Tag Archives: football

03.14.25
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Temple: One season over, one begins

Like many Temple fans, watched the finale of the Adam Fisher Story on Thursday night as the men’s basketball team lost to Tulsa.

Unacceptable.

Temple is a great school in the only World Heritage City in the United States with nearly 40,000 full-time students and many more famous alumni than Tulsa and Tulsa is in the middle of bum-bleep Oklahoma with only 3,200 full-time students.

If there is a legitimate leadership council at Temple, heads should roll.

That’s a discussion for another time and probably the next Board of Trustees meeting at Sullivan Hall.

One season is over and one is beginning.

Temple is led on the football side by a CEO who proved he knows what he is doing at three separate schools.

There is no reason to believe that won’t happen at a fourth.

On the other hand, Fisher’s major claim to fame was editing videos for Jim Larranaga at Miami.

Pretty wide gap between the two hires.

K.C. Keeler’s first week as a Temple head coach at an “official” spring practice will end tomorrow and there is a lot of good to say about his production.

Temple’s “Employee of the Week” showed an impressive grasp of the personnel under his disposal.

As a hard-core Temple fan for the last four years, I’ve studied the roster pretty well and think I have a firm handle on the ability of the holdovers.

In his first press conference as Temple’s head coach, Keeler demonstrated an “off-the-charts” kind of knowledge of the individual skills of every player who every reporter asked him about. That proves to me he both already studied the film and had an honest sit-down with all 105 scholarship players in the program.

Now all that needs left to be done is a clean evaluation of a month of practice and a further determination of what must be done in the transfer portal to plug a hole here and there.

That’s the kind of knowledge that Stan Drayton never showed in his three years here.

Will it translate into more wins?

That will all be determined by how Keeler’s staff fills the 10 or so holes that will inevitably need to be filled after spring practice is concluded.

Put it this way: I have a lot more confidence in a football guy leading my football program than a video guy leading my basketball program.

Monday: Doubting Thomases

03.10.25
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Spring Football Returns to Temple tomorrow

While spring practice officially starts tomorrow, the Owls have been hard at work all winter at the indoor facility. Temperatures approaching 70 degrees on Tuesday no doubt will push practice outside.

Some things change and some remain the same, even in the transfer portal/NIL environment.

Those who attended the men’s basketball home finale against North Texas on Sunday (a 66-61 win) saw a senior day that honored more players who didn’t spend four years at Temple than did. That’s sad because watching the journey of these players from freshmen to seniors was always a fun part for fans.

On the football side, things are just beginning as K.C. Keeler’s first spring practice begins tomorrow (March 11).

There are five big days in college football and the opening of spring practice is one of them. Opening of summer camp is another, as is the first signing day and the regular opening day.

The fifth one for a school like Temple has to be bowl selection Sunday because the top 80 teams in a 130-team FBS make it. A couple of bad coaching hires and Temple has been outside that loop for the past six years and that’s a disgrace.

The Owls decided to find someone who knew what he was doing rather than a guy (Stan Drayton) who they HOPED knew what he was doing.

More Temple fans follow football than the next two most popular sports combined, as this poll on OwlsDaily.com proved.

Already, Keeler has made an important spring practice decision in that the Owls are going to have their Cherry and White game. That’s important because with this new hire is a new enthusiasm for the sport at Temple and getting people out in April to see the new staff at work can only help drive up season tickets.

Hopefully, Keeler has checked out the game film for important players like running back Torrez Worthy (who came into his own in the second half of last season) and quarterback Evan Simon, who proved to be Temple TUFF despite a playing behind a line who didn’t give him much protection.

As important as the work is on the field in the next month, it’ll probably be even more important to scour the portal to get some pass rushers and pass protectors on both sides of the line.

That’s because we don’t get to see players developing from freshman to seniors anymore. While that’s sad, if you get a ready-to-play guy into the program by summer, there’s an opportunity now for an upgraded roster that did not exist back then.

03.07.25
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Delaware: Schedule them and beat them

Temple not only got Delaware’s best current player but stole its best recruit as well.

When a first-year Temple head coach named Wayne Hardin was asked about scheduling Villanova, he came up with his succinct response:

“I’m all for scheduling them and beating them.”

Another first-year Temple coach, K.C. Keeler, would be wise to adopt the same policy in the near future about not only the Wildcats, but his alma mater.

Temple puts fannies in the seats in Delaware and the Blue Hens would do the same in Philly.

Hardin pretty much did both in his 13-year Temple career. He also believed in scheduling smaller school power Delaware and doing the same.

