By Mike Gibson
A week ago, the “MAC football media” picked Temple to finish fifth in the Eastern Division of the Mid-American Conference.
Clueless hogwash.
I could just see it now.
A MAC beat writer who doesn’t know Eric Reynolds from Al Reynolds or Joe Jones from Jack Jones circles Temple for fifth place because he remembered the Temple running game from last year and figured it wouldn’t be much improved.
One guy even wrote, “With everybody back, Temple should be an improved squad” and then his bottom-line prediction was 4-8. Huh? Temple won four games last year.
Another guy who doesn’t know Adrian Robinson from Jackie Robinson figures the Temple defense could not possibly get any better than last year’s, which was incidentally No. 1 in MAC overall and No. 1 in the nation in red-zone defense.
No. 1 out of 119.
It wasn’t long ago that Temple was 119 out of 119 in a number of categories.
The after-effects of 25 years of futility are not lost on the MAC beat writers, who seemingly cannot get THAT Temple out of their minds.
Al Golden and company have already reached that mindset.
“We can’t change what’s happened in the past,” Golden said. “We’re a whole different program.”
Yesterday, Golden’s group of 102 extremely talented players got to work at the Edberg-Olson Football Complex to debuse the MAC media’s incredibly sloppy research when coming to a fifth-place berth for the Owls.
Sloppy research and, yes, a lot of anti-Temple bias based on outdated notions of the program.
It’s a new year and a new program and it’s going to be fun proving the so-called experts wrong.

By Mike Gibson
You don’t know who long I’ve waited to write this or see this in print.
TEMPLE SEASON TICKETS SOLD OUT!!!
Well, they are.
At least for two sections.
I was told today that sections 120 and 119 are sold out.
Season tickets in 121 and 118 are also going at a very brisk rate.
I will be sitting on the 45-yard line, in section 121.
As most of you know, Temple moved over to the “sunny” side of the field from its “home” side since the nation’s best football venue became its permanent home in 2003.
That led to a lot of ignorant people writing on mostly MAC message boards saying things like, “No way there were 30,000 people there. I watched on TV and there was nobody there.”
Dude, TV shoots the “visitor’s side” of the field exclusively (the cameras are all set up that way) and, if there was nobody there, that’s your fault, not ours.
The empty seats belonged to Kent fans or Miami fans or Central Michigan fans.
The 30K on the Temple side were unseen by people watching on TV. Despite repeated complaints to the television people to shoot the Temple side, they all wrote back saying it would be too costly to move the permanent camera spots.
So Temple moved its fans.
Now they will be right there for all to see.
And, once the Owls start winning, the other side will fill up, too.

By Mike Gibson
The following story appeared in Sports Illustrated after Temple’s 13th-straight win in 1974.
Written by Ray Kennedy, it was entitled, When playing Temple, Pray.
It might not be long before the folks on the Owls’ schedule adopt that motto once again.
The comparisons between the way Wayne Hardin built a program that won at the time was a national-best 14 straight games _ only a missed chip shot field goal at the buzzer prevented them from winning 15 or more straight games _ and the way Al Golden is building the program now are eerily similar.
Here are some of the quotes from that SI story:

“Forget all that old business about desire, dedication and do or die. Temple ‘s Wayne Hardin has hit on a new formula that seems as simple as it is surefire. Take one heavy dose of loneliness. Mix well with a dash of rejection and disillusionment. Stir in a few assorted longings—for a clean pair of socks, say, a cold beer or a faraway girl friend—and presto! You’ve got a 13-game winning streak.

Or ….

“You don’t have to go far away to grow up. You can live on campus like I did. There won’t be any parents here bugging you. And whenever you want to you can shoot home for a good meal, hit dad for a couple of bucks and, what was very important for me, drop off a bag of laundry. Your parents have raised you for 18 years and they love you, and they deserve to see you play. You run off somewhere where nobody knows you, and that won’t be possible.” Then, eyes narrowing and voice lowering, he will plant the seed. “You’ll get homesick, too. And believe me that’s a baaad sickness.”

Hardin’s formula, and apparently Golden’s, is based on simple geography: Draw a 90-mile circle around Philadelphia and keep that talent mostly home, with occasional excursions elsewhere.
It worked before.
It now appears to be Golden’s working template, too.

Click on the above image for Temple tickets

Happy Birthday to Temple’s favorite Yankee Doodle Dandy, Al Golden, July 4, 1969



By Mike Gibson
One of the surprising things about my cabin near the lake in the Poconos is the people I meet.
One of my good friends over the years, who shall remain nameless, was the supervisor of officials for what used to be known as Division IAA.
That’s the division that includes Delaware and Villanova and the like.
Every summer he regales me of stories about going to Lehigh and supervising his officials.
Entertaining, funny, stuff.
In turn, I regale him about my years of following Temple football.
Stuff funny to him, not so funny to me.
The guy is from Boston, so he knows Jack Cramer, the official who screwed Temple football in last year’s game.
The day after, he saw me jogging by his house.
“Mike, I saw the film, you guys got screwed,” my friend said. “The incredible thing is that I know Jack. He’s really a nice guy, but a Boston guy. If things are even, he’s going to give the New England team a break.”
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“I saw it from both sides on Hartford TV,” he said. “The kid (Bruce Francis) had possession and the ball clearly inbounds.”
“I knew that,” I said, “but thanks anyway.”
Now, I’m told by another friend who happens to be an official, that the end of the game against UConn is showing up in their pre-season briefings.
“Mike, I got to tell you, you are a training film for BCS now,” he said. “We’re training the replay guys. A situation like yours, we’re saying overturn the play.”
The MAC, he said, sent the game film in to the officials upon request.
“The MAC guys (officials) said the play happened too fast to call on the field,” he said. “They said something like that should have been caught. We agree. We’re telling our officials, including Jack, that was enough visual evidence to overturn. It’s a big part of their training now.”
Geez, thanks, I said.
I’m sure Bruce Francis would be thrilled but we plan on putting the game away Sept. 6 by the third quarter.
Or at least the first couple of minutes of the final quarter.
“Good luck,” he said.
“I don’t think we’ll need it,” I said. “There will be 30,000 angry full-throtted Temple fans who will make sure the officials, both on the field and the replay booth, know they can’t do that again.”
It’s up to every Temple fan or alum or any person who cares about Temple or Philadelphia to make my prediction come true.

