08.03.18
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Silver Linings (Stadium) Playbook

badurban

Color me totally underwhelmed by this projected stadium design.

Sometimes the worst decisions are the impulsive ones.

General Robert E. Lee, holding the advantage pretty much everywhere on the Gettysburg Battlefield on the first day, ordered a charge of General Pickett’s 30,000 troops right into a heavily defended Union position. They pretty much got wiped out.

Had he waited a day and covered both the left and right Union flanks instead of going up the middle, we might all be speaking with a Southern accent right now.

Pretty much that’s the way I feel about the Temple Stadium situation.

martin

Temple fans would tire fast of a glorified high school stadium like this one at Northeast.

Even the most ardent “shovel-in-the-ground-by-August” guys are believing that this is more a dead deal than a done one.

It’s been what I’ve been writing in this space since the March 6 Mitten Hall meeting fiasco. Nothing has changed since then except the goal posts have been moved from, say, 2018 until 2030 or even later.

The neighbors don’t want this, never have, never will, and Temple is dead set on getting the neighbors’ support before proceeding on this project. Since that’s the case, we might have to wait until the neighborhood becomes fully gentrified before proceeding. That probably won’t be before 2030. That’s a more likely scenario than trying to convince Social Justice Warriors to abandon their platform of the moment.

Russell Conwell, the Temple founder, was on the other side of that Pickett’s charge as a Union captain. He survived and so will his beloved Temple.

There is a Silver Lining in the way this play ended.

Building a 30-35K stadium that looks only a little nicer than Northeast High’s Charlie Martin Memorial Stadium would only make those 200 or so fans who think that having “TEMPLE” and “OWLS” spelled out in the end zones every week would more than make up for the bare-bones cheap stadium they would be forced to sit in six times a year.

Building an Akron or a FAU stadium does Temple no good and probably commits Temple to a life sentence of being as irrelevant on the college football landscape as, err, Akron or FAU are now.

Wait and build something like Houston has now is the perspective Temple should have. Swallowing hard and extending the Linc deal is the only way to go. After all, as Bill Bradshaw once said, Temple plays in the nicest football stadium in America. It’s a pro one, but it’s still the nicest.

Otherwise, the 2018 version of  the 1863 Pickett’s charge is an impulsive decision Temple doesn’t need to or even can make right now.

That’s the only silver lining in this otherwise dark cloud.

Monday: He Said What?

Wednesday: Here’s What Villanova is going to (try to) do …

08.01.18
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Unmasking Temple’s Ambidextrous Punter

waybackthere

Right there, on the far right, is Temple’s ambidextrous punter.

Every year it seems pouring through media day stories for nuggets of interest is about as fruitful as going to Sutter’s Mill near San Francisco and seeing if there is any Gold left.

 


So who is this mystery punter,
or is Collins keeping it a
secret for now?
“Yeah, kinda, sure,” Collins said.

Not this year.

Shawn Pastor, who really does the best job of INDEPENDENTLY reporting Temple sports, came up with this gem on his Owlsdaily.com site the other day talking about the punting:

“Four-year starter Alex Starzyk is gone, and Collins didn’t put the punters on public display in the Cherry and White Game.  So there’s not much for people to judge between walk-ons Conner Bowler, Max Cavallucci, Zach Kirby, Drew Levin, and Will Mobley – except that one of them might be a secret weapon.

“I thought the punters did a good job in the spring,” Collins said.  “And we’ve got a guy that can kick left-footed and right-footed rugby, so that’s really tough to defend.  So I think we’ve got some unique options.”

Starzyk punted straight-on and rugby-style, which gave opponents a different look.  But he was right-footed, and hence didn’t bring the entire field into play when teams came after him

“If the punter is always going to roll to his right, you can overload that,” Collins explained.  “But now we have the ability to go right and left.  He can go right and rugby-punt, he can go left and rugby-punt, and he can kick it fairly decent straight-on.  But he specializes in rugby.”

So who is this mystery punter, or is Collins keeping it a secret for now?

