Spencer Prescott coached under Bruce Arians, Jerry Berndt and Bobby Wallace and was credited with recruiting Heisman Trophy runnerup Paul Palmer.

By Mike Gibson
Donald Hunt is a longtime buddy of mine and we shared many laughs in the press box at Temple games, mostly at the old Vet.
In fact, nobody’s quips made me laugh any harder than Don’s and that’s saying a lot because I’ve heard some pretty funny stuff in press boxes over the years.
This time, though, Don Hunt wrote a serious and poignant story on former Owl assistant coach Spencer Prescott the other day that everyone should take a couple of minutes to read.
Please help this great former Owl, who is waiting for a kidney transplant.

By Mike Gibson
Saw a headline the other day that an unbeaten Temple football team was expecting 35,000 fans for its home game against rival Villanova.
That sounded about right until I looked at the date of the story:
Nov. 23, 1934.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Finding something on Temple football history can be challenging at best.
The local papers, the Inquirer and Daily News, have done an historically poor job of covering the team, even in the fat years of the 1970s and 1980s.
You can totally forget the lean years.
The Inquirer’s archives go back only to 1978, so that eliminates a lot of pretty good years for Temple football.
They cover a Division I team 250 miles away from the center of Philadelphia far better than the one just 1 mile north of the newspaper’s headquarters.
In fact, a strong argument can be made that a newspaper 90 miles away has done a far better job covering the team, at least archiving its history, than the newspapers in town.
After finding that Temple vs. Villanova preview in the New York Times, I found 116 stories about the Temple football team in the same newspaper’s archives covering a wide range of years.
That’s right.
One-hundred and sixteen stories, mostly previews and coverage of games, but a surprisingly large number of lengthy profile pieces (with large photos in many of them) covering the team’s personalities and coaches.

Some NYT headlines:

No Pressure On Temple, Coach Says; Crowd of 20,000 Expected _ Story was about Temple football coach Wayne Hardin and his team’s upcoming game against Rutgers. Hardin said that there’s no pressure on Temple to win because there are so many other sports options in town (1979).

MORRISON PLEADS FOR CONFERENCES; Temple Football Coach Says Two Groups in the East Would Boost Interest _ Ray Morrison, then head of the American Football Coaches Association, proposed two conferences: What is now the current Ivy League and all other (then) Division I football powers in the East. He proposed that the winners of the two leagues play for the Eastern title (1945).

Temple Picked to Win Again – Before a 1974 game against a then good Holy Cross team, Crusaders’ coach Ed Doherty said that the Owls had caught and surpassed Penn State as the No. 1 team in the East. In fact, the NYT notes that after Penn State’s 7-6 loss to Navy the week before, the Nittany Lions fell to second-place in the Lambert Trophy balloting to Temple. Oh yeah. Doherty’s fears were well-founded. Temple beat Holy Cross, 56-0, on the day that story was published (Oct. 19, 1974). That Holy Cross team won three games in a row that season, including wins at Villanova, UConn and UMass.
Temple’s Football Stock Booms Under the Coaching of Warner; Stalwart Line and Speedy, Powerful Backfield Quick to Grasp Details of Famous Mentor’s System — Shift Adds to Deception on the Attack _ Pretty much an ode to then Temple coach Pop Warner. It’s amazing to think that Temple had both Pop Warner and Wayne Hardin as head coaches. All Owl fans should be very proud of that heritage.
Spectacular Third-Period Drive Enables Temple to Upset Texas Christian; RALLY BY TEMPLE TOPS TEXANS, 13-11 Owls Gain First Triumph of Season as Bowles, Tomasic Excel in Second Half T.C.U. IS FIRST TO TALLY Thompson Kicks a Field Goal Then Clark Scores at End of 89-Yard Assault – I didn’t know you could write the whole story in a headline until I saw that one.

Temple, Under Hardin, Gains Football Heights; Not a Normal Season Made Reputation at Navy Temple Lifted by Hardin – A preview of the 1979 Garden State Bowl.

