Tag Archives: college football

11.08.25
by

Flirting with a bowl game was nice while it lasted

For most of the upcoming bye week, what we are going to be hearing from both the Temple coaches and players (and maybe some fans) is that the Owls can win one of their two final remaining games and reach bowl eligibility.

A lot of people (raising my hand here) who have watched this team know what we saw over the last 10 games and come to a competing conclusion.

The Temple fan section in one end zone at the game today.

The flirtation with a bowl was nice, but it’s probably over.

Nobody would like to see the Owls win one of their two remaining games (hell, both would be preferable) more than me but wishing and hoping isn’t going to make it happen and the Owls’ one-point losses to the service academies set them up for having to beat better teams than both Army and Navy.

That will be a nearly impossible task.

Both the Navy and Army games taught the Owls a valuable lesson in the way to close out a football game going forward.

Had the Owls did against Navy what Army did against them–slide at the 2 and milk the clock to end the game–we’d be talking about which bowl game we wanted to attend. The Navy game, a 32-31 loss, should have been a win had the Owls taken three knees and kicked the game-winning field goal.

Army quarterback Cale Hellums illustrated that point with an exclamation mark when he slid at the 2 in a 14-13 win on Saturday. He could have done what Temple head coach K.C. Keeler elected to do a couple of weeks ago and score but that would have given Evan Simon the same kind of time to beat his team that Keeler gave Blake Horvath and Navy.

It was almost like Cale turned to K.C. and said, “This is what you guys should have done against Navy.”

The Owls played dumb football then. Army played smart football today. The hard reality is for all of the great compliments Keeler had about kicker Carl Hardin is that he missed makeable field goals (45 and 38 yards) against both service academies. Just one would have put the Owls in a bowl game. Keeler said Hardin can hit it from 60, but I’d rather have a consistent kicker from 45 and in than the threat of hitting one from 60. Give me a guy like Cap Poklemba–who went 5-for-5 in field goals at Pitt–over someone who might hit it from 60.

After the Tulsa win, Keeler said OC Tyler Walker told him the Owls’ offense was better when it played aggressive. They were anything but aggressive against Army. They should have thrown downfield on 75 percent of the plays against a team that couldn’t defend the pass.

Instead, they relied on the run way too much. If the Army defense is good at anything, it’s playing against a run they see every day in practice. The few times Temple threw the ball on Saturday it was successful.

Clock management is an important thing going forward for next year not this one because it likely won’t be an issue over the final two games.

What will be an issue in the final two games is the same one we witnessed two weeks ago against East Carolina, a roster gap that can’t be bridged by getting all the injured players back over the bye week. Make no mistake about it, the rosters of North Texas and Tulane are every bit as good as the ECU roster.

After that ECU game, Keeler alluded to that issue by saying “we’re not there yet” in the area of talent.

Expect all the quotes over the next week to be of the “we can do it” variety but the quotes over the two weeks after that being of the “we’re not there yet” realm. Or “those guys have had a couple years to build the roster and we’ve had only one.”

You know what I’d like to hear?

“Tyler said to me we’ve got a great QB so let’s put the ball in his hands the final two weeks and that got us a couple wins nobody expected,” Keeler might say.

Doubt we’d hear anything like that, though.

Damn.

When that happens, the story of the 2025 season will be so close yet so far away. Maybe no more than one foot far right twice with the kicker being it should have never come down to one.

Monday: Caution to the Wind

11.06.25
by

Temple-Army: So many ways to look at it

This video proves Temple Owls are everywhere, including being producers at CBS Sports Network.

There are about 17 ways to look at the Temple at Army game Saturday (high noon, CBS Sports Network).

For our purposes here, we will only look at the top two because there is a major drop between those two through 17.

Temple fans will be outnumbered, so it is incumbent among the football sideline Temple Owls to be active and cheering their teammates.

The first one, favoring Temple, is that Army (4-4) has won four games against losing teams and lost four games against winning teams.

In case anyone has forgot, Temple (5-4) is a winning team. Both were blown out against ECU, while Temple had a better performance against Charlotte (49-14) than Army (24-7) did.

