in the middle of nowheresville bored out of his mind, that’s the kind of ironic twist that would meet with the approval of Serling.

Not to mention Temple fans who wouldn’t mind watching or reading a good ending for a change.

04.01.24
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Biggest victims of portal and NIL? The players

Every day you learn something new about both the NIL and the transfer portal.

For me, I didn’t think quarterback Clifton McDowell leaving Temple football in the middle of spring practice would have been a thing.

Would have at least expected he’d wait until the end of spring practice, give himself a chance to shine in the Cherry and White game, and then move on if the handwriting was on the wall.

This isn’t about the Clifton McDowells, though. It’s about the other kids.

The great majority of them.

Gary Segars, who does one of the best college football podcasts out there (Winning Cures Everything), said that since December 23 alone, 2,332 college football players have entered the portal and, as of last week’s show, only 1,116 have found a new home.

That’s less than half.

Tickets for Temple’s road opener going for as low as $36

What happened to those 1,216?

They not only have no place to go, but also lost their scholarships at the prior schools and the cost-of-attendance stipend (at an AAC school like Temple) of roughly between $3-5,000-per-year. This whole NIL Transfer Portal system has left the majority of the players homeless.

So this is pretty much a Ponzi scheme. Former Oklahoma head coach Barry Switzer, who lives 100 yards from the stadium (Gaylord Family Stadium) where Temple opens the season, described it perfectly: “You know what NIL stands for?” Switzer told Dan Sileo last week. “Now it’s legal.”

What got SMU the death penalty in 1986 is standard operating procedure in 2024.

Only the top 1 percent of the players are getting head-turning deals and a large portion of the other 99 percent think they should get those kinds of deals, too.

The hard reality is beginning to set in for the majority of those players.

The Oakland basketball coach said his star player is getting offers between $250K and $300K per year and there is no way Oakland can match that. The player was called “Mr. Oakland” for his loyalty to the school but that apparently is out the window.

The real smart football players at Temple are the ones who are staying because, after a trifecta of consecutive 3-9 seasons, there’s not a lot of value a Owl can offer a big-time school like Georgia or Alabama and those are the types of schools that can offer that kind of money.

They can increase their value by being a part of a winning Temple program.

The good news for Temple is that this transfer portal works both ways. Among the 1,216 players currently available in the portal are a lot of good players who can help Temple, if not against Oklahoma on Aug. 31, win against a similar skill pool of AAC players later. Five players left the Miami Hurricanes last week, including the team’s leading rusher. It’s getting late for those players to find a place and it’s likely the Owls won’t have to offer a bag of cash. Just an opportunity to play should be enough.

The coaching staff that identifies those players will win the AAC. Temple has to scour the portal and find players who can help it in areas of need and a lot of those players will need Temple as well.

The ones who don’t find a home will have a sad story to tell 60 Minutes once this sordid chapter of college sports history is over.

03.29.24
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The hard truth about the depth chart

Sol-Jay Maiava-Peters is a former teammate of current Owl starting running back Antwain Littleton.

Amid all the noise about no lopsided scrimmages and things looking good at Temple football’s spring practice is this indisputable truth.

The best quarterback on the team left for reasons unclear and there is no one on the current roster who possesses the same kind of skill set or talent level as Clifton McDowell.

Don’t believe me.

Quite a number of good uncommitted quarterbacks on that list but, for specific reasons connected to Temple, Stan Drayton should zero in on getting Sol-Jay Maiava-Peters.

Believe the numbers.

There is not a single quarterback on the roster who has put up the kind of numbers in college football as Clifton McDowell did.

If the season were to start on Cherry and White Day against Oklahoma and not a meaningless game between good guys and good guys, which is what the Cherry and White game has always been, the starter would be a guy who had four college touchdown passes against six college touchdown interceptions or a JUCO guy who did nothing above the JUCO level and looked like total crap in his only game against SMU.

Not good options.

Had to laugh when I read on message boards “next man up.”

Not a believer in “next-man-up.” Never was. Never will be. Temple’s got to go out and get a replacement for McDowell with similar athletic ability.

I saw Forrest Brock play in the SMU game and, if he was better than the kid from Ocean City (Tyler Douglas, got to assume he was because the coaches put him in first), Temple is bleeped. He didn’t show me any throws that indicated he could start at West Chester, let alone Montana. Next man up gets you beat 55-0. Forrest Gump might have played better. Hell, Forrest Tucker of F-Troop, a college football star before getting into acting, certainly would have.