Comic Turns Quips Into Tuition; Bill Cosby, Student at Temple, Featured at Gaslight Cafe Philadelphia Negro Aims His Barbs at Race Relations – My guess is that headline would not fly past any copydesk today (1962).

TEMPLE practices on roof of recreation building – Pretty self-explanatory story about Temple coach Heinie Miller being “happy” with his team’s practices on top of the school’s recreation building. Got to wonder if the punter looked down to the street and yelled, “a little help” when the ball flew off the field. Facilities, who needs facilities (1931)?
TEMPLE SQUAD ON EDGE.; Unbeaten Football Team to Meet Villanova in Homecoming Game. – Talks about the Owls expecting 35,000 for the ‘Nova game.
TEMPLE TO TRAIN AT BATON ROUGE; Accepts Offer of Louisiana State – Squad Will Depart on Thursday Night. – Nice of LSU to allow Owls to practice there prior to the Sugar Bowl. Maybe they’ll do the same for the 2010 game.

The Times had a nice piece on then 24-year-old comic Bill Cosby, reviewing his appearance in a Grenwich Village club called the gaslight. In it, Cosby said his mother wants him to graduate from Temple and “I probably will.” He also noted that New York critics called him “Philadelphia’s Dick Gregory.” He said he might not even pursue this showbiz bug, but at least wants to pay his college bills. Some $365 million later (and that was his top earnings’ year, not what he earned for his career), he’s probably happy that he did.
One story on Warner, by Allison Danzig, marked the first sports story I’ve ever read written by a female sports writer and that was in the early 1930s.
(I’m sure there were some before that, but I haven’t been able to find one.)
One writer, Gordon S. White, Jr., wrote 24 of the stories on Temple football and they were all complimentary, mostly of Hardin and the job he did.
In a story about the Owls’ win in Hawaii, White noted that it was a good sign that Hardin nailed a hole-in-one on the famed Waikoloa course there.
In one of the pieces, White quotes Hardin as comparing his quarterbacks to handicap golfers.
“Steve (Joachim) was a 2 or 3,” Hardin said. “Fortunately, I’ve never had a bad quarterback.”
When you think that Hardin had guys like Frank DiMaggio, Marty Ginestra, Joachim, Brian Broomell and Tim Riordan, you know he’s right.
Al Golden should only have that kind of quarterback luck.
Or was it design?

The New York Times gives Temple Football Forever some love.

By Mike Gibson
Bill O’Reilly isn’t going to like this, but we’re going to be paying some positive attention to the New York Times today because they paid some positive attention to us.
O’Reilly is The Times’ biggest critic, calling that institution the center of the secular progressive universe, whatever that is.
The Times referred a whole new set of readers to us in picking the Owls as the No. 74 team in the country in the recent Quad Countdown.
While they were throwing bouquets in our direction, they also tossed a few at Al Golden’s Owls.
“We’re No. 74” doesn’t sound like all that positive a chant for Cap Poklemba to lead the crowd in this year, unless you take a historical perspective.
Temple was No. 105 in the same countdown two years ago, No. 86 in the same countdown last year.

New York Times Quad Countdown
No. 73: Colorado State
No. 74: Temple
No. 75: Memphis
No. 76: Louisville
No. 77: Florida Atlantic
No. 78: Buffalo
No. 79: Baylor
No. 80: Northern Illinois
No. 81: Virginia

Even more illuminating is a look at who The Times have ranked BEHIND the Owls.
Memphis is ranked No. 75 and Louisville is ranked No. 76.
Louisville beat the Owls, 62-0, in Golden’s first season.
The Times, like us, feels those days are over.
The next step is a winning season and that must be accomplished now.
The Owls are also ranked ahead of Buffalo (No. 78), Baylor (No. 79) and  Northern Illinois (don’t get crazy, tongue firmly implanted in cheek) is No. 80.
Five years ago Virginia was beating the Owls, 44-0, at halftime with a defensive coordinator named Al Golden.
Now Virginia is ranked seven spots behind Temple at No. 81.
So we’re moving on up like the Jeffersons.
At least in the area of perception.
Before we get excited we’ve got to do it on the football field.
We’ve still got to find a quarterback who can turn the scoreboard into an adding machine, but I believe that guy is on the roster now. The cream will rise to the top once the full squad reports on July 5.
There’s a lot of hard work ahead and it won’t be easy, but it’s nice to know some influential folks will be positioned at the end to say “I told you so.”
The New York Times earned at least that much college football street cred with its bold and well-researched opinion.

