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

03.04.24
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Spring football’s Newest Trend: Hitting

It’s not often a third-year head coach can learn from a rookie one but maybe Fran Brown is onto something here.

Brown, the new Syracuse head coach, promised “hitting” as a requisite of his first spring practice and it makes sense for Temple for a couple of reasons:

A) Temple, at least on the defensive side, played the entire three months of the fall season as though that end of the sport was anathema.

Fran Brown while he was at Temple.

B) The Owls were so short of bodies last spring that they avoided hitting at all costs.

Brown has a history to rely upon. During Matt Rhule’s first year, he said he wanted the Owls to “learn the system” and went less with hitting and more with the fundamentals during spring.

A year later, Rhule changed philosophies in order to “re-establish the Temple TUFF” culture and the Owls practices–according to many players–were tougher than the games.

Brown was an assistant during those days (and later under Steve Addazio) and that’s all he knew at Temple. Then he went to Rutgers, which cut back on the physicality, and onto Georgia where the hitting was pretty much like Temple days due to the depth the Bulldogs had.

So Brown is firmly in the hitting camp.

Things got so bad at Temple under Rod Carey that one “Cherry and White” Game featured no more than running drills through foam rubber obsticles.

Certainly not football.

My guess is that the Syracuse spring game on April 20 will look more like a real football game than any Cherry and White Game has looked since Addazio. Back then, the Owls were hitting from the time spring ball started in March until the last game of the season.

If Stan Drayton beats Brown to the punch by a week (the Owls’ spring game is April 13), that could be just what this team needs.

03.01.24
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With winter over, hope springs eternal

Meteorological winter ended on Thursday while astronomical winter ends in about 20 days, so for the purposes of this space, we are acknowledging the former.

For Temple football fans like myself, hope springs eternal today.

Brandon McManus beats UConn with this OT field goal in 2012. The Huskies return to the schedule this season.

On the last day of meteorological summer, Temple will be playing at Oklahoma. That seemed like a good idea back on Halloween of 2015 when the Owls were trading blows with a then better team, Notre Dame.

Not so much nine years later due to a couple of things that didn’t exist then, the NIL and the transfer portal.

Because of largely those two things, Oklahoma will be playing downhill that day while Temple plays uphill.

There are reasons to believe, though, that the Temple season will will really start the next week during meteorological fall could be successful.

Since the Temple football schedule came out a couple of days ago, we can now go with our way-too-early projections.

Here they are:

Oklahoma 66, Temple 7 _ The Sooners recruit high school All-Americans and get the best out of the portal. The Owls recruit JUCOs and maybe lower end FCS and FBS players. Our guess is that Temple quarterback Clifton McDowell will avoid a hellacious rush and hit Dante Wright with a touchdown pass after Everett Withers’ defense gets predictably torched. 0-1.

Matt Rhule hugs Tyler Matakevich during his first win as a head coach. Rhule beat Army after an 0-6 start to his career.

Temple 34, Navy 16 _ If the dysfunctional Owls of 2023 could beat Navy by that score (and they did), it is only logical that a more functional team can duplicate the same feat. 1-1.

Coastal Carolina 31, Temple 19 _ Coastal has been a much better G5 program than Temple the last three seasons and not enough has changed for the Owls to catch up. 1-2.

Temple 34, Utah State 31 _ Utah State barely beat UConn and Temple was better than UConn at least last year based on the one comparable opponent. 2-2.

Temple 28, Army 24 _ Going with the hunch here that Temple wins a home game much like the 0-6 Owls of Matt Rhule’s first season beat visiting Army. Likely a Homecoming Game and Army doesn’t bring a big crowd. 3-2.

Our expectation is that Everett Withers clocks in at 9 a.m. and clocks out at 5 p.m. on non game days and that’s probably not enough to get Temple to improve from a 38.7 ppg defense to even a 30 ppg one but would love to see him prove us wrong.

Temple 37, UConn 30 _ UConn is finding out how difficult it is to recruit playing an independent schedule. If the Owls can beat Utah State, they must be able to beat UConn. 4-2.