Temple hasn’t scheduled Delaware since Bruce Arians ended that series by saying: “I’m all for scheduling smaller schools but not when you are the biggest game of their season.”

Now, with a former Delaware head coach and the Blue Hens moving up to FBS, it’s time to renew this longstanding rivalry.

There are a couple of reasons for that.

Wayne Hardin’s record against Delaware and legendary coach Tubby Raymond was 8-4, proving that when both teams have a legendary head coach, Temple is the better football school.

One, the storyline.

Former Delaware player and legendary head coach K.C. Keeler is now the head coach of Temple. Keeler stole not only the best Delaware player in the transfer portal but the Blue Hens’ best recruit this year so there’s that.

Two, fannies in the seats.

What visiting team STILL holds the Delaware single-game attendance record?

Temple.

Delaware hailed the acquisition of RB Keveun Mason. He is now at Temple.

That was set when a Joe Klecko-led Owls’ team spanked the Blue Hens, 31-8, before a record crowd.

Temple needs fannies in the seats and visiting Delaware would bring a significant amount (maybe 30-40 percent) of a crowd that could exceed 30,000 at Lincoln Financial Field.

Delaware has asked to play Temple before but the Owls (rightly) demanded a 2-for-1 deal. Delaware wanted a 1-for-1. Temple said thanks but no thanks.

Now that Delaware has joined FBS, maybe the Owls can relent and settle for a home-and-home.

That’s a deal that makes sense for both ballclubs.

Kind of like the Eagles sending Nolan Smith to Cleveland for Myles Garrett. Cleveland gets younger at the same position without losing a whole lot of talent and Philly gets a possible two- and three-peat.

Monday: Football Season is Here (Kinda/Sorta)

02.27.25
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Football: The Game where coaching matters most

Some great stuff about hockey here but advance to the 41-minute mark for the Keeler comments.

There has been a procession of coaches at Temple throughout the past few years and most gave passing props to the school’s football history or former stars.

Geoff Collins was the most clueless.

Temple’s only Heisman Trophy runner-up, Paul Palmer, applauds the hire of K.C. Keeler. (He hasn’t aged a bit since 1986.)

At a Temple alumni function that coincided with one of his first spring practices, Collins walked up to a bunch of Temple football alumni who were wearing varsity jackets. Collins assumed they were high school coaches who he also invited to the same practice.

“Hey, I’m Geoff Collins, where do you coach?” he said to one.

That one was Temple football Hall of Famer and arguably GOAT Paul Palmer (really, the only other GOAT is Joe Klecko but since this is just for Temple stuff and not for pro football stuff, Palmer’s got to be the guy).

Swing and miss by Collins right in his first at-bat.

Palmer was way too humble to say “I’m Paul Palmer, the greatest Temple player of all time” so instead he said he coached at Haddon Heights (N.J.), which was also true.

Collins had no idea who he was talking to that day.

Al Golden and Matt Rhule both understood and respected Temple history. Golden said when he played at Penn State no team hit him as hard as Temple so he went back to TEMPLE on the helmets to honor that time. Rhule adopted many of the Temple traditions passed on to him by his former boss.

Temple has played football since 1894 and never hired a national championship coach who got that title in Division I or above. That all changed in December and the impact should be felt on the field.

Steve Addazio was the guy who got rid of the greatest helmet in Temple history and put the block T back on it so he also swung and missed on traditions.

When it comes to Temple football, Collins wasn’t the only tone deaf guy but he certainly holds a spot in the Tone Deaf Hall of Fame.

The same certainly cannot be said about new head Temple football coach K.C. Keeler. He not only recognized Temple right away, but said the only reason he didn’t end up at Temple was because Wayne Hardin ran out of scholarships and so he ended up at Delaware.

Good stuff and, yes, he knows who Paul Palmer is.

Came across this great podcast by former Temple tight end Bryant Garvin and Temple fan Monty Moss (give it a like and a sub) talking about Temple’s new coaching hire and Palmer endorses Keeler for all of the right reasons.

Palmer talks about not only what Keeler did at Rowan, Delaware and Sam Houston but his commitment to all three institutions. He makes the very valid point that Keeler is in his mid-60s and that’s not an age where you think about moving on but one where leaving a legacy is more important.

Why not make that legacy at the school where you wanted to be as a 17-year-old kid?

Keeler brings with him all the “how to” stuff he brought to those other schools but the “want to” stuff has always been there with Temple.

The Temple GOAT understands that. The rest of Temple Nation is about to find out.

Monday: An under-the-radar recruit

02.24.25
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Football in February: Reasons for optimism

While one major sports team at Temple University appears to be imploding, there will be a “Football in February” event held by the only other major sports team at Temple.

