Tag Archives: Houston Cougars football

11.09.18
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TU-Houston: Making History?

Temple_Houston_TV_Series-308014659-large

Temple Houston was the name of a fairly underrated short-lived TV series in the 1960s. Temple Houston, played by the actor Jeffrey Hunter, was the real-life son of Texas founder Sam Houston and a successful 19th Century lawyer.

Temple versus Houston is also a short-lived football series, so one-sided that most sets are turned off by halftime in a lot of the games.

Maybe that will change by Saturday night.

A regular football season usually consists of 12 games, a lucky 13th if your school is listed in the upper 2/3ds of 130 teams.

Rarely does a single game, even a bowl one, offer an opportunity to do something that has never been done before but that’s the chance in front of Temple’s football team on Saturday (7 p.m., CBS Sports Network).

Beat Houston.

houston

Since Temple began playing intercollegiate football in 1888 (four years after its founding in 1884), the Owls have never beaten Houston.

They were the victim of an incredibly bad interference call on an interception by Mike Jones that might have given them that victory last year but that was then and this is now.

They’ve only had six chances but you’ve got to figure that the odds of winning one will eventually go their way.

Vegas certainly doesn’t, as the oddsmakers set the line at 4.5 on Monday. By Tuesday, some Temple money drove the line down to 4 but now it has settled back to the original 4.5.

cherryhelmets

Owls are unbeaten in Cherry helmets this year and 20-7 with them over the last three. This is the helmet of choice for Houston Saturday night.

Fortunately, the game is not played in Vegas and the Temple kids have a chance to prove the experts wrong and do something that has never been done.

The Owls have more than a puncher’s chance. By comparative scores, they are more impressive than Houston except for one game. Three weeks ago, they beat Cincinnati, 24-17, and the week after that Cincy went down to SMU and won. Houston, on the other hand, wasn’t able to what Cincy did last week at SMU and lost 45-31. Temple beat East Carolina, 49-6, while Houston also beat East Carolina, 46-20. Temple beat Tulsa, 31-17, while Houston also beat Tulsa, 41-26 and both teams also won at Navy (the lone time Houston’s score against a Temple opponent was more impressive).

So, at least from a comparative score standpoint, the numbers indicate there is not that much to chose between the teams. As anyone who knows football can tell you, every game is different and that’s why Saturday night is a relative toss-up.

The game is at Houston, that’s one thing in the Cougars’ favor. So is history unless the Owls are fired up enough to make some history of their own.

In a season where this team has not separated itself from any great prior Temple team, this is the legacy the TU kids can establish if they can tackle just a little better than they did last week in Orlando.

Sunday: Game Analysis

05.28.16
by

Be All, Or End All?

houston

Houston is more like Temple than any other AAC school.

This will be the last post, at least on this site, on a stadium until Temple University officially makes some sort of pronouncement about a timetable for construction.  The prediction here is that will not come for another year or two, so any further speculation on the topic is really silly.

All that has happened so far is that Temple has announced it wants to build a stadium and the city has announced it is against Temple building that stadium. We have reached, with apologies to Donald J. Trump, a Mexican Standoff.

This is going to be a long, drawn-out, process. First, the uni is going to have to get past the minefield that is City Council and, once past that, artillery of the “community” and, after that hurdle, the tanks and suicide bombers of possible law suits holding up the project. People who are talking like there could be a game in the new stadium in two years are really kidding themselves. More like two years until there is the first shovel on the ground.

If that.

This post, though, is largely to tell the tale about Houston’s beautiful new facility and the similarities that Houston has with Temple, which are many. When I first heard that Temple was considering a football stadium,  oh, about 50 or so years ago, I found the idea more than intriguing but necessary.

The Owls were nomads at the time, playing at a sub-standard stadium, the Vet, or at the tail end of their long-term relationship in Mount Airy. Then, the Owls talked about building a 35,000-seat indoor football/basketball complex on the site of Wilkie-Buick, and that’s probably what should have happened. The Owls would have solved two problems, football and basketball, and dealt with the community and the city once, not twice.



“There’s the games-are-at-the-(pro stadium)
excuse, so there’s no college environment,
and if UH just moves games to campus,
things will be fine. … then there’s
the neighborhood-isn’t-safe excuse.
And the traffic-sucks excuse.
Don’t forget the problems-with-parking,
or there’s-not-enough-good-spaces
-for-tailgating excuses.”
Sound familiar?
It’s Houston, not TU

Now, the Owls are in a half-billion dollar palace just seven miles south of the campus with a dedicated subway stop at each end taking as many students who want to attend games door-to-door.

There are a lot of things to consider about a new stadium, and chief among them, is the question about it solving all or most of the program’s current ills. There are a couple of working studies to consider and one is the 15-year Liacouras Center history. In the years since the LC was built, Fran Dunphy had the team winning three-straight A10 titles and there were plenty of seats to be had in those years. You can complain all you want about Dunphy, but when he gives you three-straight league titles and that arena comes nowhere close to selling out  on a regular basis, you’ve got a fan problem that is deeper than an on-campus facility. Another is Houston’s beautiful stadium, where the Cougars have completed their second season.

In this story, head coach Tom Herman complains about attendance, and the writer cites many of the concerns some Temple fans have about an on-campus stadium. There are a lot of sides to this stadium story, and it’s not all crystal clear.

While l would love to be able to walk from one end of the campus to a football game on the other end of the campus, it’s worth five minutes of your time to read that what happened in Houston wasn’t the be-all or end all it was cracked up to be.

Monday: Anthony Russo’s 2016 Role

Wednesday: The Second Easiest Schedule In College Football