Temple 31, Tulsa 21 _ Tulsa has much of the same recruiting problems as Temple and its student population. The Owls embarrassed themselves at Tulsa last year. They must turn that around. 5-2.

Temple 10, East Carolina 6 _ East Carolina might have been worse than Temple last year. If Withers holds them to a couple of field goals it will be his best job since a 1985 shutout of Louisville. 6-2.

Tulane 42, Temple 14 _ Jon Sumrall is a flat-out better head coach than Stan Drayton and will prove it on this day. 6-3.

FAU 35, Temple 14 _ Same for Tom Herman vs. Stan Drayton. 6-4.

UTSA 59, Temple 24 _ E.J. Warner put up 34 points on UTSA a year ago but that was at Temple’s Homecoming where the Owls typically overperform. On the road, McDowell puts up 24 but UTSA’s team speed embarrasses Withers’ defense again. 6-5.

UNT 45, Temple 34 _ McDowell does a decent job against a porous Mean Green defense but Withers does the same job he did a year ago against the Mean Green offense. Temple finishes 6-6, makes a bowl, but a four-game losing streak puts a damper on an otherwise good season.

The postscript of this season will be what might have been had Drayton made for the rest of the world was an easy business decision (but for him a difficult personal one) to replace Withers at the end of the 2023 season.

That’s our story and we’re sticking to it. We will revisit this prediction no later than December.

Eating crow after an 8-4 season or better would be our hope that day but the more likely scenario is that we’re probably overly optimistic.

Spring can do that to a psyche.

Monday: The Newest Trend

02.25.24
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Temple sports: Winning means everything

Monica Malpass reports that Temple applications surged to an all-time high after the football team beat PSU.

Debated whether to do my usual two-hour bike ride on Sunday or watch the Temple men’s basketball game live.

Decided on going for the bike ride, listen to the game live, and watch the replay only if Temple won.

As a result, I watched my first Temple basketball game of the season and thoroughly enjoyed it because there wasn’t any angst involved in the end result.

The lesson of the day was winning means everything.

This blog started pretty much around the firing of Bobby Wallace (technically, his contract wasn’t renewed) and the hiring of Al Golden. In between there was an anti-football president (David Adamany) who tried to get the sport axed but cooler heads prevailed.

Hopefully, Stan Drayton is paying attention.

The result was a 20-game losing streak ended, the Owls made their first bowl game in 30 years (and won their next bowl game), beat Penn State, hosted College Game Day, had the highest-rated college football game ever in the Philadelphia market and won a championship.

Pretty good stuff.

Since then, though, it’s been a program swimming upstream in a river polluted by the NIL and the Transfer Portal. (I didn’t think Temple would win a championship every year but I thought it could at least remain in the top 80 of teams who made bowl games.)

Will Temple ever return to those heady days when it beats a Penn State, gets an ESPN Game Day and breaks its own TV ratings record in the largest market that currently doesn’t have a P5 team?

Doubtful since the gap between the G5 and the P5 will widen. Temple opens with Oklahoma in six months and plays Penn State in 2026 and, while Temple didn’t recruit in the same world with Penn State and Notre Dame in 2015, it doesn’t recruit in the same solar system with those schools now. By 2026, it might be a different galaxy.

Still, though, I’m convinced with the right schemes and coaching, the Owls can win an AAC championship in the next couple of years and that’s certainly a better outcome for the program than the Adamany Alternative floated in 2005.

The Owls better win soon, though, and by soon we mean this fall.

If they lose more than they win for the fifth-straight season, I don’t know if the BOT can hold off a purge of the program like they did in 2005. Already, the BOT has laid some clues in that direction by deciding to cut back on spending the money to paint the field over the last three seasons.

In women’s basketball, Temple now finds itself at the top of the league in the short tenure of Diane Richardson. Stan Drayton has had the same amount of time to improve his program.

He might not have to finish in first place this season like Richardson appears on the precipice of, but he will have to show the higher-ups that 3-9 is not the new Temple football Groundhog Day.

The Temple men’s basketball team showed the university how enjoyable winning was on the main ESPN network Sunday. The Temple football team will have 10x the urgency to do the same starting not on Aug. 31, but with the offseason workouts that are happening right now.

Friday: Some Projections