The second, favoring Army, is that Temple is terrible against the run and Army has the best run offense in college football, averaging 334.9 yards. Temple has given up nearly 200 yards on the ground per game and its 5.2 yards per carry is the 8th worst in the nation.

I know that. You now know that. Chances are both Jeff Monken and K.C. Keeler–two of the best head coaches in the country–know that.

So we know what Monken is going to do–run the ball and only throw about 10 times or less.

Interesting that Temple was 5-4 against Army between the WWII year of 1943 and Daz’s first year (2011). Temple is 5-4 now.

The Temple numbers are skewed in the sense that the Owls also had to defend the pass in many of those games. Not so much in this one.

Keeler, being as smart as he is and having one of the top defensive coordinators against a triple-option (Brian L. Smith), know what both have to do: Sell out against the run and trust the athleticism of their secondary to defend the rare pass. Try to ball that fist up and punch that ball out every time and win the turnover battle.

The stakes are really high at least for Temple because the Owls need only one win over their last three games to gain bowl eligibility and become one of the top five stories for the 2025 season in all of college football.

Here’s the deal.

Should be a perfect November day for football.

For Keeler, it would be remarkable and illustrate why he is the winningest active head coach in all of college football because of where both teams he coached in the last two seasons currently rest on the FBS landscape.

The guy had Sam Houston as a nine-win team and bowl eligible last year. Now, without him, they are 0-8, while he has Temple at 5-4 and only one measly win away from turning a program that had gone 3-9 for four-straight years into another bowl eligible team.

A loss means falling farther down that hill and having to crawl back up it against far better teams than Army.

It’s not going to be easy because Army has played everyone tough in this league with the exception of ECU.

Our picks this week.

So has Temple.

Something has got to give.

(In case anyone is wondering, one of the 15 other factors is that Temple quarterback Evan Simon has been sleeping at the E-O and watching Army film for the last six days determined to have his usual great game. I’ve been watching Temple football for over 40 years and when I had the great honor to meet his parents before the first home game, the first words I told them were: “I love that kid” not because he was a good quarterback but because he showed me how much he cared when he fell on a fumble against Tulane last year like it was a live grenade. That same caring will go into his preparation this week.)

This, though, is largely assignment for Keeler, Smith and the Temple defense to complete.

Time for this team, especially along the defensive front, to show some Temple TUFF and both tackle well and ballhawk.

If they complete that task, they will come home bowl eligible for the first time in six years. It only seems like 100.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

11.02.25
by

Last Chance for Bowl: A win at Army

Temple was down 28-3 and still spoiled Army’s Homecoming 15 years ago (wearing Cherry helmets).

The schedule says Temple has three shots at gaining bowl eligibility.

Reality suggests only one.

This week at Army (noon, CBS Sports Network).

Head coach K.C. Keeler pretty much said so during his post-game press conference on Saturday when he said “we’re not there yet” when talking about the physical gap between his team and East Carolina.

Temple’s Montel Harris is all smiles after getting congratulated by Army captain Nate Coombs for gaining 351 yards and scoring 7 touchdowns in Temple’s 63-32 win in 2012, the last victory for the Owls at Army.

Leading up to Saturday’s 45-14 loss, he said it was a “50-50” game like so many in the league.

It wasn’t.

What happened?

Well, the Owls didn’t play as well as they did in the loss to Navy or the wins at Charlotte and Tulsa. East Carolina is closer in ability to Tulane and North Texas–Temple’s final two opponents–than Army is so this could very well be Temple’s last chance at bowl eligibility.

Army is probably closer in ability to Navy or Tulsa than it is to Charlotte, so this could be the last so-called “50-50” game on the schedule.

The Owls would probably be wise to look at it that way.

The Army team honors Temple by hanging around for “T for Temple U” after the 2012 win.

Army opened as a 5.5-point favorite over Temple at 2 on Sunday and the “public” bet enough money on the home side to push that up to 6.5.

Still, both Tulane and North Texas will probably be double-digit favorites over the Owls.