By Mike Gibson
This is about as good a time as ever to resume posts on Temple Football Forever.
We’ve taken a hiatus since the Cherry and White game because, quite frankly, there hasn’t been much news about the program since then.

Much doesn’t mean none, though, and we are pleased to note that Adrian Robinson, a Temple-bound linebacker, was the first Owl to ever earn an MVP at the prestigious Big 33 game.
Tonight, Al Golden appeared on the radio to drum up more interest.
Late last December, I wrote a post Golden needing to build some walls of trust with his Temple fans.
AG has spent the months since making two west coast plane trips seeking the UCLA job doing just that.
He could have rested on a significant recruiting class, but he worked tirelessly to add some needed recruits after the Feb. signing date, including someone, Kee-Ayre Griffin, who I feel has a 50-50 chance to be a dynamite opening-day starting tailback. If Griffin doesn’t earn the job, it will be because Joe Jones went through the summer completely healthy.

I was thinking about the crisis in Myanmar today and I got sidetracked.
Suddenly, I thought about Burma.
Burma Shave, to be specific.
Somebody came up a terrific idea on one of the Temple message boards around the time of the Pennsylvania primary.
They saw all of the political signs for Obama and Hillary and Dougherty and Farnese on lawns all over the tri-state area and the guy said, “Wouldn’t it be great to have signs that say simply, ‘Temple Football’ and stick it right there on our front lawns?”
Yes it would.
It’s that kind of out-of-the-box thinking that we all need to brainstorm in the few months we have to the opener.
The mission: Fill Lincoln Financial Field with as many fans as we can.
Each of us has to do our part.
Since I didn’t have or couldn’t find a sign that said “Temple Football” I placed my “Let’s Go Temple” cardboard sign on a stick and planted it on my lawn.
It’s still there.
You could probably google map my house and see it, if you knew where I lived.
This Myanmar thing, though, came straight out of the sky.
Or at least off the front pages of Yahoo News.
Myanmar used to be known as Burma.
When I was a kid, there’d be Burma Shave signs on the sign of the road.
Funny, clever, poetry designed to have you buy the product.
Or at least think about it.
I’m not a poet, but something along the lines of justice and how it will be served on Sept. 9 could be a good place to start.
There’s no justice
People say
Justice prevails
Say others;
We’ll find out on Sept. 6
Temple football
Wouldn’t something along those lines look great on the road to the shore this summer?

I’ve never been as big a fan of Cherry and White Days as my fellow Owl fans.
During the leanest of years, the Cherry team and the White team would both look good and there would be the usual optimism abounding.
I always looked at this through the Prism of two colors.
Cherry and White.
That is, whatever good was coming at the expense of something bad.
Player X would make a good move and score a touchdown because player Y missed a tackle.
My friend, Chief J, would be the pessimist.
“Another losing season,” he would say.
I’d take the skeptical approach.
“Get back to me when we do this against somebody else,” I said.
I would love, for example, us to scrimmage a Rutgers or a Villanova so I could put the spring game in some kind of context.
Right now, the football context is limited.
The best part about the day is the fellowship among Owl fans who haven’t been together since November.
Sure, some players looked good today and that’s really the biggest positive to come out of a spring game.
Former Owls’ coach Bruce Arians used to preach something to the team before every practice.
“Get your work done today,” he said, “and you’ll do good things Saturday.”
That’s what Cherry and White and what this whole month was all about.
That’s what the month of August will be about and the months leading up to August.
Get your work done.
I’ll be a lot more excited about the trip to Army, especially to see a 100 percent Joe Jones and a 100 percent Adam DiMichele and in a meaningful game for the first time in a long time.
I promise.

By Mike Gibson
Last year, it was Wayne Hardin’s shoe leather.
This year, it’s Fran Duffy’s video artistry.
Duffy is about 60 years Hardin’s junior but his work will help pack the Linc, much like Hardin’s work did.



Fran Duffy

Duffy’s brilliant work is this video (above, click once or twice on the center of the icon). The two minutes has everything.
Drama.
Pathos.
Conspiracy. See Big East.
Motive. See Big East replay official.
Incredulity. See Big East replay official turn blind eye.
Justice expected.
Justice denied.
With all due respect to coach Hardin’s tireless efforts _ stopping in every TV station, answering every radio and newspaper request for stories on his guarantee of filling Lincoln Financial Field, this ought to put even more fannies in the seats than Hardin’s record crowd did a year ago.
Justice.
Every Temple fan who was outraged at the injustice done in East Hartford last year should make plans to come to the home opener at Lincoln Financial Field.
Even those Temple fans who weren’t outraged (and who might that be?) should be there, too, because they are going to see a football team playing with a fire and determination fueled by a monumental injustice
done to them a year ago.
I can’t see how UConn can match that emotion.
It’s going to be fun to watch.
As former Owl wide receiver Phil Goodman once said: “Get your popcorn ready. It’s going to be a show.”
Or was that Terrell Owens?
It doesn’t matter.
Last year it was about Justice with a capital J.
This year, it’s about retribution with a capital R.