Visual proof that Mike Sielski went on WHIP and flat-out lied. Written proof below.

There might or might not be a LaSalle University bias against the recent success of the Temple football team, but the evidence is there that at least a jealously exists among members of the media who were graduates of that institution.

Inquirer columnist Mike Sielski wrote a curiously timed column that implied the Owls’ paid the devil for the win over Penn State by cutting seven sports to benefit football. He neglected to do two things that every good journalist does—reach out to get the other side of the story and fact-check his assumptions. Had he done the first, he would have been able to kill two birds with one stone.  He would have been informed that not a single penny of the cuts went to football and had been reinvested into the other Olympic sports.

Sielski compounded his problems by going on the Zach Gelb Show on the Temple student radio station WHIP with this uninformed statement, “let’s be real, there were a lot more Penn State fans there” to Gelb, who, to his credit, shot back and said the stands were a sea of Cherry. Sielski, who wasn’t there, let the issue die but it was easy to picture him smirking and thinking at the other end of the line: “This is just some naive kid who sees the world through Cherry-colored glasses.”

Too bad his colleague, Mike Jensen (who was there), waited a couple of days before objectively settling the issue with this line from a column he wrote on the Owls:

The case on LaSalle’s jealously might have been closed with those few words until Temple fans picked up the Daily News yesterday and saw David Murphy’s “best bet” in the weekly predictions was UMass to cover the 10.5 against the Owls. You know Murphy is hoping and praying he is right.  Coincidently or not, Murphy went to the same college Sielski did. There’s not a whole lot of objective football analysis out there to indicate that UMass will even be in the game tomorrow against the Owls and certainly far less to make them a “best bet.”

More proof.

Wishful thinking on his part, yes, and maybe a huge case of football-envy from guy whose school dropped football over a decade ago.

The Owls cannot afford to stub their toes the next few weeks for a number of reasons, the above two being relatively unimportant given the bigger picture, but they should know that, if they do, there are a lot of unscrupulous people just waiting to pound on them.

So, in a word, the game plan tomorrow against UMass: Pound. Pound the rock to keep Blake Frohnapfel off the field and, when the Minuteman quarterback finally gets on the field, pound him like they pounded Christian Hackenberg.

Because, Temple should know now, there are folks waiting to pound on the Owls should they misstep and many of them are consumed by jealously even in their own hometown.

Tomorrow: ESPN Gameday and Depth Charts