Can the Owls beat Army?

Sure, because Tarleton State, a FCS team that lost to Abilene Christian, beat Army. Abilene Christian lost at Tulsa, 35-7, who the Owls beat two weeks ago.

Transitive property means only so much because the Owls beating UTSA suggested that the game against East Carolina would be similar talent vs. similar talent.

The problem for Temple is does the Temple that showed up vs. Navy and Charlotte show up at Army or do the Owls who showed up–or didn’t show up–last Saturday show up next Saturday?

A lot will be determined by how much the injury factor played into the ECU loss and how much that factor lingers over into the Army game.

Can Jay Ducker duplicate or even come close to the 351 yards Montel Harris had in 2012 or even the 228 yards the 5-foot-5 Matty Brown had in 2010?

I’ll settle for 100, which would set up a lot of play/action passing from Evan Simon.

Or that long-awaited throwback pass from former UCLA quarterback Kajiya Hollawayne to JoJo Bermudez for six we’ve been talking about for nine weeks.

To get to a bowl, it’s time to pull out all of the stops because this could be the last one on a bowl-eligible train that might bypass the Tulane and North Texas stations.

Friday: Army Preview

10.31.25
by

Key to beating ECU: Temple’s pass rush

Except for the sarcastic “16 people” remark, this is a pretty good analysis.

Eight games into a season should compile enough evidence to determine whether a college football team is good.

Well, all the available metrics indicate that Temple is a pretty good college football team.

Damn good, coached by the winningest active head coach in football, K.C. Keeler. This week we learned coach Keeler reads TFF because he opened up Monday’s press conference by saying “there was no conspiracy to get Hunter Smith a touchdown.” (That was the subject of our Saturday night post, although we used the word “reward” and not conspiracy. No other analysis of the game brought up the Hunter Smith subject other than this space, so thanks K.C. for the shoutout.)

This might have been the year for Temple to play Penn State. ECU, though, is the Super Bowl for Temple now.

Saturday we should find out how good Temple is when the 5-3 Owls, 3-1 in conference host an East Carolina team that is somehow a 4.5-point favorite on the road (2 p.m., ESPN+).

That 4.5 means the nation doesn’t believe yet, even if Philadelphia might.

ECU is also good.

If the Owls are able to beat this team, it’s time to move them to the elite G5 level. That would be Temple winning at home against a team that was a 6.5-point favorite (UTSA), a one-point loss to another 6.5-point favorite (that should have been a win) and a win at home over a 4.5-point favorite (ECU).

Already, Thursday night provided some extra clues about how good Temple is because UTSA beat Tulane, 48-26, Tulane beat Northwestern (23-3) and Northwestern beat Penn State (22-21).

Metrics that matter. Everyone give Matt Gajewski’s YouTube page a thumb’s up and a like. This guy knows his stuff.

Oh yes. We forgot. Tulane beat ECU, 26-19.

Transitive property notwithstanding a number of experts (see above video) have pointed out some metrics that give the Owls important advantages.

The Owls haven’t had a pass rush since the UTSA game and there is a good reason for that in since the guys who were the protagonists in that rush (Sekou Kromah and Sultan Badmus) have been banged and missed a lot of snaps. They are both back and should cause the ECU quarterback to run for his life, just as they did in the second half to Owen McCown of UTSA.

Kromah and Badmus are good to go and that couldn’t come at a better time for Temple.

All things being equal, the ECU offensive line is nowhere near as good as the UTSA line so if the Owls get consistent pressure on Kaitin Houser, he should wilt just like McCown did.

It would help if the 12,500 students who live on campus hop either hop on the subway for the 10-minute ride to Lincoln Financial Field or get one of the hundreds of free buses the university offers every gameday.

Make some noise to get that pass rush juiced. Stand up on every defensive third down.

This is an all-hands-on deck game both the players and the fans so that means players, coaches, alumni, students and Joe Philadelphia fans whose other hometown football team is on a bye this week are all one party on the same project.

Winning, and singing “T for Temple U” afterward.