“Yeah, kinda, sure,” Collins said.”

Shawn left that out there hanging like a Hector Neris curveball, but we couldn’t resist the challenge of unmasking him.

It took delving into the past of each one of those names, but we found him and it’s Drew Levin. The dictionary says the word “ambidextrous” refers to only the hands, but it also been used in the past referring to last’s switch-kicker at Texas A&M.

The advantage of having one is dubious at best but it is an advantage. Temple has done the rugby punts in the past but the defense—or special teams—have overloaded the block and protections to the punter’s right side. With a guy who can kick with both feet, they won’t be able to do that.

In this chess game called football, you make the moves you can and this time Temple has control of the board.

My hope is that the Owls do not have to punt at all and score gobs of touchdowns but, if in the unlikely event they do have to punt, it should be at least more interesting this season.

Friday: Silver Linings On Stadium Issue

07.30.18
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The Case For The Defense

smiling

Karamo Dioubate (72) who had a hand in the last title, could have two hands in this one.

The other day I sent a message to a politican columnist I know that said simply this:

“Keep calling balls and strikes as you see them.”

I don’t always agree with her—actually, very rarely do—but I respect the way she approaches her craft and the logic of the arguments she makes.

In this day and age of polarization, it makes sense to hear  both sides rather than look for ones that ratified a pre-existing view.

Later in that message, I mentioned to her that the pitch cast on the Phillies games does a much better job at calling balls and strikes than the humans behind the plate do. That’s because the computer—setting the batter’s box the way it should be (belt to knees)—doesn’t make mistakes.

That brings us to the case Temple quarterback Frank Nutile made at media day.

“We’re loaded,” he said.

His head coach, Geoff Collins, was more cautiously optimistic in that kind of setting but said after the bowl game that he was going to have a “ridiculous” team in 2018.

I interpreted that as ridiculous as in the good kind because of the number of key returning players the Owls have in 2018.

Those are humans, though, and humans, like the umpires, can make mistakes in those types of evaluations.

Setting up the equivalent of the “pitch cast” box to take an objective view is the fact that the Owls have three immovable tackles in the middle of the field in Michael Dogbe, Dan Archibong and Freddy Booth-Lloyd and options at both ends in Quincy Roche and either Nickolas Madourie and Karamo Dioubate. Madourie is a junior college transfer who had 17.5 sacks at that level and Dioubate, who has been in the interior in his first two college seasons but was a high school All-American at defensive end, which got him recruited by schools like Penn State and Alabama. If Madourie’s jump to major college football doesn’t translate, Dioubate should be able to handle the other end position. Hell, Dioubate is more of a defensive end than he is a tackle and the Owls might want to utilize his talents where he can create more Mayhem. Just a thought.

The Owls have really good linebackers and defensive backs.

Put them all together and this should be a much more impressive defense that held eight-win Florida International to just three points.

Nutile has played against that defense every day in the offseason and it might be one of the reasons he used the word “loaded” or Collins used the word “ridiculous.”

Those are subjective words, but there is a lot objective data backing it up. The ultimate arbiter will be the record, not the humans who call the balls and strikes.

Play ball.

Wednesday: That’s Special

Friday: Silver Linings

07.27.18
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Unpacking Media Day

This is the exact moment the great Ventell Bryant checked out of the Dave Patenaude Inn.

In the college football world of haves and have-nots, there is definitely a “have-not” feel among the Group of Five members.

Has been, maybe always will be.

At least for now, it is.

Among those G-fivers, though, the American Conference represents the haves and, among the AAC group, Temple has to be mentioned near the top.

That was clear after AAC Media Day on Tuesday, even though the Owls were picked to finish third in the AAC East for the second-straight year.

Reputation is based more on what you have done than what you are predicted to do and, with that as the criteria, Temple is royalty in this conference.

Only three schools—Houston, Temple and UCF—have won league titles and only two, Houston and Temple, have appeared in two title games.

Last year, the scribes who cover the league were right when they (correctly) predicted the Owls to finish third. This year, the nagging feeling is that they won’t be.