Another excellent job by Fran Duffy (not to be confused with hoop coach Fran Dunphy) and the boys in the Temple video department.
Less than 30 days until the two-month countdown appears and, presumably, that will include different highlights, limited to all returning players, of which there are many.

And just a reminder:
Because the season tickets soon transfer from the control of Temple to the Eagles’ ticket office, you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches by purchasing season tickets from Temple in the next month or so. Click over the Temple football helmet and let’s fill up the stadium for the Nova game with people wearing only Cherry and White. With 260,000 living alumni, 33,000 full-time students and 5,867 full-time employees, we can make it happen.
We should make it happen.

I got a lot of grief on this site last year when I wrote that, in my mind, Adam DiMichele is a better quarterback than Donovan McNabb.
By my mind, I meant for my team.

I had more confidence in DiMichele getting the job done in a big spot for my primary team (Owls) than I had McNabb getting the job done in a big spot for my secondary team (Eagles).
That’s based on close observations of both over the last three years.
Is the 22-year-old DiMichele better than the 32-year-old McNabb?
That’s for the Eagles to decide, since they have now invited him to a preseason mini-camp for rookies.
We’re talking about a young quarterback with a fresh set of legs and a world of moxie against an old quarterback with tired legs and questionable moxie.
You can say that Reid did this out of a professional courtesy to the local team, but leaving the door ajar for DiMichele might just been good enough for him to find a permanent home there.
The Eagles will find out a few things about my favorite quarterback at the upcoming mini-camp:

• He can make throws on the run;
• He won’t throw balls at the feet of receivers;
• He can still scramble;
• He has a knack of making the big play at the big time;
• He can throw an accurate deep ball;
• He doesn’t wear a flak jacket that limits his mobility in the open field;
• He won’t throw up on the field like a certain other quarterback has done twice at crunch time.

My admiration for this tough-as-nails young man is well-documented here.
I wish he would have had the opportunity, for example, to go up against Penn State for four full quarters, that game would have been a lot closer than a 42-point spread, I really believe.
Maybe 10-15 tops.
Maybe Adam could have made enough plays to keep them in the game to the end.
There are 22 guys on a football field at any given time but, for Temple, it’s been a long time since one man has made such a difference.
That man was (I have to use was now, unfortunately) Adam DiMichele.
Football is a funny game.

Had ADM been fully healthy for the last two seasons, I have no doubt that the Owls would be going for their third-straight winning season.
No doubt.
Adam now has a blog on Owlsports.com and he’s shown a nice ability to express himself on paper. Heck, I even like his blog better than McNabb’s.
The Eagles have had one quarterback who has mostly infuriated me for the last three years. They now have another who has never let me down.
All he has to do is be himself and Andy Reid will love him. So will Eagles’ fans.

Video courtesy of Owlified… great job, Owlified

Our parking lot is No. 10, the green blotch circled in map and shown in photo below.

