Tag Archives: ncaa-football

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)

02.20.25
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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.

01.10.25
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What Thursday’s semifinal said about the state of Temple football

Some TU fans say this guy can’t throw. This film indicates otherwise.

What a difference a decade makes …

That’s what we learned most from Thursday night’s 27-24 Notre Dame win over Penn State in a national football semifinal.

Temple’s Brandon Shippen, right, scores against Notre Dame’s Max Redfield, left, in the 2015 game.

Especially from the Temple football perspective.

One decade ago Temple routed Penn State, 27-10, in front of a strongly pro-Temple sellout crowd at Lincoln Financial Field.

About a month and 25 days later, No. 21-ranked Temple took No. 9-ranked Notre Dame down to the wire before safety Will Hayes jumped the wrong way allowing William Fuller with 1:07 left to catch the game-winning touchdown pass in a 24-20 ND win.

That crowd was more evenly split but another LFF sellout.

That game was the highest-rated game ever in the Philadelphia TV market for college football.

We will see by Friday whether that game withstood the test of time and beat Thursday’s night’s game in Philly.

Either way, that was a magical year for Temple and, to be honest, something we probably will never see again through no fault of Temple.

That’s the perfect way to illustrate where we are with Temple football. The big boys with the big money will always get the players and the Temples of the world will get the discarded scraps.

Even though K.C. Keeler is a great coach, the best he can hope to do is recruit P4 castoffs and make some noise in the G5.

That’s OK because even in that environment Temple can win and compete for G5 championships.

It’s not 2015 but it certainly beats the alternative.

Winning in football at the level Temple currently plays at should be the goal and not competing for national championships.

There are still a lot of good things that can be accomplished at that level, including energizing the alumni and getting them out to more games than just Homecoming.

Look at it this way: A few months ago people were talking about dropping football being a viable option at Temple.

No more.

All the Temple administration had to do was hire a definite college football Hall of Fame head coach in K.C. Keeler and then start recruiting players like the Michigan backup quarterback (Alex Orji) who visited Temple this week. My personal feeling is that he reminds me of Quincy Patterson and Walter Washington, a run/first, pass/second quarterback. In a fair QB battle, my money is on Evan Simon. Temple can win with Evan Simon. Not so sure about Alex Orji but if these coaches trust him, I trust them.

Temple is bringing in championship-level coaches not only in Keeler (who won national titles at Delaware and Sam Houston) but the offensive coordinator at Montana State and his OL coach.

Certainly better than the coaches we’ve had the last three years with the possible exceptions of Chris Wiesehan (OL), Tyree Foreman (RB) and Adam Schierer (ST). Those were objectively good coaches who got overruled by incompetent ones.

Keeler is bringing in his own guys and that’s exciting.

It’s also exciting that he’s bringing in P4 guys who were recruited at a high level but stuck behind better talent. They have a chip on their shoulder that will be on display game days.

They might not be able to win there but they can certainly win here.

We’ll always have 2015 and 2016 but getting back there isn’t realistic in the current environment. Getting back to respectability certainly is and that’s something we haven’t seen since 2019.

After 1-6, 3-9, 3-9, 3-9 and 3-9 it’s about damn time.

Monday: A Deep Dive Into Temple’s New Offense

11.28.24
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North Texas at Temple: No “D” in Owls

There is both humor and truth to this. Nothing would end all this transfer portal and NIL nonsense faster than for a Saudi man to invest $10 billion in Temple football’s NIL fund. Watch how fast the rest of the college world shuts down the NIL if Temple wins three national championships in a row. The Saudi man would get a good laugh out of it, though.

Any thoughts of an upset for Temple in the high noon season finale (ESPN+) at Lincoln Financial Field on Saturday probably went out the window a week ago.

That’s when the Owls gave up 51 points.

The last coach who called the Temple game his Super Bowl was the Utah State coach this year. He lost, 45-29.

To have a chance to win in college football a respectable defense is a must and the Owls haven’t been respectable since holding Tulsa to 10 points in a 20-10 win.

That was back on Oct. 19, a long time ago. We wrote in this space on that beautiful 70-degree day that “we all be freezing our asses off a month from now at the North Texas game.”

And we will as the temperatures won’t escape the 30s.

Since then, Temple has given up 56 (ECU), 52 (Tulane) and 51 (UTSA).

The lone outlier was the 15 points given up against FAU.