At least that’s the feeling among the Owls themselves.

Ventell Bryant put it best on his twitter feed.

vbtweet

What does Bryant know that they don’t?

Start with Frank Nutile being the quarterback for five of the last seven Temple games (all wins, except for  losing to the national champions and a debacle we describe below), including a 28-3 thumping of Florida International in the Bad Boy Mowers Bowl. Add in the mix Bryant himself, who after saving Temple’s season with a spectacular circus catch to set up the game-winning field goal in the Villanova game, disappeared for the remainder of the season.

templegrad

Doctorate of Offensive Football Philosophy

Partly that was due to injuries, but mostly that was due to checking out and not being a believer in OC Dave Patenaude’s “Coastal Carolina Soft” offense. With Ed Foley being named “head coach of the offense” Bryant has checked back into the Conwell Inn where  the hope is an established running game will create more play-action openings in the second. There can be no debate who was the best Owl receiver in the 2016 championship season and that was Bryant himself, whose heroics basically won the UCF game in Orlando two years ago and could not be contained by Navy in the title game.

The key to Temple repeating the mediocrity of 2017 and becoming great is simply this: Does Collins realize successful Temple football is first establishing the run and THEN faking it into the belly of a great tailback on play-action to open things up for the passing game or does he continue to believe in the failed philosophy of his Coastal Carolina OC, who inexplicably passed on first and goal from the 1 at Army last year when he had the best fullback in the country available to lead block for a tailback who was unstoppable against that squad? Patenaude did similar, OK we’ll be frank, shit all season. Like North Carolina fans said about Dean Smith, only he could stop Michael Jordan. Only another Carolina guy (this time Coastal) could make the “best fullback in the country” disappear for most of the 2017 season.

It’s Common Sense 101 that once Rock Armstead (or Jager Gardner) gauges a defense behind fullback Nitro Ritrovato blocking for big gains to start a game, the linebackers and safeties for the “bad guys” will inch closer to the line of scrimmage to help with run support. Once that happens, it’s much easier to fake the run and find Temple receivers so open in the secondary Nutile will not know which one to pick out. Football is not Rocket Science. It never was and never will be. It took two years for Matt Rhule to figure that out. Will it take two years for Collins or has he learned after one year?

That’s the difference between this 2018 team going 10-2 or better or repeating a 7-6 season.

Ed Foley understands this concept and that might be why the players have bought into the system this season and not last.

Bryant, a Temple grad like most of us reading this blog, could be unstoppable.

With Isaiah Wright on the other side of the field, defensive backs head should be spinning and Nutile will have options.

Given that, and the fact that the UCF head coach will be learning on the job, UCF might not be the slam dunk the AAC writers think it will be. Geoff Collins already made his first-year mistakes.

It’s time for somebody else to do the same.

That might be enough.

They don’t even know.

We don’t, either, but by the time December comes around, do not be surprised if Temple is a three-time visitor to the AAC title game.

It all depends on what the playbook is, the 2016 successful one, or the 2017 failed one.

Monday: The Case for The Defense

07.25.18
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Biggest News From AAC Media Eve: Penn State

aacmediaday

Temple and Houston are the only 2 teams which appeared in at least two AAC title games.

Not much news is ever made on AAC Media Day,  but at least AAC Media Eve gave us this interesting tidbit: Temple is negotiating a home-and-home with Penn State.

This is interesting for at least three reasons.

One, Penn State has never given Temple a home-and-home.

Two, I never thought we’d see PSU again after Temple beat them by two touchdowns and a field goal in 2015 and lost by a measly touchdown the next year.

Three, this confirms my last conversation during a recent tailgate with Dr. Pat Kraft, still the athletic director at Temple University.

trick1

The first Philly special

“We’re not giving anybody 2-and-1s anymore,” Dr. Kraft said.

“Even Penn State?”

“Even Penn State.”

Well, there goes the chance of ever playing Penn State again, I thought.

If Kraft is able to pull this contract off, it’s a major coup for his tenure. Heck, THE major coup for his tenure.