I saw enough of Simon in the RU-TU game to know he was the second-best quarterback in that game.

Temple needs to get better than E.J. Warner at that position, not worse.

Sol-Jay Maiava-Peters would give Temple two QBs who were offensive MVPs in the New Mexico Bowl. (Chris Coyer was the first.) Hell, if he comes here, he might get another NMB MVP trophy for the Owls.

McDowell offered that possibility, having thrown 13 touchdown passes and only four interceptions for FCS national runnerup Montana. Contrast that to Warner’s 23 TDs and 14 interceptions for Temple last year and there was a chance that Temple would get better just on the turnover factor alone. Warner had this nasty habit of throwing Pick 6s at exactly the time Temple didn’t need them (Rutgers, 2022 and USF, 2023).

Temple head coach Stan Drayton knows what he has to do.

Get a big-time quarterback in the transfer portal.

There is a list published in the graphic of this post of the current big-time quarterbacks available. One, former Georgia Tech and Nebraska starter Jeff Sims, is available. I would not go that route, rather looking at quarterbacks with Sims’ talent but with a demonstrated history of protecting the football. (Temple already tried to get a 4* quarterback with a history of fumbling, Dwan Mathis, and that did not work out too well.)

Drayton has to ask himself this question: Is he more comfortable going into the Oklahoma game with possibly a quarterback (Brock) who lost, 55-0, to SMU in 2023 or a guy who beat SMU, 24-23, in the final game of 2022?

One possibility on this list of undecideds in the BYU quarterback, Sol-Jai Malavia-Peters. Kid led his team to a bowl win and is a great runner. Former teammate of Antwain Littleton at St. John’s (D.C). Like many other great football players in this transfer portal, Peters still does not have a home. He can help Temple and Temple can help him.

All Drayton has to do is call in Littleton after practice tomorrow and have him do the heavy lifting to recruit a guy who won a bowl game for BYU as a starting quarterback.

Since Littleton is 6-1, 235 pounds lifting that cell phone and selling Peters on Temple should not be that hard.

Monday: Ponzi and Temple

03.25.24
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Temple’s path to winning: A unique style

“You guys hang in there because one of our alums is going to win the MegaMillions Tuesday.”

Failing me winning the Powerball tonight or the Mega tomorrow, there are a couple of other pathways to respectability for Temple football that were apparent over the last few days both in the basketball tournament and the football scrimmage.

One, that probably can’t happen.

What we saw is that, after the first round, the teams who paid the piper (i.e., NIL) largely won and the brackets settled into favorite mode.

So Temple or any G5 team winning the national championship until this current financial landscape probably cannot happen in either major sport.

One, that could happen.

The teams who pulled off the upsets in the first round (Grand Canyon, Yale, Oakland, Duquesne) all had a unique style of play that other high-seeded teams were not ready for. Grand Canyon pressed and had line-change substitutions. Yale slowed it down. Oakland ran an offense that accentuated its strength (the three) by an entry pass into the paint followed kicking out to a shooter. Duquesne played a 1-3-1 zone that confused BYU.

All exceeded any national expectations.

Temple football could carve out that same niche in the G5 college football world if only it would embrace its recent past.

Fullback, two tight ends, establish the running game, chew up the clock with 7-8 minute drives each quarter and occasionally hit an explosive downfield play in the passing game by faking it into the belly of one of their talented running backs, and throwing over the heads of a defense whose linebackers and safeties were forced to inch up to the line of scrimmage to stop the run.

That’s how Al Golden turned Temple from a 20-game losing streak to a first bowl appearance in 30 years. That’s how Matt Rhule progressed from the morass of his first two seasons to double-digit wins in his final two.

That’s how Temple won an AAC championship, appeared on College Football Gameday, and posted the highest-ever prime time TV rating for a national college football game in the Philadelphia market.

After Temple beat Navy, 34-10, for the AAC title, Middies coach Ken Niumatalolo made a great comment about Temple being just as hard to prepare for everyone in the league as his team was because Temple didn’t do the same thing any other team did from a scheme standpoint.

The Owls lost their way and strayed from their roots since then and tried to do the same thing every other college football team did–a spread offense where the passing game was supposed to set up the running game.

That hasn’t worked here. Running to set up the play-action always did.

It was heartening to hear that the Owls established the run in their first scrimmage.

Keep it up and commit to it and the Owls can be the football version of Grand Canyon and Oakland this season.