This is the best chance to date for Temple to show the nation how far it has come in football under the winningest active coach in the NCAA.

Putting the bad guy’s quarterback on his backside early and often will be the key. Mr. Badmus and Mr. Kromah that is your assignment if you chose to accept it, but Mr. Haye, Mr. Stewart, Mr. Morris and others are free to join in as needed.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

10.26.25
by

K.C. Keeler was right about high expectations

How much of a genius would this guy have looked now if the refs made the right call against Navy?

In a couple of weeks, Temple went from controlling its own destiny in the American Conference football championship picture to needing help to stay in it.

This is exactly the type of thing Temple head coach K.C. Keeler was talking about back in August when asked about the possibility of the Owls getting to a bowl game this year. Keeler said hell with the bowl game, this team’s goal is to win a championship.

This year, not some far-off year in the future.

That raised some eyes in the assembled media who knew the history of four-straight 3-9 seasons, but Keeler wasn’t here then because he was winning championships at other places.

Not all the assembled media raised eyebrows because a New York Post guy named Michael Leboff was buying Temple stock when it was low back on Aug. 14, predicting in the paper that the Owls would win the title.

Only a brutal missed call (among other things) by the refs in the Navy game separates the Owls from controlling their own destiny in the American Conference race. Had the refs seen the Navy guard false start, maybe Navy kicks the extra point or that 3-yard pass for the two-point conversion becomes a much-tougher 8-yard pass that misfires.

Now the Owls can control only what they can control and that’s to win out and let the chips fall where they may.

There is no “easy” path to the championship game but an argument can be made that that, among the one-loss teams, Temple can help itself the most because it has home games against one of the one-loss teams (ECU) and a road game at another, North Texas. They also have a home game against Tulane, which like Navy, is unbeaten in the conference.

Other than what Temple can do, the Owls have to hope that Navy loses twice because that would eliminate the first tie-breaker (head-to-head competition). Then, after … hopefully … beating ECU and Tulane, they have to hope either one of those teams beat Navy or another one-loss team.

That’s pretty much it.

Tough but doable.

If it gets past the first two tie-breakers (head-to-head and computer rankings), that’s where things work against the Owls because of playing two top 25 teams–which most of their competition didn’t do–in the non-conference slate.

While it would be nice to have their fate in their own hands, having of a lot of it now for what Keeler called on Saturday “the stretch run” was something unforeseeable in August but something that Keeler wanted his team to visualize.

If such a scenario comes into focus, that New York Post guy will immediately be inducted into the College Football Prognosticator Hall of Fame for seeing something nobody else did.

Except maybe Keeler.

Friday: ECU Preview

10.24.25
by

Keeler has a chance to challenge Hardin’s start

Probably the best look behind the scenes at Wayne Hardin and Temple Stadium that I’ve ever seen.

Only one new Temple coach started his career with the Philadelphia school winning roughly twice as many games as he lost.

That was the great Wayne Hardin, a College Football Hall of Famer who continued his great career here in 1970 and finished 18-9-1 over his first three years at Temple.

Nobody else started at Temple so successfully.

Tomorrow’s high at Tulsa is 59 but there is plenty of wet weather in the forecast.

Not Bruce Arians. Not Al Golden. Not Matt Rhule.

To me, and pretty much everyone else, K.C. Keeler is a sure-fire bet to join Hardin in the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta for what he’s done before he got here.

That was the way with Hardin, too, who had Navy as the No. 2 team in the nation in 1962.

Yet what Hardin did at Temple might have been more impressive.

Same with Keeler at Temple because his best may be yet to come.

Top teams in the country in turnover margin.

Keeler got his 275th career win on Saturday, 49-14, at Charlotte.

In his first season, the Owls are 4-3 with a shot to finish 9-3. Amazing in the sense that they were 3-9 for the last four years and 1-6 the year before that.

Even more amazing that they were only a missed false start away from being unbeaten in the American Conference and having their championship destiny in their own hands.

Now they are going to need help to knock Navy out of a tie-breaker situation.

