Tag Archives: ncaa-football

11.30.25
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Season post-mortem: Good, so close to great

Plenty of good to like about K.C. Keeler’s first season as Temple head coach, so the grade has to be a Solid B.

Good, but could have been better so no A.

Refs also made a mistake in the Navy game that was just as important as Temple not kicking the field goal.

The Owls finished 5-7 and were only three knees away from 6-6 and a bowl game.

We’ve harped on this before, so won’t spend more than one or two sentences on the Navy game. Tied, 24-24, with 1:16 left and a first-and-goal from the 1, the obvious move was to take three knees and get that clock down to about 20 seconds before kicking a field goal from extra point distance to win it, 27-24.

Carl Hardin then squibs the ensuing kickoff, and Navy does the five backward passes on the kickoff that never works and somebody like Curly Ordonez falls on the ball to end the game. Then Hardin gets carried off the field, the Homecoming crowd of nearly 27,000 goes home happy and maybe a good portion of those folks come back for the final two games.

Wasn’t to be.

The worst errors are the unforced ones and that was doozy of the year. Didn’t buy Keeler’s post-game explanation that the Owls didn’t practice the kneel down and he wasn’t comfortable doing it. That was the same play the Owls executed flawlessly at the end of four of their five wins, so they must’ve practiced it. That was the difference between 6-6 and maybe playing another 6-6 team in a bowl game and getting about three weeks extra practice time for next year.

Live and learn.

Temple was 3 points away from beating three bowl teams (Navy, Army, UTSA, which they did beat) and a 7-5 record.

The one-point Army loss was hard, but easier to take than the loss to the other service academy.

Now let’s get to the good part.

They did beat a UTSA team that WILL be bowl bound and handed Charlotte a worse loss than either Tulane, North Texas or Army did.

They added a road win over Tulsa, something that the old coaching staff never did.

They upgraded the roster significantly all the while keeping every single player on scholarship who wanted to stay.

Even though they lose a record-setting quarterback in Evan Simon, they were thisclose to bringing in a Heisman Trophy candidate (Trinidad Chambliss), who was scooped up by Ole Miss the Friday he was supposed to sign at Temple.

They probably won’t find a Heisman candidate to replace him in the transfer portal this time, but they will find a QB or two good enough to win in the American Conference. Pretty sure they will upgrade the entire roster the same way, while keeping a good portion of the two-deep who do return.

At 6:46 here, Yale demonstrates the general principle of what TU should have done against Navy.

Keeler and roster-building guru Clayton Barnes built a nine-win FBS roster with fewer NIL resources at Sam Houston State than they have at Temple and probably will build a nine-win roster at Temple either next year or the year after.

All they have to do is improve to 6-7 next year and continue the upward curve.

Unlike basketball, there is reason for optimism with Temple football and the structure Keeler put in place is it.

Fairly certain there will be a better grade a dozen months from now, whether it’s a B+ or an A.

Friday: Signing Day Analysis

Monday: Room at the Top

11.22.25
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Temple’s bowl hopes now rest on a 90/10 game

The Owls didn’t even attempt a throwback pass from Kayjia Hollawayne to JoJo Bermudez so they lost.

Way back in August, K.C. Keeler said he noticed something about the American Conference.

“I told our guys there are going to be a lot of 50/50 games in this league and our chances of winning those games will come down to how clean we play,” he said.

Demerick Morris, who once thought the grass was greener on the Oklahoma State side of the fence and spent some time practicing for Mike Gundy, came back to Temple once he heard K.C. Keeler had taken the job. He takes one last look at the green grass at the Linc after his final game at Temple. (Black and White Photo Courtesy of Zamani Feelings)

Unfortunately Temple’s last 50/50 game was at Army and the Owls are out of such games meaning that their hopes to shock the world and make a bowl game rest on a 90/10 game.

And they have the 10 in that equation.

Maybe the Tulane game was a 70/10 game and that was pretty much reflected in Saturday’s final score of 37-13. Tulane got a number of ridiculous calls by refs who were seemingly told by the league office that if there was a 50/50 call, give it to the Green Wave. We can’t say for sure but it looked that way.

Expect another Green–Mean–to get the same kind of deference in five days.

