Since there’s no opponent this week, thought the Throwback Thursday segment this week would be the Garden State Bowl.

There were a few things to take from that bowl:

• Great coaching led directly to Temple’s win. Temple coach Wayne Hardin likes to tell the story of the exchange of films with the California team. He gave them only a couple of Temple game films and those were the games that Temple could afford to be very vanilla and run the basic stuff. Due to Hardin’s contacts in California, he was able to get not only the films Cal exchanged but the entire season of Cal film. He noticed that the linebackers on Cal tipped their hand when they would blitz and had quarterback Brian Broomell fake that way and throw the other. Those plays led to a 21-0 Temple lead before Cal could figure out that Hardin had them figured out.
• Cal’s trash-talking served as a motivating factor for Temple. Cal coach Roger Theder said “Temple doesn’t play opponents as tough as we do” and that hissed the Owls off. Cal had five losses that year, but the 11-point loss to Temple was its worst. Probably not a coincidence.
• It was cold, but probably not as cold as the fans remembered. I saved my game notes (the printed kind, given out in the press box) and it said: “Temperature at kickoff: 40 degrees.” Tried to find them on the internet but could only find this veiled reference to the game in a Cal band blog about the temperatures being several degrees above freezing but not feeling that way.
• Yes, and one of the loudest laughs that day was when they showed the final score on the Jumbotron and had a graphic cartoon visual of an Owl taking a dump on the head of a Bear. Certainly beats the misspelled “CONGRATULATIONS TO THE NEW MEXICO BOWL CAMPIONS” that appeared on the scoreboard in Albuquerque. That  Owl/Bear graphic pretty much summed up a wonderful afternoon.
• The Temple fans were great. There were 55,874 in attendance and only about 500 or so were rooting for Cal. It was that day I was convinced that a consistent winning and well-coached Temple program against big-time competition could put enough fannies in the seats to thrive. Even though Rutgers, essentially a home team, played in the first GSB, the 55K Temple drew remains an all-time bowl record crowd in New Jersey.
•  The Cal band performance is below and they even play a  current Temple Diamond Marching Band favorite:

By the way, the 1979 Temple team would have blown out the 2010 Temple team (which, ironically, did not make a bowl but should have).