Photo, courtesy Owlsports.com

I have a love/hate relationship with Cherry and White Day.
It dates back to the Bruce Arians’ days.
One year, the team looked particularly good in April and went out and laid a 4-7 egg a few months later.
It was then I decided I hated Cherry and White Day because, no matter how good the Cherry looked against the White or the White looked against the Cherry, the bigger picture was skewed.
A fellow reporter, it may have been Chuck Newman, it may have been Joe Juliano, I don’t quite remember who, turned to me once and said:
“They always look good on Cherry and White Day.”
There’s about as much truth to that sentence as any single one ever composed.
Come to think of it, I don’t remember ever leaving on a Cherry and White Day not impressed.
So, as a barometer of what might come in the fall, take it with a (very) large grain of salt.
Make that a boulder of salt.
That’s pretty much why I hate Cherry and White Day.
Then there’s the love part of the relationship.
I love getting together with Temple fans to discus the upcoming season.
I love meeting the parents of recruits and inviting them to our Parking Lot K tailgates, to become part of the Temple family as such.
I love the best day in the world in the best place in the world to do one-stop shopping for some inexpensive and quality Temple stuff, including game-worn jerseys.
I love the tailgating in April (hey, when can you get a chance to tailgate in April?) and I love getting together with all of the old tailgate friends.
I love the dedication of a guy like Ken Mayo, coolowl on the message boards, who holds a first-class tailgate and is inclusive of everyone in the lot.
Heck, I love being a Temple fan because there are no cliques.
We as a people (to borrow a Martin Luther King, Jr. phrase) are not large enough to have cliques.
One day, when all (or half) of the 260,000 living alumni and all (or half) of the 33,000 full-time students are clamoring to get into a sold out Lincoln Financial Field, I hope that part of being a Temple fan never changes.
Even though all of the lots will be filled with a sea of Cherry and White, everybody wearing a Temple T-shirt or sweatshirt or hat will be welcomed by every other Temple fan at whatever little or big satellite tailgate in the lot.
This Saturday, at 2 p.m. folks will be over at 11th and Norris Street to catch that rather skewed preview of the 2009 Owls.
By 11 a.m., most should be parked in Lot 10 (12th and Norris) to do some serious tailgating.
Nobody leaves until 1:55 when we all walk over to the $7 million Edberg-Olson Football Complex. Since it’s a two-minute walk, we should be standing on the sidelines by 1:58, tops.
Bring brewskis and money.

Temple football’s four-month countdown.

The people have spoken.
At least the Temple fans who occasionally check this site from time to time.
Someone in the sports information department will run a slogan by Al Golden, who will either approve it or improve it, and the slogan will appear on the front of the media guide.

Click here for Temple football season tickets and order them by June 12 to get a free 2009 media guide

If the fans voting on the recent poll have anything to say about it, “Unfinished Business” will be this year’s Battle Cry.

Here is the final vote count, with the number of actual votes next to the percentages:

Awe and Shock 2 (3%)

Shock and Awe 2 (3%)

Unfinished Business 19 (35%)

Bowl or Bust 9 (16%)

Sky’s The Limit 14 (26%)

Destination Detroit 7 (13%)

It took a couple of days getting use to, but I like it.

Unfinished Business.

My slogan, Shock and Awe, came in a distant last.

I tried.

We had a couple of other suggestions since, though, that bear some examination:
FLIP THE MAC _ A takeoff on last year’s “Flip The Switch” Flip the MAC refers to the constant barrage of negative messages about Temple football on the MAC bulletin boards. One guy keeps saying Temple=Bad Football when two teams he trumpets, Miami and Akron, were beaten two years in a row by the Owls. Another guy from Kent State keeps bringing up Temple attendance problems when there were maybe 400 folks, tops, at Kent State for the Temple game last year. The slogan can be accompanied by a logo that shows the familiar Styrofoam No. 1 finger given out at Temple basketball games. In this case, the finger is switched one digit over and a MAC logo appears on the back of the hand.

IT’S TIME _ Shortened version of “It’s Time To Win” or “It’s Our Time to Win” or “It’s T Time” with the Temple logo substituted for the T. I can’t argue with that, either, because it is time to win.

Unfinished Business captures what went on the last two seasons as good as anything.

Two years ago, the Owls left 28 points on the field in a 31-0 loss to Penn State.
Last year, the Owls didn’t finish after leading, 27-7, at Navy, in the fourth quarter.
This year it’s time to finish that business.
It’s Our Time.
It’s T Time.
If, in the process, it flips off the MAC, then so be that, too.