Really, the game at North Texas (Black Friday) looks more lopsided in the sense that the Owls will have to play a better quarterback and a better running back than anyone they’ve seen on Tulane and they will have to do it on the road against a 10-1 Mean Green team that needs that game to reach its first American Conference championship game.

Temple’s been to two of those and won one and that only seems like a hundred years ago and not less than a decade ago.

Not a LB, but DT’s Demerick Morris’ legacy at Temple will be that of the first guy who entered the transfer portal and returned to 10th and Diamond.

Still, the Owls themselves were once 5-3 so not making a bowl would be a huge disappointment. If that happens, I would feel sorry for all the Owls who worked so hard–especially a guy like DT Demerick Morris on the defensive side and QB Evan Simon on the offensive side.

For not only those guys but themselves, they need to find a way to play a perfect game on Friday, or this will be forever known as the Year of The Three Knees.

That is, if they had done what every other pro or college team would have done with 1:16 left and a first-and-goal at the 1 against Navy–take three knees and burn the Middies two final timeouts–kicking a FG from extra point distance to win with no more than 15-20 seconds left, they would be figuring out which bowl invite to take. That was not a close call. An otherwise great coaching staff had a brain cramp on that day.

That cramp will be forever etched in Temple Football history if the Owls don’t find a way to get it done Friday.

You don’t want to let that happen, but you might not have a choice because those guys have better Jimmies than your Joes.

Or Evans and Demericks.

Monday: The Fans Are Not To Blame

Friday: Mean Green-Owl Preview

11.09.25
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Time to throw caution (and footballs) to the wind

K.C. Keeler did this interview two days before the Army game and he says better days are ahead, we’re just trying to figure out if those better days are this month or next year.

Over the next bye week, the Temple coaches are going to have to decide how to best get one or two wins in their final two shots.

A defense that allowed only 14 points against Army should be competitive enough.

Trust Evan Simon’s arm to do more than lead the Diamond Marching Band and we might revisit this great moment after the Tulane game.

Remember, this is an Army offense that scored 24 on Kansas State and 17 on Tulane–one of the two remaining teams on Temple’s schedule–so it could be said if they perform that way over the final two games, they put the Owls in a good spot to win one of the two games and become bowl eligible.

There do appear, though, to be cracks on offense and those should be fixable over the bye week.

The Owls so far have maintained a balance of running and passing but maybe after a further review of the situation they should realize how fortunate they are to have a quarterback who has thrown for 22 touchdowns against only one interception and incorporate more of the offense around him. After the Tulsa game, K.C. Keeler said his OC (Tyler Walker) told him he thought the Owls’ offense was better when it was “more aggressive.”

I agree. Yet the Owls’ offense was anything but aggressive in a 14-13 loss at Army on Saturday.

Time to reset that.

Evan Simon, to me, seems to be the type of guy who can turn the scoreboard into an adding machine if he gets the chance and maybe Temple gives him that over the final two games.

We can only hope.

Time to throw caution to the wind and that means filling the air with footballs at least at a higher rate than throughout the season so far.

Unless Kajiya Hollawayne’s four-star arm is broken, I’d like to see him throw one touchdown pass on a reverse before he leaves Temple.

Temple has explosiveness on the edge in players like JoJo Bermudez and Kajiya Hollawayne and reliable pass catchers in Colin Chase and a fantastic tight end room led by Peter Clarke. Hollawayne–a former quarterback at UCLA– should be the guy tossing the throwback pass, not a backup quarterback that the defense can recognize right away. In fact, maybe it’s advisable to ditch that entire Tyler Douglas package.

Maybe instead of handing the ball off to Jay Ducker, Keveun Mason and Hunter Smith, involve those guys more in the screen game to keep the pass rush off Simon and then take some deep shots. Run the ball but make it closer to 40 percent of the time instead of 50. Hell, I wouldn’t mind if it was 30 percent of the time.

This is the kind of approach that both Tulane and North Texas haven’t seen on film and they might not be ready for it. Simon isn’t going to be around forever so Temple should put his ability to good use over the final couple of games. If I’m going to try for a bowl game, I want the ball in the hands of my best player wearing that Cherry helmet most of the time.