If I win the Powerball tonight or the Mega tomorrow, they can dream of being a Georgia or a Michigan because the Owls will be the highest-paid team in the NCAA and it would be delicious irony to hear that “the only reason Temple is winning is because some alumn hit the $1.1 billion Megaball. Let’s go back to the old system of no transfer portal or NIL so Georgia and Michigan have a fair shot of winning again.”

Duh?

Until then, style over substance.

03.22.24
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March Gladness: The One Chance for G5 to Shine

For TU, one of the solutions to football woes is to purchase either the old Temple Stadium site here or something close to it to revive a home-field advantage if there is no chance to build one on campus .

There is no rhyme or reason to fate.

Of course, in the end, the bad guys will win in college sports.

That’s a script the bad guys wrote and had approved by the NCAA and the Supreme Court in terms of the NIL and transfer portal.

Simply put, the bad guys are the richest ones in college sports, the big conferences with the big fan bases and the big bucks.

The good guys are the ones who ask for a fair shake, the guys who thought the NCAA would have enough power to regulate fairness and fight off the cheaters who want to buy championships.

Well, mostly on a day where the bad guys won, those of us who aren’t the richest or a part of the big conferences all celebrated what Oakland and Duquesne did on Thursday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

No. 14 Oakland busted a lot of Final Four brackets with an 80-76 win over No. 3 Kentucky. No. 11 Duquesne beat No. 6 Brigham Young. Samford was robbed when a clean block against Kansas was ruled a foul. Maybe the NCAA told the ref to do it. Maybe not.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

With the NIL and the transfer portal being what it is, the best players from the Duquesnes and the Oaklands will be bought and paid for by the bad guys.

When that happens, this magical NCAA Tournament will be over because Cinderellas are what made this March Madness story so great.

How does this impact Temple football?

In that more important sport, the Owls are more closely aligned with the basketball Duquesnes and Oaklands than they are with the Michigans and the Georgias.

Saw this coming a mile away. If I had $100,000 I would be able to buy Temple football enough players to win a natty. Instead, only had $10 and won $70.

Their No. 1 millionaire athletic booster, Lewis Katz, died in a plane crash and their No. 2, Bill Cosby, was effectively ostracized by legal allegations.

Who knows where Temple sports would be if those guys were still in the arena?

Now the Owls have basically zero NIL support because the bulk of their alumni fan base commuted to school on a train or a bus and would have been overjoyed to receive the same kind of scholarship current Temple football and basketball players have. In my case, it was four years of taking a trolley to the El and then getting off at Berks and walking 10 blocks west to school.

Both ways, uphill, on snowy days. That’s Temple TUFF. Would not try that walk in that same neighborhood today.

Those alums can’t be expected to hold their noses donate to players who are getting a full ride.

Fortunately, they are in the same boat with most of their G5 compadres.

They can win G5 titles, like the 2016 team did, but there is no shot to do anything better unless Congress steps in because we know where the Supreme Court stands.

Until that happens, Temple football will have to ride out the storm.

Batten down the hatches.

Monday: Style over Substance

Friday: Unspoken truths about the depth chart

03.17.24
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What the UAB-TU hoop run can teach the football Owls

As someone who won The Philadelphia Inquirer employee NCAA pool (2011), the No. 1 thing that helped me was the full broadsheet page that included in small type (we in the business call it agate) every single score of every single game of every single team in the tournament.

Before every game, Stan Drayton should show this clip to his team as an example of how to dive on a ball when the other team fumbles.

Really, it was the secret sauce.

Kept checking and cross-checking comparative scores before I made my picks. When the tournament was over, I got $2,400 in cash delivered in a brown paper bag at Westy’s Bar (15th and Callowhill) at nearly 2 a..m. Never was more nervous walking to the Inky parking garage in my life. That’s when the Inky had its full complement of employees and the cash haul was impressive. I still haven’t paid taxes on them but I think the statue of limitations has passed so I should be OK.

Reid Tuvim, an Inky copy editor who ran the pool, did a nice analysis of my picks in the employee internal newsletter and why they were so good. Inky and every other paper in the country stopped publishing that cheat sheet. Not the same clicking and re-clicking to find the same info that I could hold in my hand. What then took seconds now takes hours.

As a result, I never duplicated that monetary success.

Give me something I can hold in my hand that has every score of every team and I can win just about any NCAA pool there is.

Adam Fisher had Temple sports trending on Sunday. Maybe Stan Drayton will be able to do the same come December.

