If this is true, it wouldn’t be the first time Maryland head football coach Mike Locksley was mad at Temple.

Way back when the Owls were a winning team in the last decade, Locksley opened his Maryland career with a 79-0 win over Howard.

He followed that up with 63-20 win over No. 21 Syracuse, then lost to Temple, 20-17. The post-game handshake with then Temple coach Rod Carey was particularly unenthusiastic.

That was in 2019, though, and this is now.

Locksley was recently quoted as saying his third-string running back demanded $100,000 to not enter the portal and that third-string running back appears to be at Temple right now.

Could Antwain Littleton II have been paid $100,000 by Temple to play for the Owls?

Certainly looks that way because there were two running backs who could be considered “third-string” and only one of them was taken by another team and that’s Littleton. The other “third-string” running back, Ramon Brown, is one of the still remaining 1,000 players in the transfer portal who have not found a team and probably won’t.

So it does not appear to be that Brown ever had the leverage (or even the stats) to make such a demand but Littleton, the more accomplished Big 10 running back of the two, did.

If Temple is paying Littleton $100,000, color me shocked but there are a couple of other possibilities at play here.

One, Brown could be the guy who demanded $100K. Two, Littleton demanded $100K and didn’t get it but bet on his NFL future by taking what would almost be a sure starting job at Temple.

Three, Temple head coach Stan Drayton could have found the $100K for Littleton.

Any of the scenarios work for me because Temple now has a starting tailback battle between an accomplished Big 10 back–more like a second-teamer than a third-teamer–and a JUCO back who was named first-team All-American in Torrez Worthy.

Significant upgrades over Darvon Hubbard and Edward Saydee, the Owls best two backs of the last two years.

That’s how you get better and that’s how you win more than three games.

Even with that good news for Temple, this singular situation highlights the Mike Francesa rant at the top of this post. When everyone in college football is free to move to the next team, college football is over as we know it.

Someone not named the NCAA (hint: Congress) has to rein this in and that probably won’t happen for another five or ten years.

Meanwhile, Temple has to remain above water and pay the piper.

Even if they upset a coach 100 miles down the road.