K.C. Keeler will be appearing at Maxi’s today to answer all your questions and outline his plan to bring immediate respectability to Temple on a national level that we really haven’t seen around here since the first four games of the AAC basketball tournament in 2024.

Temple hoops had a great opportunity to build off that national momentum but blew it as new acquisitions never panned out.

Since I have a “real job” that I have to be at the time, I won’t be able to attend but if I could ask him a couple of questions these would be it:

“One, since you talked to OwlsDaily.com editor Shawn Pastor about 10 days ago and said you haven’t watched any film on the current Owls, did you get a chance to do so subsequently?

“Two, what were you pleasantly surprised by and what areas of concern do you have going into spring practice in a couple of weeks?

That’s pretty much it.

If not, why not and do you plan to check out the game film of the guys who showed enough loyalty to the school and the program to stay?

The community outreach could not have come at a better time and we’re not talking about 5 p.m. on a Monday afternoon. We’re talking about the overall malaise this winter with Temple sports.

The Temple basketball Owls started their conference season with a 4-1 record followed by a 6-3 record and are now sitting at 6-9 in the AAC. They were the only team to beat Memphis in the conference at one time.

Now a complete implosion has occurred.

One site that covers Temple basketball after an 80-64 loss at UAB used the term “moral victory” even while suggesting that it wasn’t. Hell, that was no moral victory. It was an immoral loss. I clapped back on that suggesting that a Pearson Hall rec team of non-scholarship athletes could have lost to UAB 80-16 or so and there’s not a whole much of a difference in national perspective between 80-64 and 80-16.

Not good and maybe there are some lessons to be learned on the football side.

A second-year hoop coach relied on high-profile transfers from Penn State and St. Joseph’s who never panned out and maybe better vetting should have been involved. Maybe some semblance of hustle on defense could have helped.

It doesn’t even look like the basketball team is trying on defense (not to mention rebounding) and that’s never a good look.

Now Keeler appears to be focused not only on talent but on vetting and coaching and playing defense with a modicum of heart, which will always keep you in the game in any sport.

Keeler will explain all that and more this afternoon and maybe for the first time in a long time, Temple fans will leave a venue with smiles on their faces.

02.20.25
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Last on Keeler’s to-do list: Film Study

Temple is blessed to have a great returning quarterback in Evan Simon.

Every new head coach has to have “to-do list” and, frankly I’m surprised by one thing new Temple head coach K.C. Keeler admitted he has not done.

Study game tape on the current Temple team.

The answer I was looking for here was: “Yeah, Shawn, I saw all those against Utah State and Evan Simon is a pretty special QB.“

Not being a College Football Hall of Fame head coach but someone with a solid grasp of Temple football history and a graduate degree in Wayne Hardin University, that’s the first thing I would have done had I gotten the job.

Color me surprised that he told OwlsDaily.com editor-in-chief Shawn Pastor that he had not reviewed any film of the current Temple holdovers.

Some pretty good Torrez Worthy highlights here. Kinda reminds me “a little” of Saquon Barkley.

It’s not too late for Keeler to put the projector in the team meeting room and take a look at a few players he now has under his control.

My first duty as a new Temple head coach would have been to study game film on every single Temple football player.

There is a simple reason for that.

I want to know who I want to keep as a starter and who I want to replace.

Don’t know how Keeler could move forward without that information but it’s not too late to do soon.

I will offer this current bit of advice: Please study the game film of two players in two games against teams that would have fared pretty well against any G5 team, Utah State and UConn.

The first player is Evan Simon. The second is Torrez Worthy.

Simon made five great throws under pressure for touchdowns in a 45-29 win over Utah State.

Torrez Worthy had 95 yards on 12 carries, including a 35-yard run that set up the Owls on the UConn 1 to win the game against a bowl-bound team. Instead of going with the leaping handoff to Worthy on a 4th-and-goal (think “Sam Bam Cunningham” here), the Owls went with a tush push to a 160-pound backup quarterback.

Instead of a 26-23 Temple win (which 99.9 percent of the CBS Sports audience thought they would see), the soaking wet 160-pound QB fumbled the football and it went the other way for a 29-20 loss.

Not the No. 1 reason the old staff got fired, but certainly near the top.

If Keeler is the coach I think he is, he will find out the film doesn’t lie about two of his players.

Both Simon and Worthy are special talents.

Temple can win big with both.

The Owls need to upgrade most of the other 20 positions. (Really, not many because the Owls have a lot of good returning players, particularly on defense.)