That’s the lesson I’ve learned about NCAA pools.

There is a more important lesson Temple football can learn from the recent unlikely basketball runs of both UAB and Temple and those are just as clear as the small agate type was on those pages.

One, Stan Drayton’s emphasis on getting JUCOs is a Hail Mary prayer that just might be answered.

Two, if the Temple football defense gives even half the effort on every fumble by the bad guys that Hysier Miller gave on that Saturday loose ball, the Owls can improve from last in the nation in defensive turnovers to at least the middle of the pack and that will be twice as good.

Being twice as good usually translates into twice as many wins and hopefully that will be the case for the football Owls.

Back to the JUCOs, though.

That’s the strategy Drayton and his staff designed for Owl recruiting in the offseason. While my preferred pathway would be heavy on the FCS stars and lighter on the JUCOs, maybe Drayton is right. Hell, his $2.5 million salary per year is a lot better than my $2,400 haul that night at Westy’s. So he’s getting the big bucks to solve big problems.

Andy Kennedy proved you can win a AAC championship in a major sport with a heavy emphasis on JUCOs.

Maybe Drayton can do the same.

If so, that will be his secret sauce.

Friday: March Gladness

03.15.24
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ACC Might Have Taken The Wrong TV Market

The first Temple basketball highlight film ever on TFF. These guys deserve that honor.

After a couple years of misery for Temple sports fans, what the men’s basketball team did on Thursday night was super sweet.

No matter what happens now, history will read that SMU’s final men’s basketball game in the American Athletic Conference was a 75-60 loss to Temple.

At home in front of the same rich Mustang fans who put up the big bucks for SMU to move to the ACC.

In my mind, Clifton McDowell will be a huge upgrade from E.J. Warner for Temple in that he will be able to make all the passes E.J. made and give a multi-dimensional look that Temple hasn’t had since P.J. Walker.

In a tournament game that meant everything.

Now it’s up to the football Owls to prove one important point: The ACC might have taken the wrong TV market.

Philadelphia, despite being the sixth-largest city, is still the fourth-largest TV market due to the density of the population in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey suburbs that surround the city.

Dallas/Ft. Worth, the market SMU is in, is one market behind in fifth place but the big difference is this. TCU is also in that same market. That market was already taken by the Power 5.

The Philadelphia market is owned by Temple and available to any Power 5 conference that wants it. It is also the largest TV market without a P5 team.

Temple could change all that. If Adam Fisher has proven anything in his first year, is that he has immediately improved the Temple basketball program. It might not show in the 14-19 record but it shows in how competitive the team has been even in their losses. One more thing is that Fisher has been able to recruit. He is already bringing in the top player in the state of Texas, Dillon Battie, the son of former Owl great Derrick Battie and bringing in the best player in Delaware in Aiden Tobiason.

An example of how Temple owns the Philly market over Penn State is that Penn State played Notre Dame six times on ABC prime time and never even approached the numbers Temple was able to put up for this one game. The X Factor was Temple, not Notre Dame.

There is reason to believe that the men’s basketball Owls can immediately go to the head of the AAC class next year. No bellyaching from Fisher about the transfer portal or NIL. He’s finding a way to win and get recruits. Women’s basketball coach Diane Richardson won the AAC regular-season title in her second year.

The one thing holding the university back has been the abysmal performance by the football program.

Stan Drayton gets a pass for the first year’s 3-9 because he showed the kind of competitive improvement that Temple fans needed to see after the Rod Carey Error.

The second year, though, was as bad as Carey’s 1-6 and 3-9 seasons from a competitive standpoint and raised major red flags.

Now Drayton is slowly–maybe too slowly–is showing signs he gets it. Short of bodies last year, Drayton overbooked the personnel flight and is now seven scholarships over the limit.

That means the Owls can have a physical spring practice and they need it. They had the worst-tackling game in recent Temple history in a 45-14 loss at North Texas and got only marginally better after that.

They lost a record-setting QB in E.J. Warner but Drayton showed he “gets it” by not settling after signing Rutgers’ backup Evan Simon. He went out and got a difference-maker in Clifton McDowell, who can do things Warner never dreamed of doing. They improved their running game by signing two first-team JUCO All-Americans and a solid Big 10 backup.

Now if the Owls can put that physicality together with the explosiveness of McDowell and Company, the football Owls can shock the world the way the basketball Owls did on Thursday night.

Do that enough times, and thousands of fannies return to the seats and millions of eyeballs to the screen and the ACC might be wondering if they picked the wrong TV market.

