Full disclosure: I shop at Costco instead of Walmart because I like the fact that Costco pays its employees $15 an hour.

I believe that’s a fair amount to spend on someone who puts his or her lives on the line dealing with the general public, now more literally than figuratively, sadly.

I don’t visit Walmart and run up and down the aisles and scream they suck and tell all of the other shoppers to go to Costco.

If I don’t like something, I just go elsewhere.

I fully expect if you don’t like Temple Football Forever, I will get the same treatment.

I hope I do.

I don’t do this to please the audience or to get subscriptions or twitter follows. I do this as a labor of love.

I love Temple football and want it to maintain the same kind of standard it achieved under Al Golden and Matt Rhule and often submit for your approval their blueprint for success and hope the current regime follows it. I want championships and despise 1-6 seasons and the avoidable reasons for it.

This post today is about someone who doesn’t feel the same way about TFF as I do Walmart or Costco.

Every time I post something, he posts a criticism. He might as well be pissing into the wind because I know his IP address (it’s Horsham) and I’ve banned him for life from this site even though he tries to post under many different aliases, some very famous Temple football-related names.

I feel sorry for the guy.

When I offered five questions for Rod Carey in my last post, he basically said go ask the guy the questions. My whole point was that the paid people following Temple don’t have the balls to go ask him in regular press conferences. What are they afraid of, that Rod Carey is going to beat them up for asking tough questions?

To not understand the difference between an opinion blogger and an objective journalist is a special kind of stupid.

The whole point of blogging is to offer opinions on how things might be better. It is not to cover the team per se. If this guy has his own, he is free to start his own blog.

To spend that much time and effort on negativity about what someone else says or writes who you clearly hate indicates to me he has no life or no life at least worth living. Just walk away, Renee. The very definition of being mentally ill is being obsessed with someone or something you don’t like. That is deeply disturbed territory.

I hope I never see this guy in Costco or he might be carrying an AR-15.

Monday: Resuming regular programming

For someone who hates to get up early, the thing I missed most about the 2020 was getting up at 5:30 or so a half-dozen times a year and making my way to Lincoln Financial Field by no later than 8 or 9.

I’ve been doing that for the better part of 40 years now and to suspend that routine seemed strange.

It was strange.

I thought about that when someone accused me of being a “fair-weather fan” because of this post last week.

I remember tailgating near the end of one season where the Owls went 0-11 under Bobby Wallace and the pre-game tailgate at Lot K included Ted DeLapp, Rick Gabe, Nittany Owl, a guy named Fred, the late Dan Glammer, Lazygote and me.

We looked around the lot not five hours before the game but more like five minutes and we were it. That was it on that rainy pre-game against Miami (Ohio). Seven guys. Maybe more in the Jetro Lot a couple of blocks away where the late Wes Sornisky was holding court with a few ex-Temple players.

Now it’s grown exponentially but those days were never to be forgotten. The pre-game talk that day was that we were going to hire a coach to bring us to the Promised Land. One guy mentioned Rick Neuheisel. Fred brought up Frank Solich. One guy mentioned John Latina.

None of us have ever heard of Al Golden at that point.

It turned out he was the right choice.

We all came back every week during a 20-game losing streak because we knew that, under a good coach, Temple football–despite paltry facilities in those days–could thrive.

It turned out we were right. Because largely of Al Golden, Temple went from being laughed at to being respected and he was the coach the Owls needed at that time.

My point then, as it is now, is that once we came out of the Dark Ages, we should have a minimal expectation of never returning to them. Everyone there nodded in agreement. Temple football should never have zero, 1 or 2-win seasons again.

Those fans there that day were the all-weather fans, not the fair-weathered ones. None of us expected Temple to win the championship every year, but winning seasons (or at least non-losing ones) should be the standard going forward.

A 1-6 season opened some eyes, even though a lot of us got up just before noon on days we were used to getting up at 5:30. Some blamed COVID, but I thought that excuse was too easy. COVID didn’t cause four kickoffs to go out of bounds (two in a row). COVID didn’t cause a pandemic of fair catches. COVID didn’t cause the Owls to throw a pass short of the goal line on a critical two-point conversion at Navy when they had a 6-6 receiver covered by a 5-10 corner in the back of the end zone.

The standard remains and that’s why 2021 is important to keeping whatever fan base Temple football has left or even have a chance at expanding it.

Friday: Dynamic and Dependable

The plan as rolled out by the Temple football season ticket office was to set a deadline for Feb. 26.

I let it slide.

I don’t think I’m the only one.

Looking at it from a sheer marketing perspective, the product they are trying to sell is just not a good one right now.

Hmm.

Do I want to sit in a seat and watch another 1-6 (or 2-5) start and suffer like I did from 1991-2008?

No.

Been there, done that.

Hell, I might wait until after the Rutgers’ game and re-up. Beat Rutgers and I am all in and that bar would have been a very low one as recently as two years ago.

Furthermore, do we really know if fans will be allowed in the stands?

Just as importantly, will tailgating be allowed in Lot K or FDR Park? The tailgating experience is at least 50 percent of being there in good years, about 90 percent of it in the bad old days. Right now, 2020 was the bad old days and I’m hoping it was an outlier but the signs are not encouraging. Tailgating is not guaranteed for 2021.

I certainly hope so and think so, but I don’t KNOW so. That alone is enough to postpone any decision on season tickets until the effect of the vaccine on the entire pandemic is determined, maybe even as late as August.

If the ticket office was smart, they would have moveable deadlines and not have set the one that just expired. It’s going to be hard enough to sell tickets this season.

Making it easier to sell them should supersede any arbitrary deadline.

Friday: The Bounty Bowl and Temple