It’s worth a shot or the final two games could be a repeat of ECU and nobody wants to see that.

Friday: Avoiding Heartbreak

11.06.25
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Temple-Army: So many ways to look at it

This video proves Temple Owls are everywhere, including being producers at CBS Sports Network.

There are about 17 ways to look at the Temple at Army game Saturday (high noon, CBS Sports Network).

For our purposes here, we will only look at the top two because there is a major drop between those two through 17.

Temple fans will be outnumbered, so it is incumbent among the football sideline Temple Owls to be active and cheering their teammates.

The first one, favoring Temple, is that Army (4-4) has won four games against losing teams and lost four games against winning teams.

In case anyone has forgot, Temple (5-4) is a winning team. Both were blown out against ECU, while Temple had a better performance against Charlotte (49-14) than Army (24-7) did.

The second, favoring Army, is that Temple is terrible against the run and Army has the best run offense in college football, averaging 334.9 yards. Temple has given up nearly 200 yards on the ground per game and its 5.2 yards per carry is the 8th worst in the nation.

I know that. You now know that. Chances are both Jeff Monken and K.C. Keeler–two of the best head coaches in the country–know that.

So we know what Monken is going to do–run the ball and only throw about 10 times or less.

Interesting that Temple was 5-4 against Army between the WWII year of 1943 and Daz’s first year (2011). Temple is 5-4 now.

The Temple numbers are skewed in the sense that the Owls also had to defend the pass in many of those games. Not so much in this one.

Keeler, being as smart as he is and having one of the top defensive coordinators against a triple-option (Brian L. Smith), know what both have to do: Sell out against the run and trust the athleticism of their secondary to defend the rare pass. Try to ball that fist up and punch that ball out every time and win the turnover battle.

The stakes are really high at least for Temple because the Owls need only one win over their last three games to gain bowl eligibility and become one of the top five stories for the 2025 season in all of college football.

Here’s the deal.

Should be a perfect November day for football.

For Keeler, it would be remarkable and illustrate why he is the winningest active head coach in all of college football because of where both teams he coached in the last two seasons currently rest on the FBS landscape.

The guy had Sam Houston as a nine-win team and bowl eligible last year. Now, without him, they are 0-8, while he has Temple at 5-4 and only one measly win away from turning a program that had gone 3-9 for four-straight years into another bowl eligible team.

A loss means falling farther down that hill and having to crawl back up it against far better teams than Army.

It’s not going to be easy because Army has played everyone tough in this league with the exception of ECU.

Our picks this week.

So has Temple.

Something has got to give.

(In case anyone is wondering, one of the 15 other factors is that Temple quarterback Evan Simon has been sleeping at the E-O and watching Army film for the last six days determined to have his usual great game. I’ve been watching Temple football for over 40 years and when I had the great honor to meet his parents before the first home game, the first words I told them were: “I love that kid” not because he was a good quarterback but because he showed me how much he cared when he fell on a fumble against Tulane last year like it was a live grenade. That same caring will go into his preparation this week.)

This, though, is largely assignment for Keeler, Smith and the Temple defense to complete.

Time for this team, especially along the defensive front, to show some Temple TUFF and both tackle well and ballhawk.

If they complete that task, they will come home bowl eligible for the first time in six years. It only seems like 100.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

11.02.25
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Last Chance for Bowl: A win at Army

Temple was down 28-3 and still spoiled Army’s Homecoming 15 years ago (wearing Cherry helmets).

The schedule says Temple has three shots at gaining bowl eligibility.

Reality suggests only one.

This week at Army (noon, CBS Sports Network).

Head coach K.C. Keeler pretty much said so during his post-game press conference on Saturday when he said “we’re not there yet” when talking about the physical gap between his team and East Carolina.

Temple’s Montel Harris is all smiles after getting congratulated by Army captain Nate Coombs for gaining 351 yards and scoring 7 touchdowns in Temple’s 63-32 win in 2012, the last victory for the Owls at Army.

Leading up to Saturday’s 45-14 loss, he said it was a “50-50” game like so many in the league.

It wasn’t.

What happened?