Little do people know another tidbit: Joe Paterno originally wanted to play this game in Philadelphia every year “as a gift to our Philadelphia alumni.”

That all changed after the 1976 renewal of the series (the first game since 1950) when the Owls out-gained the Nittany Lions from scrimmage, 371-120 yards, but lost a 26-25 tilt when the special teams could not cover a kickoff and a punt return. That game was more like a Big 5 basketball game than a college football one, with 30,000 fans waving Cherry and White pom-poms on one side of the field and 30,000 fans waving Blue and White pom-poms on the other. (“After that game, I played my starters on special teams,” head coach Wayne Hardin said a few years ago.)

The opening play from scrimmage–a 76-yard run for a touchdown by a Temple sprinter named Bobby Harris–elicited the loudest cheering I’ve ever heard at a Temple football game, including the 2015 win over PSU. You’ve got to remember that Temple was coming off a couple of years of 9-1 and 8-2 teams and a nation’s-best 14-game winning streak so the Owls had a significant fan base in Philadelphia established.

Afterward, Paterno withdrew the offer of returning to Philadelphia the next season and took the home game and renegotiated a deal that would give PSU 3-2s and 2-1s going forward.

While the ink isn’t dry yet, the news that negotiations are moving along is good news, even if the first game is 2026–two years after the Owls play Oklahoma. Right now, almost too good to be true.

Friday: Unpacking Other Media Day News

07.23.18
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Best of TFF: Breaking a 20-Game Losing Streak

 

copper

Editor’s Note: This is the third of a three-part Best of TFF series for our vacation week. Thanks to a mention on the popular sports site Deadspin.com, our story on the end of a 20-game losing streak (below), had over a million page views, the most in TFF history. 

Watching Travis Shelton show his backside to the entire Bowling Green kickoff team, I thought about a lot of people.
Most of all, I thought about Karl Smith.
And all of the other small-minded narrow-thinkers like him.
Smith is the executive editor of PhillyBurbs.com.
You need only read a few excerpts from this piece of crap he wrote about Bowling Green putting up 70 on the Owls.
Things have changed a little since then, Karl.

…”how nice to have an extended scrimmage every year …against an overmatched opponent that actually counts in the standings,” Smith wrote …

A brief synopsis is in order. He went on to thank Temple for this and thank Temple for that and then concluded by thanking Temple for accepting an invitation to the MAC so that the Owls can be Bowling Green’s whipping boy for the next few years.
“… how nice to have an extended scrimmage against an overmatched opponent every year that actually counts in the standings,” Smith wrote.
Hmmm.

compelling

I guess he doesn’t know collegefootballnews.com named the Owls 2006 freshman recruiting class at the top incoming class among MAC schools, current or future.
I guess he doesn’t care many of those recruits, as many as 18, are seeing significant playing time for the Owls this season or that these same players pushed around Bowling Green’s sophomore- and junior-dominated lineup.

bowling
He might not know that the 2007 recruiting class is ranked significantly higher than that one and that it might dwarf any recruiting class of any MAC team in recent memory.
Or maybe he doesn’t care.
And, if he can count, he knows that this same Owls will be around for the next three years. Yes, the same Owls that beat his beloved Bowling Green by two touchdowns yesterday.
We won’t assume that Bowling Green will be Temple’s whipping boy for the next few years, as he assumed the other way.
The evidence is there.
Temple is getting better.
Bowling Green is getting worse.
Get used to watching Shelton’s backside. You’ve got two more years of watching that 4.27-40 speed.
We have six players coming in with that kind of speed and the evidence suggests that Temple could literally leave Bowling Green looking permanently in its rear view mirror.
Al Golden is a young, charismatic, recruiter who kids identify with and will rally behind. He came to Temple with a deserved reputation of being a recruiter without peer and he has only enhanced that reputation so far in his year on the job.
Thank you, Karl Smith.
Thank you very much.

