On the first day of spring classes, Christian Braswell took his single digit number and skipped town for what he hoped would be greener pastures.

No. 2 dumped all over a Temple football tradition, the single-digit number.

Braswell wasn’t the first single-digit Owl to leave but he should be the last.

The way to do that would simply be to tweak the rules and reward single digits only to seniors in the summer camp prior to their last seasons.

A year ago, Quincy Roche took his No. 9 to Miami.

Now Braswell is taking his No. 2 elsewhere, joining another single-digit, Isaiah Graham-Mobley, in playing somewhere else after being rewarded with Temple football’s highest honor.

He won’t be the last Owl to leave Edberg-Olson Hall, especially under Rod Carey, but this is one problem that does indeed have a solution.

To me, there’s a lot to be said for the single-digit tradition but loyalty should be valued as much as toughness. There’s something annoying about watching a Miami game and hearing several times (as I did this past season) that “Roche is so tough, he earned the Temple single digit as an underclassmen.”

When you think about it, it’s a slap in the face to Temple that someone like that plays for someone else.

That should remain a Temple staple and the only way to do it under this present college football environment is to reserve it for seniors who have stuck with the program for their entire careers.

If Carey is really out of scholarships, as he appears to be, there’s not much he can do now to upgrade the talent enough for a significant boost in the 2021 win total but he at least can implement a change that should outlast his time here.

Reserve the single digit for Temple seniors so that no Temple single-digit guy ever plays for anyone else.

It’s the least he can do.

Monday: The Bruce Arians’ Playbook

Friday: The Sinkhole Problem