Well, the Owls didn’t play as well as they did in the loss to Navy or the wins at Charlotte and Tulsa. East Carolina is closer in ability to Tulane and North Texas–Temple’s final two opponents–than Army is so this could very well be Temple’s last chance at bowl eligibility.

Army is probably closer in ability to Navy or Tulsa than it is to Charlotte, so this could be the last so-called “50-50” game on the schedule.

The Owls would probably be wise to look at it that way.

The Army team honors Temple by hanging around for “T for Temple U” after the 2012 win.

Army opened as a 5.5-point favorite over Temple at 2 on Sunday and the “public” bet enough money on the home side to push that up to 6.5.

Still, both Tulane and North Texas will probably be double-digit favorites over the Owls.

Can the Owls beat Army?

Sure, because Tarleton State, a FCS team that lost to Abilene Christian, beat Army. Abilene Christian lost at Tulsa, 35-7, who the Owls beat two weeks ago.

Transitive property means only so much because the Owls beating UTSA suggested that the game against East Carolina would be similar talent vs. similar talent.

The problem for Temple is does the Temple that showed up vs. Navy and Charlotte show up at Army or do the Owls who showed up–or didn’t show up–last Saturday show up next Saturday?

A lot will be determined by how much the injury factor played into the ECU loss and how much that factor lingers over into the Army game.

Can Jay Ducker duplicate or even come close to the 351 yards Montel Harris had in 2012 or even the 228 yards the 5-foot-5 Matty Brown had in 2010?

I’ll settle for 100, which would set up a lot of play/action passing from Evan Simon.

Or that long-awaited throwback pass from former UCLA quarterback Kajiya Hollawayne to JoJo Bermudez for six we’ve been talking about for nine weeks.

To get to a bowl, it’s time to pull out all of the stops because this could be the last one on a bowl-eligible train that might bypass the Tulane and North Texas stations.

Friday: Army Preview

11.01.25
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Somebody please bury the White helmets

When Penn State lost at Temple a mere decade ago, James Franklin made the major subject of his Monday press conference burying the game tape.

These helmets look good.

We don’t know where. It might be on a remote farm in State College.

If the Temple football Owls are lucky, K.C. Keeler will find at least a dog park in North Philly to bury about 105 helmets.

All White ones.

I didn’t remember Temple ever winning in the combo of White helmets and Cherry uniforms, but I did a deep dive over four years of American Conference highlight reels and did find one victory in that combination.

These helmets are better carried than worn. They look like total crap and the Owls don’t play well wearing them.

Oct. 19, 2024 when Stan Drayton’s Owls doubled up Tulsa, 20-10, at last year’s Homecoming.

That’s it.

We did find a win over Navy (2023) wearing White helmets with gray jerseys, but only one with White helmets and Cherry tops.

The uniform combination of White helmets and Cherry tops is 1-9 against all competition, most of them Ungodly blowouts like Saturday’s 45-14 loss to East Carolina.

The Owls have won with White helmets and White uniforms (UMass this year) but White helmets with any combination of Cherry are no bueno.

No only does it look like crap, the Owls almost always play like crap with the White helmets.

Now that’s probably not the reason why they played like crap on Saturday–you have to give some credit to the Pirates–but why risk it?

This is the only Temple helmet ESPN Gameday allows on the set.

Take me, for instance. Rocked the Temple No. 1 game jersey for a 55-7 win against Howard and then wore it again against Navy. The Owls looked good and played well in both games (wearing Cherry helmets).

Because of the Navy loss, retired it for this season for the gray Temple hoodie.

Now the gray Temple hoodie is retired, and I will pull out the Cherry hoodie for the Army game a week from now. Had to buy one on the concourse today ($85, 2XL).

At this rate, I will go broke.

Superstition notwithstanding, a great day up until 2 p.m. was ruined by what happened between 2 and 5 p.m. The defense that completely shut down a scoring machine in UTSA either didn’t show up or was too banged up to duplicate that effort.

The Owls were on the precipice of becoming bowl eligible and that’s something Keeler and company embraced that thought all week.

Now the next thought should be to win the next play, the next game, and not look at the scoreboard or the implications of it.