Wednesday: Returning to 2018

07.20.18
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Best of TFF: There Are No Words

Editor’s Note: This story was first published on the day after Temple’s championship win. It received nearly 900,000 page views, the second-most in TFF history.

The morning after arguably the greatest win in Temple football history, there are no words.

Literally no words are coming out of my mouth, at least in the sense of being able to talk this morning.

The throaty and hoarse condition is more than OK because it was the result of cheering for the Owls at beautiful Navy-Marine Corps Stadium as they captured what really is their first-ever major football championship. The 1967 MAC title was admirable, but that was a day when the school played to a level of football that was beneath their status even then as one of America’s great public universities.

So this was it.

ride

Walking out of the stadium and into the concourse, I let out a very loud primal: “THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN’ ABOUT!!”

Fortunately, I got a few high fives and smiles from my fellow Temple fans and not fitted for a straightjacket. It also put the voice out for 24 hours, maybe more.

When it comes to Temple football today at least, you cannot think in terms of a national championship—the deck is stacked against G5 teams in an unfair system—so what happened yesterday was the pinnacle of Temple football success. Thousands of Temple fans, easily in excess of 10,000 Temple fans, made Navy’s 15-game home winning streak a moot point by turning that stadium into a Temple home field advantage and to get to that mountaintop and look down from it is incredibly satisfying.

Hey, it’s a pretty spectacular pinnacle. The only thing that would have made it better was a G5 slot in a New Year’s Six bowl against Penn State, but that’s not happening for a number of reasons that are not important today. (Objectively, would you take a team for the Cotton Bowl that has won seven straight against this schedule and beat a Navy team, 34-10, over a Western Michigan team that struggled to beat a four-loss Ohio team? I would but I don’t expect the bowl committee to be that objective. I can also grudingly see the WMU argument.)

What is important is that the Owls have gone from being a perennial Bottom 10 team and laughed at nationally to being ranked in the Top 25 for two straight years and going to a title game one year and winning it the next. When you think of the success P.J. Walker and Jahad Thomas have had here, there is a Twilight Zone quality to the parallel between this success and their success at Elizabeth (N.J.). In their freshman year at Elizabeth, they won one game; in their freshman year at Temple they won two games. In their sophomore year at both schools, they won six games. In their junior year at both schools, they reached the title game and lost and, in their senior year at both schools, they lifted the ultimate hardware together.

Truly amazing and I will miss both of those guys.

Back on Cherry and White Day, I wrote that this team will be better than last year’s team while people on other websites—notably, Rutgers and Penn State fan boards—insisted that Temple would take a step back. I was consistent in my belief that this was the STEP FORWARD year, not the step back one, and that belief was rooted in knowledge that both the defense and offense were significantly upgraded despite graduation losses. Only a Temple fan who follows the team closely would know that, not the know-it-alls who make assumptions on subjects they have no idea what they are talking about.

Today at noon, the Owls will know where they will go for a bowl game. They can finish the season in the top 25 and set the record for most wins in Temple football history.

It won’t be the cake because we saw that yesterday, but it will be the Cherry on top of that white cake and it will be delicious even going down past what promises to be a future sore throat.
Monday: When TFF Made The Big-Time Media

07.18.18
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Best of TFF: Arians’ Reaction to win over PSU

For our vacation week, we are running a three-part series on the most-read stories in Temple Football Forever history. Here is one on Bruce Arians’ reaction to the win over Penn State published in 2015:
bruceandanthony1

When Bruce Arians led the Arizona Cardinals to a late-season upset of the Seattle Seahawks two years ago, it was the final loss of the season for the Seahawks on the way to winning the Super Bowl. The question for Arians then was a natural one as someone in the press room asked him if that was his biggest win as a head coach. Arians paused for a second and said, no, his biggest win as a head coach came at Temple when the Owls broke a 39-year losing streak to Pittsburgh in the 1984 season.