It all starts on Saturday (3:30 p.m., ESPN+) at Tulsa. Temple has no chance in that game if it is thinking about 9-3 or even looking at the scoreboard.

K.C. Keeler tells the story about being recruited by Wayne Hardin in the late 1970s.

It does have a chance if it does all the “Hardin-like” things Keeler has been preaching all season. One, don’t look at the scoreboard. Two, concentrate on the next play. Three, “do your job” on the next play and not go outside that job by “trying to make a play.”

These things have been what Keeler has been preaching all year and, for the most part, the Owls have answered his prayers.

Saturday at Tulsa will provide a challenge because the Owls will have to overcome some weather issues. There is a good chance of rain, a high temperature of 59 degrees, and even some thunderstorms in the area. That’s advantage Temple because the Owls No. 4 in the country in turnover margin and Tulsa is No. 109. On a rainy day, that ball is slippery and the team who values it most has the advantage.

You can add 4 wins to that total.

The Owls have experience in that area as the home game against Howard was delayed by a half hour by thunderstorms in Philadelphia and the game at Georgia Tech was also delayed by the same thing. The Owls remained focused at home, not so focused on the road, but the lessons learned in Atlanta should be applied in Tulsa.

One game at a time. One play at a time.

Seven years after the above video was made, Hardin had Keeler in his office on a recruiting visit. The Owls ran out of scholarships that day, but Keeler is where he belongs now.

Beating Tulsa tomorrow opens another door. There are four more doors to bust down after that.

A 9-3 start is implausible but not impossible. Wayne Hardin showed the way in 1972.

K.C. Keeler is doing the same almost 60 years later. The fact that the two were in the same room once talking about coming to Temple is a pretty neat thing indeed.

Late Saturday Night: Tulsa Game Analysis

10.20.25
by

Tulsa Week: Some solid evidence out there

The guys from The College Football Experience discuss Temple once again.

A year ago, the Temple football program was in turmoil with talk of a leadership change and still was able to beat visiting Tulsa.

By double digits, 20-10.

Each season is a new deal, especially in the era of the transfer portal and NIL and both teams hired new head coaches.

Temple hired K.C. Keeler, a legend, who won his 275th career game on Saturday. Tulsa went the younger route, hiring Tre Lamb, who was head coach at East Tennessee State.

Pretty sure we all know who made the better hire and it wasn’t just because Keeler recognizes that the Owls play and look a lot sharper when they wear the Cherry helmets.

Temple is now 4-3 (really should be 5-2), while Tulsa is 2-5. One of those wins was against Oklahoma State. The other was against Abilene Christian.

Both teams played Navy which is a point of comparison.

Navy went to Tulsa and won, 42-23, while it was lucky (and got some help from the refs) in surviving at Temple, 32-31.

That doesn’t mean Temple is going to win by 20 or so on Saturday (3:30 p.m., ESPN+) but if the Owls dot their I’s and cross their T’s, they should be able to come home with a two-game winning streak.

One, they have a staff that was able draw X’s and O’s well enough to play a competitive game against Navy. Two, Tulsa doesn’t.

Also, unlike that Navy game, the Owls are going to have to be focused in an environment that could put them to sleep.

Now that staff will have to turn its film study to a Tulsa team that likes to throw the ball deep and the fact that the Owls faced a lot of that on Saturday in a 49-14 win at Charlotte should help them adjust. What they have to do is play the ball and not the man because the few times the 49ers were able to move the ball, they were helped by face-guarding penalties against the Owls.

Another good Tuesday practice should help clean up those kinds of mistakes and help the Owls take another step forward.

Wearing the Cherry helmets with the White uniforms again wouldn’t hurt, either.

Friday: Tulsa Preview

10.16.25
by

Temple-Charlotte: Long past time for a trick play

Halfway through the season one thing Temple fans know about both offensive coordinator Tyler Walker and head coach K.C. Keeler is that they don’t like trick plays.

Walker has shown an innovative offense with a lot of motion that causes both defensive coordinators and defenses in general to scratch their heads.