Leave it to the equipment crew to take a sledgehammer to those God-ugly White helmets. It might have had nothing to do with the latest loss, but even to tempt Karma on All Soul’s Day was probably not a good idea.

Monday: Last Chance Hotel

Friday: Army Preview

10.31.25
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Key to beating ECU: Temple’s pass rush

Except for the sarcastic “16 people” remark, this is a pretty good analysis.

Eight games into a season should compile enough evidence to determine whether a college football team is good.

Well, all the available metrics indicate that Temple is a pretty good college football team.

Damn good, coached by the winningest active head coach in football, K.C. Keeler. This week we learned coach Keeler reads TFF because he opened up Monday’s press conference by saying “there was no conspiracy to get Hunter Smith a touchdown.” (That was the subject of our Saturday night post, although we used the word “reward” and not conspiracy. No other analysis of the game brought up the Hunter Smith subject other than this space, so thanks K.C. for the shoutout.)

This might have been the year for Temple to play Penn State. ECU, though, is the Super Bowl for Temple now.

Saturday we should find out how good Temple is when the 5-3 Owls, 3-1 in conference host an East Carolina team that is somehow a 4.5-point favorite on the road (2 p.m., ESPN+).

That 4.5 means the nation doesn’t believe yet, even if Philadelphia might.

ECU is also good.

If the Owls are able to beat this team, it’s time to move them to the elite G5 level. That would be Temple winning at home against a team that was a 6.5-point favorite (UTSA), a one-point loss to another 6.5-point favorite (that should have been a win) and a win at home over a 4.5-point favorite (ECU).

Already, Thursday night provided some extra clues about how good Temple is because UTSA beat Tulane, 48-26, Tulane beat Northwestern (23-3) and Northwestern beat Penn State (22-21).

Metrics that matter. Everyone give Matt Gajewski’s YouTube page a thumb’s up and a like. This guy knows his stuff.

Oh yes. We forgot. Tulane beat ECU, 26-19.

Transitive property notwithstanding a number of experts (see above video) have pointed out some metrics that give the Owls important advantages.

The Owls haven’t had a pass rush since the UTSA game and there is a good reason for that in since the guys who were the protagonists in that rush (Sekou Kromah and Sultan Badmus) have been banged and missed a lot of snaps. They are both back and should cause the ECU quarterback to run for his life, just as they did in the second half to Owen McCown of UTSA.

Kromah and Badmus are good to go and that couldn’t come at a better time for Temple.

All things being equal, the ECU offensive line is nowhere near as good as the UTSA line so if the Owls get consistent pressure on Kaitin Houser, he should wilt just like McCown did.

It would help if the 12,500 students who live on campus hop either hop on the subway for the 10-minute ride to Lincoln Financial Field or get one of the hundreds of free buses the university offers every gameday.

Make some noise to get that pass rush juiced. Stand up on every defensive third down.

This is an all-hands-on deck game both the players and the fans so that means players, coaches, alumni, students and Joe Philadelphia fans whose other hometown football team is on a bye this week are all one party on the same project.

Winning, and singing “T for Temple U” afterward.

This is the best chance to date for Temple to show the nation how far it has come in football under the winningest active coach in the NCAA.

Putting the bad guy’s quarterback on his backside early and often will be the key. Mr. Badmus and Mr. Kromah that is your assignment if you chose to accept it, but Mr. Haye, Mr. Stewart, Mr. Morris and others are free to join in as needed.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

10.26.25
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K.C. Keeler was right about high expectations

How much of a genius would this guy have looked now if the refs made the right call against Navy?

In a couple of weeks, Temple went from controlling its own destiny in the American Conference football championship picture to needing help to stay in it.

This is exactly the type of thing Temple head coach K.C. Keeler was talking about back in August when asked about the possibility of the Owls getting to a bowl game this year. Keeler said hell with the bowl game, this team’s goal is to win a championship.

This year, not some far-off year in the future.

That raised some eyes in the assembled media who knew the history of four-straight 3-9 seasons, but Keeler wasn’t here then because he was winning championships at other places.

Not all the assembled media raised eyebrows because a New York Post guy named Michael Leboff was buying Temple stock when it was low back on Aug. 14, predicting in the paper that the Owls would win the title.