So, of all the congratulatory messages pouring into third-year Temple head coach Matt Rhule after a 27-10 upset of Penn State on Saturday, the one posted by Arians on his twitter page was priceless:

Rhule had one-upped Arians in the sense that he broke a longer streak over another in-state rival in Penn State (after a 74-year drought), so the two men have been in the same shoes at the same place. No one knew more what a win over Penn State could do for the Temple program than Arians, who said the first question asked of him at his first Temple press conference was, “Why does Temple even play football?” Like the presser after the Seattle game two years ago, Arians paused before a thoughtful response: “To beat Penn State.” Arians came close twice, losing to nationally-ranked Nittany Lions’ teams, 23-18, in 1983 and 27-25 to what would become an 11-1 PSU team in 1984, but never quite got over the hump.

Now that Rhule did, Arians used both twitter and the phone to express his satisfaction with the result. Rhule took the call and said, “Yes sir, thank you sir.” to a guy who was a young coach at Temple once, too. Rhule said he did not know what else to say to the NFL coach of the year. Then Rhule went out to the parking lot at Lincoln Financial Field and presented the game ball to another former Temple coach, College Football Hall of Fame member Wayne Hardin, who came close a few times against Penn State but, like Arians, could not get over the hump.

In the fraternity of college coaches, and the circle of life, all three coaches will now share a pretty neat memory forever because only those three fully understand the magnitude of the moment.

Friday: That Championship Season

07.16.18
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Ranking Temple Schedule: 1-12

Temple fans know Daz is susceptible to a trick play. Watch the center here.

Everyone on the campus of Temple University and the extended family wants to hand Sgt. Slaughter a loss.

The man who currently is head coach at Boston College deserves his fate as the most-disliked coach on the Temple schedule in 2018.

Despite proclaiming his love for the university and “South Philly ravioli” and wanting to be “the head coach for life here” Steve Addazio skipped town after two years.

In retrospect, it was the best thing to happen to Temple football. Most at the time did not know it but me, pounding the steering wheel with unmitigated joy upon hearing the news on the car radio, knew that the Temple football program had dodged a huge bullet.

Daz wanted to run off tackle on seemingly every first and second down, passing only if it was third-and-long. That got him (and Temple) a lot of bad-end sacks. Daz staying here would have retarded the development of the program. In a way, hiring Matt Rhule was a two-step forward move without the one-step back.

Daz last season was 4-7 and, if Temple acted like a “normal” school, it would have fired him. At Temple, though, the commitment of the school is for life—or at least the full term of the contract—even though the commitment by the person on the other end is not.

All of the above being true, the Owls’ test at Boston College in late September ranks as their second-toughest of the season.

Here are our rankings of the 12 toughest Temple games, from 12-1:

12) Villanova—Beating this team “only” 16-13 was an unmitigated disgrace last year. Elon and Rhode Island had an easier time with the Wildcats. It’s high time that Geoff Collins finds the find print in his $2 million-per-year contract that dictates blowing this team out is a must.

11) UConn—The Owls have pummeled this squad in two of the last three years but last year’s 28-24 fiasco was probably the worst-coached Temple game of the last decade. Got to think that game got into Collins’ gut and he wants to throw up. Blowing this team out in East Hartford would be the perfect bromide.

10) East Carolina—The Owls won at this place, 34-10, last year with a FCS-level quarterback and a backup fullback as the featured tailback in the second half. At home, with a FBS-level quarterback and both Ryquell Armstead and Jager Gardner healthy, got to figure that the Owls could do even better this time.

buckethats

9) Buffalo—the last time Al Golden played this team at Lincoln Financial Field, he came away with a 37-13 win. As someone on one of the other boards said recently, Collins gets paid the big bucks to beat the crap out of teams like Buffalo. The only online computer simulation of this game has the Owls winning, 30-7. I think that SHOULD BE about right.

8) Tulsa—Temple won in Oklahoma, 42-22, last year with the key plays in the game made by returning Temple starters. Got to figure the Owls repeat that in the friendly confines of the Linc.