CBS Sports and Emory Hunt made Temple a highlight game and like the Owls. Great photo of Temple center Grayson Mains here. The Owls’ offensive line led the way for 518 yards of total offense against Navy and deserved the win.

What he hasn’t shown is a “trick play” and, by that I mean, a throwback pass to Kajiya Hollawayne (a quarterback at UCLA), who draws the defense to him and leaves JoJo Bermudez wide open on the other side of the field for six.

Saturday (3:30 p.m., ESPN+) would be a good time to dust that one off because the Owls need a booster shot after being made sick by a heartbreaking loss to Navy.

When asked about trick plays two weeks ago, Keeler said he was hesitant to use them “when we’re not playing well.”

He didn’t say anything about the first play of the game.

Not going to be an easy game for the Owls because it’s Charlotte’s Homecoming in this compact 15,000-seat stadium.

The Owls have played six games and, on five of them, the first play of the game has been a standard handoff to Jay Ducker. I know that. You know that. The bad guys certainly know that.

None of those handoffs have gone for more than 3 yards.

Why not fake that handoff to Ducker, toss a throwback to Hollawayne and have the former UCLA quarterback hit Bermudez in stride for six?

Why not indeed?

This is how wide open JoJo Bermudez would be on a throwback pass from Hollawayne.

That would get the sideline pumped.

Mentioned this to Evan Simon’s dad the last couple of tailgates and he agreed. Also brought it up with Grayson Mains’ dad and he didn’t hate the idea.

Don’t know if these dads enough pull with their kids for them to draw this up in the dirt like a sandlot play but it wouldn’t be a bad idea for this game particularly.

This team is hurting (hell, I’m still hurting) from the toughest of tough losses and getting off to a spectacular start would just be what the doctor ordered.

That doesn’t mean a 3-yard handoff to Jay Ducker.

Showing the world that the Owls have bounced back means a touchdown on the first play of the game. Nothing ventured nothing gained is a great saying for a good reason.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

10.04.25
by

It’s official: Keeler is ahead of schedule

Leave it to first-year Temple head football coach K.C. Keeler to set the bar high and then do a Fosbury Flop over it by the fifth game.

As early as mid-summer, Keeler said he wanted his team to be thinking about championships this year, not some far-off year in the future.

Owls sing the school fight song afterward holding the best helmets (Cherry) in college football. (Photo Courtesy of Zamani Feelings.)

It’s official now. Keeler and the Owls are ahead of schedule because, while many had the Owls beating UMass and Howard, nobody had the Owls beating Oklahoma, Georgia Tech or UTSA in the pre-season prognostications.

By this week, though, some pretty knowledgeable college football observers–Gary Segars, Bud Elliott, Colby Dant and Ryan McIntyre–had saw enough of how hard the Owls played and how well Keeler coached in that first four to pick them to win outright today (see our Friday post for the receipts).

And they did, 27-21, at Lincoln Financial Field, rallying from a 14-3 halftime deficit to pull it out against a pretty darn good team.

How good?

UTSA hung with Texas A&M before losing, 42-24, and, at the time Keeler said he wanted his Owls to be thinking championships, some people actually picked the Roadrunners to win the American Conference. After that loss to the Aggies, UTSA head coach Jeff Traylor said: “We have championship fiber.”

It’s one thing to say you have championship fiber and it’s another thing to show it and the Owls were the team who showed it in the second half, outscoring the Roadrunners, 21-7.

They did it with an offensive line that kept Evan Simon clean and a defensive line that put the other guy on his backside and running for his life on the few occasions they didn’t. Going into the season, Keeler said this was the best defensive line he’s ever had and he won 271 games as a head coach coming into the season so he had some good ones.

Then he said he “never saw a group improve as much” as his offensive line, the product of “iron sharpens iron” for both spring and summer ball. They opened holes for both Jay Ducker (the MAC’s leading rusher in 2021) and Hunter Smith (the Sun Belt’s leading rusher in 2023). Smith’s 54-yard run for a score put the Owls up, 17-13.

That aged well.