Only a brutal missed call (among other things) by the refs in the Navy game separates the Owls from controlling their own destiny in the American Conference race. Had the refs seen the Navy guard false start, maybe Navy kicks the extra point or that 3-yard pass for the two-point conversion becomes a much-tougher 8-yard pass that misfires.

Now the Owls can control only what they can control and that’s to win out and let the chips fall where they may.

There is no “easy” path to the championship game but an argument can be made that that, among the one-loss teams, Temple can help itself the most because it has home games against one of the one-loss teams (ECU) and a road game at another, North Texas. They also have a home game against Tulane, which like Navy, is unbeaten in the conference.

Other than what Temple can do, the Owls have to hope that Navy loses twice because that would eliminate the first tie-breaker (head-to-head competition). Then, after … hopefully … beating ECU and Tulane, they have to hope either one of those teams beat Navy or another one-loss team.

That’s pretty much it.

Tough but doable.

If it gets past the first two tie-breakers (head-to-head and computer rankings), that’s where things work against the Owls because of playing two top 25 teams–which most of their competition didn’t do–in the non-conference slate.

While it would be nice to have their fate in their own hands, having of a lot of it now for what Keeler called on Saturday “the stretch run” was something unforeseeable in August but something that Keeler wanted his team to visualize.

If such a scenario comes into focus, that New York Post guy will immediately be inducted into the College Football Prognosticator Hall of Fame for seeing something nobody else did.

Except maybe Keeler.

Friday: ECU Preview

10.25.25
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Learning lessons in a win goes down easier

A couple of weeks ago, the Temple football Owls learned a hard lesson in a bitter loss.

Today, they learned the same kind of lesson in a win, a remarkable 38-37 overtime one at Tulsa that has to rank with one of the top college football games in Week 9.

Give me the second option any day of the week.

Put both lessons up on a blackboard, add one plus two and come up some basic arithmetic that could result in the Owls controlling their own destiny–as much as they can–to get to the American Conference title game.

First, the old news. Temple head coach K.C. Keeler probably learned that taking three knees with a first-and-goal at the 1-inch line and then kicking a field goal with either no (or very little time) on the clock for the bad guys was the preferable option to scoring too soon and giving Navy time to do damage.

Water under the dam and a damn hard way to lose a game.

Today, he learned that trying to reward a guy with a touchdown after a long run is definitely not preferable to giving it to your Mr. Inside (Jay Ducker) after your Mr. Outside (Hunter Smith) put you in a similar spot at the 1-yard line.

That’s why Ducker is Mr. Inside and Smith is Mr. Outside. They both have specific roles on this team and the play-calling took both out of their roles.

Ducker is the inside run specialist but it looked like Temple OC Tyler Walker was trying to “reward” Smith for his effort with a touchdown and Ducker never got back in the game on that series. One, Smith had to be gassed after that long run yet he got the next carry. Two, Ducker is the better runner between tackles.

To me, that was the key to the game being a 31-14 Temple win and a 38-37 Temple win (or worse) because Tulsa made that a 14-point swing. Stopping the “sure” seven of Temple and scoring seven on its own on the next series.

Afterward, Keeler said he was “doing other things” and that Walker was responsible for those four ill-fated calls. That would have made it 21-7, Temple. Instead, the Hurricane used that goal-line stand as momentum to go up, 17-14.

Can’t do that going forward against anyone and, hopefully, this hard lesson was learned.

When the Owls wear Cherry helmets, they usually don’t lose.

Fortunately, the Owls survived because my favorite Temple quarterback (now officially of all time, supplanting Adam DiMichele, sorry Adam), Evan Simon, threw five touchdown passes and, once again, no interceptions.

For those counting, that’s 21 touchdown passes against zero (that’s right, zero) interceptions for the season. Simon is only two touchdowns from tying E.J. Warner’s record for touchdown passes at Temple (23) and is almost a sure bet to eclipse it. Look who is on that list. One, is the son of a Super Bowl winning QB (Warner) and Brian Broomell (who had 22 TD passes) is QB of a Temple team that finished No. 17 in the nation in 1979 and beat two other bowl teams, West Virginia and Syracuse. Another (Steve Joachim, 20 TDs in 1974) only won the Maxwell Award as the best college football player in the nation, beating Heisman winner Archie Griffin.