7) Cincinnati—Despite some pretty good recruiting by Luke FIckell, he is far from a proven game-day coach. The Owls won the last two games with the Bearcats pretty easily and should win this one at home.

ventell

6) Navy—This is probably the best-coached team the Owls will face all year. That said, Temple broke a nation’s-best 15-game home winning streak there in the AAC championship game last time simply because  the Owls were able to bring as many fans to the game as Navy was. If Temple fans bring the noise again, they should win this one.

5 South Florida—The Owls won the last LFF meeting between the two teams, 46-30, and USF is not nearly as it was in 2016 (now without Quinton Flowers and Marlon Mack) and the Owls might be as good as the squad that handed out that 16-point beating.

4) Houston—In Texas, it starts to get tough for the Owls against Major Applewhite’s squad. The Cougars have the best player not only in the league in nose tackle Ed Oliver but the best player in all of G5 football. Still, it’s high time for Temple to beat Houston in football, something it has never done.

3) Maryland—Owls won at Maryland, 38-7, the last time they visited but last year’s Maryland team won at Texas and improved the defense with the hiring of Chuck Heater as co-coordinator. This is a game the Owls could win, but will probably not be favored.

2) Boston College—Plenty of reasons for Temple FANS (see above) to want to win this game but that’s tempered by the knowledge that no current Temple player ever met or was recruited by Addazio nor does Collins, who also was a coordinator at Florida, has any animosity toward him. Plus, Daz has recruited many “dudes” so whether his “dudes” are tougher than our dudes is yet-to-be determined. Still, on May 8, I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream that had the Owls winning, 42-14, and Daz refusing to shake Collins’ hand afterward because Temple was throwing touchdown passes in the fourth quarter (true story). That was my favorite dream of the year and I hope it comes true.

1) UCF—Any team that goes 13-0 with a national championship (at least in the minds of the fair-minded) deserves mad respect but remember that first-year head coaches (who have not been a head coach anywhere else) not named Tom Herman struggle in the AAC and that’s the best hope Temple has of winning this one on the road.

Wednesday—Our annual one-week vacation begins but we will be running surprise “Best of TFFs” starting on this day and returning to fresh perspectives on Wednesday, July 25

 

07.13.18
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The Big Uniform Reveal: It Looks Good

swaggyt

Conventional wisdom on social media after The Big Reveal on the new Temple uniforms yesterday was: “Well, if the kids like it, that’s the only thing that matters.”

Really?

Identity does, too.

Few of us are kids anymore but all of us once were.


A cautionary note is provided
by our friend Karma.
Since (and including)
the 2015 win over Penn State,
the Owls are 19-3 wearing
predominantly Cherry, 7-7 wearing white
and 1-4 wearing black. They are 0-0
wearing gray, but we will find
out how they fare with that color soon

The thought never occurred to me once when I was a kid that I wanted a new uniform or I was waiting for what I new uniform looked like.

Maybe thinking evolved over the last 40 or so years, but when I look at uniforms like the ones at Alabama, USC and Penn State, I’m more convinced than ever that uniforms have little to no impact upon a recruit’s decision to attend a certain school.

Those schools have a clean, traditional and some—not me—would say “boring” look but it has not affected them.

Nor should it affect Temple, which has had a pretty distinctive look of its own for the past decade or so of mostly success.

Cringeworthy is what I think when I see what Maryland has done with once pretty nice uniforms and that’s what I was afraid to see when the Owls made their big reveal on Thursday. After all, the Under Armour CEO is a Maryland grad and UA and Temple collaborated on this new look.

Fortunately, crazy did not happen. The Big Reveal actually looked pretty good, keeping the predominantly Cherry and predominantly white look while adding a touch of gray and black. A cautionary note is provided by our friend Karma. Since (and including) the 2015 win over Penn State, the Owls are 19-3 wearing predominantly Cherry, 7-7 wearing white and 1-4 wearing black. They are 0-0 wearing gray, but we will find out how they fare with that color soon.

Don’t tempt Mother Nature.

Temple did not stray far from its traditional look, adding a tweak here and there.

The basic identity of Temple is still reflective in the new look, but the identity of Temple is there and that matters every bit as much as what the kids think.