On a beautiful 82-degree afternoon in South Philly, the Temple fans who made it found out that Keeler wasn’t blowing smoke. Nothing wins more football games than putting the other guy on his ass and the Owls did that in the second half.

Going into a two-game home stretch that included UTSA on the front end and Navy on the back end, the thought process was this: Split the two and the Owls have a chance at a bowl. Sweep both and the Owls have a chance to face Memphis in the league title game.

Might as well set that bar a little higher in one week and jump over it. That’s all Keeler ever wanted and that’s more than Temple fans could have ever expected.

Monday: What We Don’t Care About

10.03.25
by

Temple-UTSA: Some educated guesses

Only a couple of things are certain around 1 p.m. or so at the Sports Complex in Philadelphia on Saturday.

The Philadelphia Flyers will be playing indoors next door and the Temple Owls will be hosting UTSA outdoors at Lincoln Financial Field on a jammed packed day of Philly sports. My guess is 17,000 plus fans in both places. Between 1-4 while things are being settled in those two places, about 45,000 Phillies fans will arrive on the scene for some pre-game tailgating.

They will probably find Lot K closed and all Temple parking. Those fans can make a difference by making noise and standing on third down when the Owls are on defense.

If anyone tells you they know what the outcome of the football game will be, they are lying. The ball is a funny shape and takes odd bounces and this one figures to be close. If those balls bounce Temple’s way and the fans can make a difference, everybody leaves happy.

In between, there are some educated guesses on both sides.

It’s amazing to me that two separate betting sites have this game at a projected 28-27 Temple score and the line has remained with USTA a 6.5-point favorite. Both Gary Segars of Winning Cures All and the guys at The College Football Experience (including Colby Dant and Ryan McIntyre) like Temple.

TCFE has gone as far as to lock things up for Temple.

Bud Elliott of CBS Sports “The Cover Three” Podcast picked Temple OUTRIGHT on the Moneyline.

This can go either way but this win is right out there on the table for Temple to taste and so the Owls must do what they have to do to put a fork in it.

This is just the kind of game first-year Temple head coach K.C. Keeler has preached about for the last nine months. Almost every day Keeler said the conference games are going to be a “50/50” ball and the team that plays the cleaner game will come out on top.

Should be a beautiful day for a good chunk of the 250,000 Temple alumni living within an hour of LFF to make the trip to support the Owls.

So far, Temple has played pretty clean. It is one of only three FBS teams with no turnovers through four and there are 129 other FBS teams.

Now it’s time to move on to the next thing as former Temple head coach John Chaney famously said:

“Take care of the known and don’t worry about the unknown.”

So far, the “known” about UTSA is that it can run the ball with Robert Harvey, Jr. (is there a Robert Harvey Sr. of any note?), who is the leading rusher in the country.

So Temple needs to stop that known and do its best against the unknown.

That element is in good hands with Temple DC Brian L. Smith, who has had major success against UTSA. Last year, Smith held UTSA to 13 points through three quarters in a Rice win. Contrast that to former Temple DC Everett Withers “holding” UTSA to 51 points in that same season. To me, that’s the biggest improvement of the K.C. Keeler hire: Bringing in a DC with a history of success versus the handicap that Temple had the last two years, a DC (Withers) with a history of failure just because he was a friend of the head coach at the time. In 2021, Withers gave up nearly 40 ppg as DC at FIU. In 2023-24, Withers came pretty darn close to that at Temple (38.7 ppg).

Smith has revamped the scheme and put personnel in positions to win.

The other known is that UTSA is terrible against the pass and Temple quarterback Evan Simon is pretty good for the pass and the Owls must exploit that secondary.

Temple must also continue to run the ball well with the 2021 MAC leading rusher (Jay Ducker) and the 2023 leading Sun Belt rusher (Hunter Smith) controlling the game and the clock, all the while keeping Harvey and company off the field.

That’s the way we think things will go down. Because we don’t know for sure is the reason why we will show up and support and will be standing and making noise on third down.

All other Owl fans should do the same.

Very Late Saturday Night (pushing 11 p.m.): Game Analysis

Monday: What We Don’t Care About

Friday: Navy Preview