By Mike Gibson
I’m sure someone other than Bill Parcells said it first:
“If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.”
I’ll give credit to Parcells because I like the way he says it, nodding his head like you all should know what he does.
“If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.”
You can say the same for quarterbacks.

Temple quarterbacks in their final high school seasons:
Adam DiMichele, Sto-Rox _ 2,706 yards and 36 touchdown passes.

In the mix currently:

Vaughn Charlton, Avon Grove _ 1,337 yards, 9 touchdown passes.

Chester Stewart, DeMatha _ 1,348 yards, 17 touchdown passes.

Aaron Haas, St. Joseph’s Prep _ 1,430 yards, 21 touchdown passes

Mike Gerardi, Parsippany Hills (N.J.) _ 2,300 yards, 35 touchdown passes

Chris Coyer, Oakton (Va.) _ 1,407 yards, 15 touchdown passes (and 15 TD runs)

Despite “defined measurables” like 40 speed and vertical leap, quarterbacking now, as always, is better measured by a poised athlete’s ability to hit another athlete in the open field while under pressure.
It doesn’t matter if the QB is running or if the receiver is running.
It doesn’t matter if there’s a 6-5, 280-pound guy charging at you.
Or, during the same play, all of the above is happening at full speed.
It’s about your ability to do your job and hit the receiver.
Meet Mike Gerardi, Temple’s Duck.
If Gerardi looks like a quarterback and throws like a quarterback, it’s because he is a quarterback and a pretty darn good one.

Mike Gerardi

It would not be a stretch to say Gerardi was born to be a quarterback.
He’s been one since Pee-Wee ball and excelled at a really high level from the time he first put on the pads.
I don’t buy that stuff about “if he’s so good, why didn’t he get a scholarship offer” that so many negative fans parrot.
Good quarterbacks slip through the cracks all the time. At one time, UConn showed some interest but backed off.
For every Henry Burris, who was wanted by just about everyone out of Spiro (Okla.), Temple has had a Matty Baker _ a kid who was wanted by no one but became a winning quarterback.
Looks to me like Gerardi could be cut out of the Baker mold, a high-achiever in high school who somehow slipped through the cracks.
At Parsippany Hills in New Jersey two years ago, Gerardi threw for 2,300 yards and 35 touchdown passes. That performance made him a first-team New Jersey all-state performer at quarterback. The other quarterback on the first team was Matt Simms of Don Bosco, son of Phil Simms.

“Really the surprise has been Mike Gerardi. He’s really come in. Every time he’s gotten in, he’s led us down and scored or played really well. So he’s getting a lot of reps now.” Matt Rhule
Offensive coordinator
Temple University

In prep school last fall, he tossed 16 TDs against no (zero) interceptions.
So, while most things in spring practice are pretty secretive these days, it should not be surprising to hear this out of offensive coordinator Matt Rhule’s mouth when talking about Gerardi on Owlsports.com:
“Really the surprise has been Mike Gerardi,” Rhule said. “He’s really come in. Every time he’s gotten in, he’s led us down and scored or played really well. So he’s getting a lot of reps now, because want to see who can lead us, who can move the football, who can push.”
That could very well be coachspeak, something designed to light a fire under incumbents Vaughn Charlton and Chester Stewart.
Even if Mike Gerardi lights it up in the Cherry and White Day game on April 18, we probably won’t even know then.

At this point, it’s about even money that Charlton, Stewart, Gerardi or even incoming freshman Chris Coyer takes the first snap against Villanova on Sept. 3.
That’s the way it should be.
Nobody should be awarded the job because he’s been here longer or it’s his turn or because his feelings will be hurt if he doesn’t get the chance.
It’s all about moving the team and scoring touchdowns.
It’s all about who gives your team the best chance to win a championship.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
Somebody is going to have to knock Rhule’s socks off between now and Sept. 3.
So far, it’s been Gerardi but we have months to go before we know who wins this most important of competitions.