03.11.24
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The perfect guy to give the pre-game prayer

Nick Sharga (far right) will try to save souls like he did with the Temple program nearly a decade ago.

Most national observers will tell you what Temple head football coach Stan Drayton did in replenishing the roster amounted to a Hail Mary.

Nick Sharga’s (4) block sprung Ryquell Armstead (farthest Owl on the black line) for a long touchdown here against USF.

Maybe that’s a good way to describe the state of the program which desperately needed an infusion of not only talent but big bodies.

Now we know who can deliver the pre-game prayer.

It’s the same guy who, in my mind, was almost as responsible for double-digit winning seasons in 2015 and 2016 as P.J. Walker, Tyler Matakevich and Matt Rhule.

Nick Sharga.

Sharga was named to the Priesthood last week. Looks like Nick will remain relatively close by as he will be stationed at Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, on Franklin Street in North Philly.

While the starting fullback for the Owls, Sharga opened gaping holes for both Jahad Thomas and Ryquell Armstead and epitomized Temple TUFF. He also played half the game at defense (linebacker) in a 34-12 win over Memphis.

This is classic Temple TUFF football, with a fullback at the goal line.

At Rhule’s Baylor press conference, he gave much of the credit for Temple’s success to Sharga, saying “we ditched the spread offense and went with an old pro style offense because we had an NFL fullback.”

Rhule said the Owls were successful using that system not just because of Sharga but because it was a scheme that chewed up the clock, and kept the ball out of the hands of the other offense. He also said that it was a perfect system for Temple because with a fullback and two tight ends no one else in college football was doing that and it was just as difficult to get ready for a Temple game week as it was for big-time teams getting ready for a triple-option service academy team.

Father Nick (4) was always in the middle of Temple TUFF, pushing that pile into the end zone.

Sometimes, something as simple as a scheme can be a great equalizer when there is a talent imbalance.

Temple benefited from that scheme and won a lot of games.

We can only pray the lightbulb comes on in the E-O again and the Owls’ braintrust realizes now what the coaches in that same building realized then.

Now we have the perfect guy to lead us in prayer.

03.08.24
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What Temple can learn from the women

Women celebrate AAC championship on the floor of the Liacouras Center Wednesday.

If this were baseball, Temple University athletic director Arthur Johnson would have a pretty good batting average in major head coaching hires.

Home run with the women’s basketball hire, and two strikeouts (so far) with the other two people.

That’s a .333 average.

This really stinks that Temple is being looked at in this manner. Arthur Johnson and Adam Fisher have to be on top of this and investigate. A Boston College point shaving scandal was covered in the movie Goodfellas. Temple does not want to be the 2024 version of St. Joe’s 1961 basketball squad.

Baseball, a great average. Athletic directing, no so much.

Still, there are lessons in those three hires.

The two strikeouts came here as never leading a program as a head coach.

The home run, Diane Richardson, was an already established successful head coach in the same Mid-Atlantic region.

Richardson led her basketball women to an AAC championship in a couple of short years. Drayton has had two years of failure (3-9) and there are major questions about Adam Fisher and the men’s basketball program after it gave a clinic in matador defense on Thursday night in a 100-72 loss to visiting UAB. The lack of effort on defense was so appalling major questions were raised nationally.

The lesson is simply this.

If Drayton is not able to pull rabbit out of his hat in the form of a winning season, Johnson will have to look for the male version of Richardson: A successful coach with a history of knowing how to be a winning CEO elsewhere BEFORE coming to Temple. Also in that resume is an ability to successfully recruit the footprint–a 250-mile radius around Temple.

Looking at the North Texas film, the same could be said about the Temple football defense in 2023. Worst tackling I’ve ever seen in a Temple game.

That’s one big part of the job.

The other big part is not having to learn on it.

When you have to learn to be a head coach while on the job, the guinea pig is Temple. That means the players and the fans.

Temple is paying for the on-the-job training and, if you are successful here, the likely beneficiary is another school who gets to hire the guy away from Temple. If you fail, Temple pays the price and no one benefits.

What the Richardson hiring proved, Towson paid for the on-the-job training and Temple was the beneficiary. That has always been my preference for the football program. Other schools, preferably nearby, should have paid for the training for a ready-made football head coach so no learning on the job was required.

That’s Athletic Directing 101 but since Johnson is also learning on the job, we can only pray the lessons are being absorbed and applied to future hires.

Monday: Speaking of Praying