Keeler has crossed everything else off his to-do list before the start of spring practice on March 11.

This one last thing should be at the top of his list. Get that damn projector and walk a couple of feet outside of his Temple football coaching office to the film room and take some notes on Simon and Worthy and maybe four or five other returning Temple loyalists.

Then we can move forward to fill his other needs.

02.14.25
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Not long until we see greatness at work

An argument can be made, maybe for the first time since 1983, Temple football fans will have a chance to watch greatness at work fairly soon.

Arguably, because while Bruce Arians, Al Golden and Matt Rhule did some great work for Temple since Wayne Hardin retired that year, all were “learning on the job” types who did their better work after getting acclimated to the demands of being a first-time head coach.

When Hardin first stepped foot on campus in 1970, he was not only a championship pro football coach with the Philadelphia Bulldogs, he was one of the five best college football coaches in the nation before that.

In 1961 at Navy, Hardin had the Middies ranked No. 2 in the country. That was an amazing, incredible accomplishment in the year that Navy players were ineligible to play in the NFL due to a five-year service requirement.

Wayne Hardin’s proven dominance over Tubby Raymond and UD.

You think the NIL and the transfer portal are hard?

Try walking into Roger Staubach’s house and telling him he can play at Navy for the next four years but won’t be able to play for any NFL team until he’s 26.

That’s exactly the sales pitch Hardin had for him and he was able to sell it.

Staubach not only bought it but got a Heisman Trophy as a result, as did his teammate and future Temple football radio analyst Joe Bellino. Hardin was a pretty good salesman.

Then Temple hired him in 1971, which was like Temple of today hiring Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman a decade from now.

Hardin is in the College Football Hall of Fame now and no doubt current Temple head coach K.C. Keeler will join him in a few years. After all, Keeler is already the winningest FCS coach in history and that’s probably enough. No one is likely to catch him since the FCS coaches on his heels probably will get FBS jobs.

Keeler has to do something Hardin never had to and that was navigate the choppy waters that are both the NIL and the transfer portal.

Nobody has a better understand of the genius of Hardin than Keeler, who was recruited by him but the Owls overcommitted on scholarships that season so Keeler ended up at Delaware.

Keeler understands the history of Hardin’s battles with legendary UD coach Tubby Raymond, where Hardin went 8-4 against him including a 31-8 win at Delaware before the (still) largest crowd in Delaware history and a 31-14 win over an otherwise 12-0 Delaware team that Keeler played on in 1979.

Hardin proved he could win at Temple.

Keeler already proved he could do it at a tougher place (Sam Houston State), leading that program from an FCS national champion team to a 9-3 FBS team in no time.

He will apply that same kind of blueprint to Temple starting with the first spring practice on March 11. That’s less than one month from now.

If you see greatness at work, take notes. Or you can watch this space because we will be doing exactly that.

Monday: Difference between want to and how to

Friday: That’s my quarterback

Monday: The AAC Schedule

02.10.25
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Temple now has three Howie Roseman’s

Khalil Ahmad will reportedly go from being recruiting coordinator at Penn State to a high-profile football job at Temple.

What’s better than one Howie Roseman?

Three of them.

While Jalen Hurts received the MVP of the Super Bowl on Sunday night after a 40-22 demolishing of the Kansas City Chiefs, most inside football guys will tell you that the real MVP this year was Roseman, the general manager of the Philadelphia Eagles.

Put it this way: After last year’s total collapse, it was Roseman’s job to retool both the roster and the coaching staff and hit went 4-for-4 with both.

He got a couple of No. 1-type picks in Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean and both provided good coverage and sure tackling on the back end of the defense the team didn’t have a year ago. Plus, he signed what turned out to be the best linebacker in football in Zach Baun and re-signed C.J. Gardner-Johnson.

Kyle Pollock.

Then he fixed the coaching piece by hiring a pair of proven coordinators in Kellen Moore and Vic Fangio.

Mix the coaching with the new players and a team that couldn’t tackle anyone at the end of last year could not be blocked.

Temple football fixed that coaching piece a few months ago when it fired Stan Drayton and replaced him with a Hall of Fame head coach in K.C. Keeler.

Now with Keeler’s hiring of Khalil Ahmad to a “high-ranking” front office role at Temple, the Owls do not have one Howie Roseman but three.

The other two are Clayton Barnes and Old Dominion’s Kyle Pollock.

All will have a “Howie Roseman” type role with the Owls, scouring the transfer portal for overlooked talent like Baun was in the NFL.

