Even an 0-6 Temple team drew a tailgate crowd like this back in 2013.

The odd twist to this week’s TV Guide is that Comcast Sports Net Philly has added Temple to its noon lineup on Saturday.

Bad move, because a “Blah” Homecoming is soon to become a “Meh” Homecoming.

Like, “Meh, I could be there but since it’s on tv …. ”

Temple needs the softcore/fringe/lazy—you pick the word—portion of its fan base to begin showing up on a more regular basis and nothing mutes that crowd more than the game being on “real” television. (If it’s on a stream system, like ESPN3, that does not seem to affect the attendance.) Real television gives the casual Temple fan an excuse to miss the game, sit back at home, watch the game on his HDTV, then use his laptop to go on a Temple fan site and criticize the lack of a Temple crowd.

That’s how it usually works, the people who you know who live in Philadelphia and have off on Saturday and watch on TV are usually the first to write the Temple crowd sucks. If you are not part of the solution, you are certainly part of the problem.

One example is a former great Temple basketball player who is off on every Saturday and Sunday who posts photos of him and his kid at every home Eagles’ game. He usually only makes Temple football games on one day a year and that is Homecoming.

Now, with the remote so handy, even that might be doubtful. It’s amazing to me that a Temple grad can go to every Eagles’ game at the same stadium and put himself through that hassle does not even support his school’s football team with the same level of enthusiasm. That is a systemic problem with the Temple softcore fan base.

There is a hardcore fan base of roughly 20,000 who we see at every home game (raising my hand here) and a softcore fan base of about 15K more who we saw at the Army game. We lost them with that loss for the season, and I doubt we will see much more than the 22,000 announced we had for Stony Brook even with Homecoming.

Maybe 25,000, but probably no more.

You can thank the triple-whammy of local television, lazy softcore fans and the Army loss for what promises to be a “Meh” Homecoming. The opponent, Charlotte, is not that appealing but big-time schools play Nicholls State and still sellout for Homecoming. Last year’s Homecoming Game against Tulane was one of my best experiences as a Temple fan. This year, I do not expect it to be anywhere near as good.

The only stat that matters is 1-2 and that’s just not good enough.

It will be a long climb back to a good crowd for the rest of this season and it could affect things like recruiting and bowl possibilities. Temple had nine months to prepare for Army and was an undisciplined team against PSU. One-hundred and twenty yards in penalties makes you wonder what this team does in practice the other six days of the week. The way it approached Army makes you wonder what they did the six months before that.

Tomorrow: Game Analysis (since it won’t be off TV, it will be posted around 10:30 p.m.)

Monday: 5 Surprising Things We’ve Learned So Far

Wednesday: The Death Penalty

Friday: SMU Preview

Saturday: Game Analysis

New York Post Betting Guide. Our picks this week: USF getting the 5, Louisville covering the 26.5 and Michigan State covering the 5. Temple covers the 27.5 and beats Charlotte, 48-7.