Back when Tiger Woods was winning just about every major golf tournament that there was, sports books had a standard bet before majors: Woods against the field.

Woods won just enough to make the bet–appealing on its face–a moneymaker for the house.

K.C. Keeler went into Temple’s offseason promising to get an experienced QB or two and some Owl fans, me included, weren’t expecting a Woods but certainly hoping for someone who reached the leaderboard of some quarterback competition on the field somewhere.

Instead, they got a couple of guys–third stringers at Penn State and Washington State–who now have a 50/50 chance to win the starting job at some point before the Sept. 5 opener.

Or at least a significant shot against a field that includes three true freshmen.

Say, those three–Brody Norman, Brady Palmer and Lamar Best–are roughly the field and the two transfer portal acquisitions, Ajani Sheppard and Jaxon Smolik–are “Tiger Woods.”

I’ll take the field, specifically Temple’s “secret weapon” in Best, whose film is off the charts. Best is every bit the passer P.J. Walker was and a far better runner. All Walker did was break every career passing mark at Temple.

He might not be the starter but Temple’s failure to get a high achieving starter in its two transfer portal acquisitions raises significant concerns.

Among them, this: Smolik got on the field in a real game and did virtually nothing for Penn State. Same with Sheppard in stints and Rutgers and Washington State.

When you have a chance to get on the field in an actual game, you’ve got to do something. Neither of them did. Sheppard, like former Temple quarterback Evan Simon, is a one-time Rutgers’ backup but Simon threw for over 300 yards in a Big 10 game at Iowa so you knew he came with receipts.

Neither of these guys are coming with receipts.

Both, like Best, Norman, and Palmer, have good high school film but at least in the two transfer portal cases, that film has not translated into actual results in real college football games.

Maybe they will at Temple and maybe they won’t, but they haven’t so far, and the best predictor of future success is past success. I was hoping Temple would land the Saginaw Valley or Western Carolina quarterbacks, but apparently the staff whiffed on those two high-achievers.

This seems like settling to me and far from the dynamic duo of Simon and Gevani McCoy, but we will see.

Back to the drawing board.

BYU’s Bear Bachmeier showed a “true freshman” can go 11-1 on a college football field so that’s why I’m taking the freshman field against the two transfer portal pickups. He had to come from a long way in summer camp to beat more experienced quarterbacks who had a full spring and maybe that’s what will happen here.

May the Best man win.

Or at least the most talented one.