There is no “D” in Temple and even no “D” in Owls. That’s something the next coach is going to have to fix because to have a chance to win at football or even break even, you can’t be giving up the 35+ points per game Everett Withers has in his two years as DC.

There was some hope that a change in the DC to Chris Woods last week would have stopped some of the bleeding but it was apparent that it was the Jimmy and Joe’s as much as the X’s and O’s because the Owls could not sustain a pass rush.

North Texas has called this game its “Super Bowl” and there is a good reason why. The Mean Green have lost five in a row after a hot start and needs the win for a 6-6 record and a bowl game.

Of course, the last coach who proclaimed the Temple game as his team’s Super Bowl was Utah State’s and Temple won that one, 45-29. So there’s that. If it’s a Super Bowl, it will probably be the least-attended one in history as no more than 5-10K fans are expected to rattle around in a 70K stadium.

Still, the incentives seem to be all on North Texas’ side here.

All Temple has to play for is a 4-7 season after three-straight 3-9 ones (one Rod Carey 3-9 followed by two Stan Drayton 3-9s). That’s not what Drayton promised when he was hired and that’s why he was fired.

Now the Owls are faced with an almost impossible task of stopping a team that played Army and Tulane a lot tougher than Temple did.

The football is odd-shaped and can take a lot of funny bounces but for Temple to even be competitive in this one would require a defense that has shown the capability to stop someone.

The Owls aren’t going to get that until a new coach comes in and, with him, a lot of Jimmy and Joe’s who can strike fear into an offense and put a quarterback on his ass.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

Monday: Season Analysis

10.31.24
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After nine years, what went wrong?

Nine years ago today, Temple was on the top of the college football world.

The Owls were 7-0 and ranked No. 21 and gameday was in town for a prime-time matchup with No. 9 Notre Dame.

Only because Will Hayes decided not to put up his hand and deflect away what would have been an easy play to make, Will Fuller caught the game-winning touchdown pass and the Irish hung on for a 24-20 win. The game still ranks as the No. 1-rated TV college game ever watched in the Philadelphia market, which is still the No. 4-ranked TV market. Better than any Penn State-Ohio State game. Better than any Penn State-Notre Dame game.

Lincoln Financial Field was packed with mostly Temple fans to see the No. 21 Owls play the No. 9 Irish nine years ago today.

Temple was the draw, not Notre Dame. Probably no college football game will ever attract more eyes in the Philly market, including a national title game that might include Penn State.

Who knows where the Owls would have been ranked if Hayes knocked away that pass and Temple went to 8-0.

My guess is no lower than 12th.

Now the Owls are ranked No. 19.

From the bottom.

That’s falling over 100 floors faster than a broken elevator in a horror movie.

So the question has to be asked: What went wrong?

Sitting in my seat dejected by the loss and comforted by classy Notre Dame fans walking by and patting me on the back (“you guys have a helluva team”), the thought occurred to me that this might have been the Zenith of Temple football.

What never occurred to me was that the Owls would fall this far and this fast.

While I never thought 7-0 and ESPN gameday would be the norm, I thought it was possible, maybe even likely, that Temple would be the kind of job that would attract good enough coaches to compete for a bowl game every year.

Temple still remains a big TV draw because of its market. Imagine if the Owls won consistently.

It has not.

It would be easy to blame the NIL and the transfer portal for this mess and certainly it’s a contributing element but it’s not the full story.

Temple’s fall is attributable to mostly Temple decisions. The Board of Trustees approved a plan to build a stadium on Temple’s own property but let no more than 20 or so neighbors bully them out of that decision.

My feeling then as it is now is that Temple has as much right to build anything on its property as I do putting up a white picket fence around my house. That goes for every university in the country.

If a bunch of neighbors came up to me and objected to my fencing plans, I would politely say, “Geez, it’s my property and I think it improves the value so thanks for your input but I’m still putting the fence up.”

That’s one mistake.

The others were hiring ADs who felt that it was more important to hire buddies than it was to follow the formula that got Temple to the top in the first place.

Temple has now suffered through 1-6, 3-9, 3-9 and 3-9 seasons.

If it is lucky, it might get to a fourth-straight 3-9 season.

The only hope for Temple to fix that elevator and start climbing to the top is to follow the formula that got Matt Rhule and Geoff Collins here. Get the best person. Get someone who the AD never worked with but has impeccable credentials on his own.

Or it can chose not to fix the elevator, which would be the nuclear option no one wants.

Monday: A Dream Press Conference