Nobody knows how many mistakes an athletic director is allowed to make but, at a place like Temple, the margin of error is smaller than others.

On Sunday, a guy who hit AT LEAST .666 on Temple football coaching hires got the most prestigious athletic director honor that can be awarded: The James J. Corbett Memorial Award is a US award given annually by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA). It is presented “to the collegiate administrator who through the years has most typified Corbett’s devotion to intercollegiate athletics and worked unceasingly for its betterment.”

Pretty precise language when it comes to Bradshaw’s contribution to Temple football.

When you’ve had collegiate football since 1984 (and the school was founded 10 years earlier), and you hire two of the best four college football coaches at said school, you’ve done a remarkable job.

Very few people can argue that Al Golden and Matt Rhule were two of the best four hires in Temple history. (The other two are inarguable: College Football Hall of Famers Wayne Hardin and Pop Warner.)

For one AD to hire half, that’s a job well done and, at least at Temple, fit the criteria of “devotion to intercollegiate athletics and (working) unceasingly for its betterment.”

Put it this way: Compared to the three hires his successor made, Bradshaw knocked it out of the park. Pat Kraft hired, in order, Geoff Collins, Manny Diaz and Rod Carey. The less said about those three the better.

That also applies to the more said about the three prior football hirings: Golden, Rhule and Steve Addazio.

Pretty good for a guy who was a baseball player at LaSalle and came from a place (DePaul) that didn’t have college football.

To put it in Bradshaw’s best sports terms, Golden and Rhule were upper-deck home runs. Daz was certainly not a strike-out or fly out but the argument can be made that he was at least a gap double (first bowl win in over 30 years) or a hard-hit single off the wall while being thrown out at second (his 4-7 season the next year).

Although Collins won a bowl game with a worse record than Daz, he never quite fulfilled his promise (Mayhem) here and Diaz struck out looking while Carey was a swinging strikeout.

Bradshaw’s gift in my mind at least was a knowledge of Philadelphia (he went to LaSalle) and common sense.

He took a yellow legal pad with him to Charlottesville to interview then Virginia DC Golden, watched Golden pull out a binder of East Coast recruiting and coaching contacts, listened to what he had to say, and, on the way home, jotted down: “This is our guy.”

With Rhule, who finished second to Daz the first time, Bradshaw listened to all of the Temple players but still kept his options open. When Mario Cristobal asked for directions to Temple from the Philadelphia International Airport, Bradshaw had second thoughts. Everyone from the Temple police to the players to the cafeteria people met and loved Matt Rhule, who knew every nook and cranny of Temple. Then he ran into Temple icon (and assistant AD) Al Shrier in the hallway of the Liacouras Center.

“Bill, listen to me. Hire Matt Rhule.”

That was all he needed to hear.

Temple was off and running in football again, surpassing what even Golden had done. If you had Temple being unbeaten and hosting College Football Gameday (and then grabbing the all-time single-highest prime-time TV rating FOR ANY COLLEGE FOOTBALL game in the history of the nation’s fourth-largest market), then you might have been the only one. I never saw that coming. That was a day and night we might never see again for Temple football.

A large part of the credit for Oct. 31, 2015 goes to Bill Bradshaw.

For those of us who benefited that day, the Corbett Award is the least he deserves. Sainthood could be in his future, but let’s hope that is many years away. What he did for Temple football was perform the requisite three miracles.

Friday: That First Weekend

Monday: What’s the Deal?