Now back to Simon, who is going in the books as better than all of them.

This was the sequence that turned a potential blowout for Temple into an overtime game. I get that you are trying to reward a guy who had a 72-yard run with a touchdown but, if after the first play, he doesn’t score, give it to your inside run specialist.

That won’t be the first time he’s ever beaten Warner because, in 2022, Simon was the winning quarterback in a 16-14 Rutgers’ win at Temple. The key play was when Temple’s tiny quarterback tried to throw over a lineman who tipped it and took it the other way for 6.

The hard lesson that day for Temple was if you are a vertically challenged quarterback, don’t throw when a big guy is coming at you with outstretched arms.

The hard lessons the last two times for K.C. Keeler and his staff include a smarter approach when you get to the bad guy’s 1-yard line.

How they apply those lessons will go a long way in determining whether the Owls reach “just” a bowl or something much sweeter.

Much, much sweeter.

Monday: The scenarios

10.24.25
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Keeler has a chance to challenge Hardin’s start

Probably the best look behind the scenes at Wayne Hardin and Temple Stadium that I’ve ever seen.

Only one new Temple coach started his career with the Philadelphia school winning roughly twice as many games as he lost.

That was the great Wayne Hardin, a College Football Hall of Famer who continued his great career here in 1970 and finished 18-9-1 over his first three years at Temple.

Nobody else started at Temple so successfully.

Tomorrow’s high at Tulsa is 59 but there is plenty of wet weather in the forecast.

Not Bruce Arians. Not Al Golden. Not Matt Rhule.

To me, and pretty much everyone else, K.C. Keeler is a sure-fire bet to join Hardin in the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta for what he’s done before he got here.

That was the way with Hardin, too, who had Navy as the No. 2 team in the nation in 1962.

Yet what Hardin did at Temple might have been more impressive.

Same with Keeler at Temple because his best may be yet to come.

Top teams in the country in turnover margin.

Keeler got his 275th career win on Saturday, 49-14, at Charlotte.

In his first season, the Owls are 4-3 with a shot to finish 9-3. Amazing in the sense that they were 3-9 for the last four years and 1-6 the year before that.

Even more amazing that they were only a missed false start away from being unbeaten in the American Conference and having their championship destiny in their own hands.

Now they are going to need help to knock Navy out of a tie-breaker situation.

It all starts on Saturday (3:30 p.m., ESPN+) at Tulsa. Temple has no chance in that game if it is thinking about 9-3 or even looking at the scoreboard.

K.C. Keeler tells the story about being recruited by Wayne Hardin in the late 1970s.

It does have a chance if it does all the “Hardin-like” things Keeler has been preaching all season. One, don’t look at the scoreboard. Two, concentrate on the next play. Three, “do your job” on the next play and not go outside that job by “trying to make a play.”

These things have been what Keeler has been preaching all year and, for the most part, the Owls have answered his prayers.

Saturday at Tulsa will provide a challenge because the Owls will have to overcome some weather issues. There is a good chance of rain, a high temperature of 59 degrees, and even some thunderstorms in the area. That’s advantage Temple because the Owls No. 4 in the country in turnover margin and Tulsa is No. 109. On a rainy day, that ball is slippery and the team who values it most has the advantage.

You can add 4 wins to that total.

The Owls have experience in that area as the home game against Howard was delayed by a half hour by thunderstorms in Philadelphia and the game at Georgia Tech was also delayed by the same thing. The Owls remained focused at home, not so focused on the road, but the lessons learned in Atlanta should be applied in Tulsa.

One game at a time. One play at a time.

Seven years after the above video was made, Hardin had Keeler in his office on a recruiting visit. The Owls ran out of scholarships that day, but Keeler is where he belongs now.

Beating Tulsa tomorrow opens another door. There are four more doors to bust down after that.

A 9-3 start is implausible but not impossible. Wayne Hardin showed the way in 1972.

K.C. Keeler is doing the same almost 60 years later. The fact that the two were in the same room once talking about coming to Temple is a pretty neat thing indeed.

Late Saturday Night: Tulsa Game Analysis