Ahman is Penn State’s recruiting director so he knows what he’s doing. Barnes was the portal guy at Sam Houston State and helped build a roster than gave Keeler a 9-3 record this year and Pollock’s job description is “associate general manager for personnel and roster improvement.”

Sounds to me like the days of reaching for JUCO talent are over and Temple is going to make some real inroads into acquiring talent that could win right away.

One Howie Roseman turned out well for the Eagles.

Maybe three of them will do the same for the other Lincoln Financial Field football tenant.

Friday: A tale of three Temple programs

02.07.25
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Feb. 4 signees: Reasons for optimism

Gut feeling that De’Carlos Young becomes Temple’s featured back in 2025 and that Jett White and Jayvant Brown make immediate all-AAC impacts.

You won’t find Temple football in the top 10 of recruiting classes.

You don’t have to.

All you need to do is compare Temple not necessarily against the best AAC recruiting classes (Memphis and Tulane’s were better) but against the G5 as a whole.

Nobody said Sam Houston’s recruiting class was No. 1 in the Group of Five a year ago. In fact, it was much closer to No. 64 than No. 1.

What Sam Houston had then and what Temple has now is a College Hall of Fame football coach in K.C. Keeler. It also had no NIL money. It also finished 9-3 in the regular season.

That means a lot.

A year ago Temple had neither a highly rated recruiting class nor a Hall of Fame college football coach.

One out of two ain’t bad.

The reality of college football today is that the schools with the alumni with the rolls of money will always have the top-ranked classes.

Temple will never have that.

The sooner we accept that reality the better.

So what’s the path forward?

With apologies to P4 big-time recruits Jett White and Jayvant Brown, DeCarlos Young is Temple Football Forever’s choice as the No. 1 recruit in this 2025 class.

Keeler and a very smart staff identifying diamonds in the rough is acceptable alternative.

Make a bowl game right away and challenge for the AAC title in a couple of years.

That appears to have happened on Wednesday with this recruiting class.

Put it this way: Does even a Temple team coming off consecutive 10-win seasons ever dream of recruiting a player like Jett White or Jaybrant Brown?

The answer clearly is no.

The transfer portal taketh away but it also giveth.

White and Brown were big-time P4 recruits and would not have given Temple a second look first time around.

Now, they can help Temple inch closer to the top of the AAC.

How close?

Maybe not to the Memphis or Tulane level but certainly to that level just after those two teams

Keeler as my coach over Stan Drayton as my coach makes me think 6-6 is much more attainable than the 3-9 we’ve been used to as fans.

Now this guy still has six scholarships in his pocket with about 2,000 players to chose from and they better be defensive linemen who can put the quarterback on his ass and offensive linemen who can protect a franchise quarterback like Evan Simon.

If he doesn’t deliver them by the summer, you will read your first criticism of Keeler here. Until then, trust a process demonstratively better than the last process.

02.03.25
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Some great players remain in the portal

Hard to believe the number of very good players left in the college football’s transfer portal and, the longer they stay there, the better the chances for a G5 school like Temple to come away with some.

There’s no secret who new Temple portal expert Kyle Pollock should be targeting because the Owls lost two of their better defensive lineman to both portal and graduation and their offensive line struggled in pass protection last season.

Both need to be resupplied.

The top offensive lineman remaining in the portal is Fa’Alili Fa’amore who is a 6-5, 314-pound junior from Wake Forest. He originally signed with Washington State but moved on to Washington.

C.J. James from UTSA was granted an additional year of eligibility due to the Diego Pavia lawsuit. He’s 6-3, 310 pounds and is familiar with Temple. The Owls lost their starting quarterback to a rival conference school from Texas two years ago so turnabout is fair play. K.C. Keeler has plenty of recruiting connections in Texas so maybe he could pull this off.

Hard to believe the number of very good players left in the college football's transfer portal and, the longer they stay there, the better the chances for a G5 school like Temple to come away with some.
Analysts like Bruce Feldman insist the biggest problem with the transfer portal is the belief among players that they will land somewhere. Nearly 50 percent who enter one year find themselves without a home the next.

Kai Greer (6-6, 285) redshirted this year at Georgia Tech and has offers from places like Liberty and Utah State so Temple should probably throw its hat into the ring for him. Temple beat Utah State, 45-29, last year and Keeler beat Liberty, 20-12, as head coach at Sam Houston State.

Those are just a few of the “types” of lineman Temple can and should go after.

The Owls don’t have the same NIL resources many other schools have but they can offer an opportunity for good players who want to bet on themselves to succeed.

Maybe it’s enough. Maybe it’s not, but we will never know unless we try.

Friday: Signing Day Recap