Tag Archives: ncaa

11.08.25
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Flirting with a bowl game was nice while it lasted

For most of the upcoming bye week, what we are going to be hearing from both the Temple coaches and players (and maybe some fans) is that the Owls can win one of their two final remaining games and reach bowl eligibility.

A lot of people (raising my hand here) who have watched this team know what we saw over the last 10 games and come to a competing conclusion.

The Temple fan section in one end zone at the game today.

The flirtation with a bowl was nice, but it’s probably over.

Nobody would like to see the Owls win one of their two remaining games (hell, both would be preferable) more than me but wishing and hoping isn’t going to make it happen and the Owls’ one-point losses to the service academies set them up for having to beat better teams than both Army and Navy.

That will be a nearly impossible task.

Both the Navy and Army games taught the Owls a valuable lesson in the way to close out a football game going forward.

Had the Owls did against Navy what Army did against them–slide at the 2 and milk the clock to end the game–we’d be talking about which bowl game we wanted to attend. The Navy game, a 32-31 loss, should have been a win had the Owls taken three knees and kicked the game-winning field goal.

Army quarterback Cale Hellums illustrated that point with an exclamation mark when he slid at the 2 in a 14-13 win on Saturday. He could have done what Temple head coach K.C. Keeler elected to do a couple of weeks ago and score but that would have given Evan Simon the same kind of time to beat his team that Keeler gave Blake Horvath and Navy.

It was almost like Cale turned to K.C. and said, “This is what you guys should have done against Navy.”

The Owls played dumb football then. Army played smart football today. The hard reality is for all of the great compliments Keeler had about kicker Carl Hardin is that he missed makeable field goals (45 and 38 yards) against both service academies. Just one would have put the Owls in a bowl game. Keeler said Hardin can hit it from 60, but I’d rather have a consistent kicker from 45 and in than the threat of hitting one from 60. Give me a guy like Cap Poklemba–who went 5-for-5 in field goals at Pitt–over someone who might hit it from 60.

After the Tulsa win, Keeler said OC Tyler Walker told him the Owls’ offense was better when it played aggressive. They were anything but aggressive against Army. They should have thrown downfield on 75 percent of the plays against a team that couldn’t defend the pass.

Instead, they relied on the run way too much. If the Army defense is good at anything, it’s playing against a run they see every day in practice. The few times Temple threw the ball on Saturday it was successful.

Clock management is an important thing going forward for next year not this one because it likely won’t be an issue over the final two games.

What will be an issue in the final two games is the same one we witnessed two weeks ago against East Carolina, a roster gap that can’t be bridged by getting all the injured players back over the bye week. Make no mistake about it, the rosters of North Texas and Tulane are every bit as good as the ECU roster.

After that ECU game, Keeler alluded to that issue by saying “we’re not there yet” in the area of talent.

Expect all the quotes over the next week to be of the “we can do it” variety but the quotes over the two weeks after that being of the “we’re not there yet” realm. Or “those guys have had a couple years to build the roster and we’ve had only one.”

You know what I’d like to hear?

“Tyler said to me we’ve got a great QB so let’s put the ball in his hands the final two weeks and that got us a couple wins nobody expected,” Keeler might say.

Doubt we’d hear anything like that, though.

Damn.

When that happens, the story of the 2025 season will be so close yet so far away. Maybe no more than one foot far right twice with the kicker being it should have never come down to one.

Monday: Caution to the Wind

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

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

10.20.25
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Tulsa Week: Some solid evidence out there

The guys from The College Football Experience discuss Temple once again.

A year ago, the Temple football program was in turmoil with talk of a leadership change and still was able to beat visiting Tulsa.

By double digits, 20-10.

Each season is a new deal, especially in the era of the transfer portal and NIL and both teams hired new head coaches.

Temple hired K.C. Keeler, a legend, who won his 275th career game on Saturday. Tulsa went the younger route, hiring Tre Lamb, who was head coach at East Tennessee State.

Pretty sure we all know who made the better hire and it wasn’t just because Keeler recognizes that the Owls play and look a lot sharper when they wear the Cherry helmets.

Temple is now 4-3 (really should be 5-2), while Tulsa is 2-5. One of those wins was against Oklahoma State. The other was against Abilene Christian.

Both teams played Navy which is a point of comparison.

Navy went to Tulsa and won, 42-23, while it was lucky (and got some help from the refs) in surviving at Temple, 32-31.

That doesn’t mean Temple is going to win by 20 or so on Saturday (3:30 p.m., ESPN+) but if the Owls dot their I’s and cross their T’s, they should be able to come home with a two-game winning streak.

One, they have a staff that was able draw X’s and O’s well enough to play a competitive game against Navy. Two, Tulsa doesn’t.

Also, unlike that Navy game, the Owls are going to have to be focused in an environment that could put them to sleep.

Now that staff will have to turn its film study to a Tulsa team that likes to throw the ball deep and the fact that the Owls faced a lot of that on Saturday in a 49-14 win at Charlotte should help them adjust. What they have to do is play the ball and not the man because the few times the 49ers were able to move the ball, they were helped by face-guarding penalties against the Owls.

Another good Tuesday practice should help clean up those kinds of mistakes and help the Owls take another step forward.

Wearing the Cherry helmets with the White uniforms again wouldn’t hurt, either.

Friday: Tulsa Preview

10.16.25
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Temple-Charlotte: Long past time for a trick play

Halfway through the season one thing Temple fans know about both offensive coordinator Tyler Walker and head coach K.C. Keeler is that they don’t like trick plays.

Walker has shown an innovative offense with a lot of motion that causes both defensive coordinators and defenses in general to scratch their heads.

CBS Sports and Emory Hunt made Temple a highlight game and like the Owls. Great photo of Temple center Grayson Mains here. The Owls’ offensive line led the way for 518 yards of total offense against Navy and deserved the win.

What he hasn’t shown is a “trick play” and, by that I mean, a throwback pass to Kajiya Hollawayne (a quarterback at UCLA), who draws the defense to him and leaves JoJo Bermudez wide open on the other side of the field for six.

Saturday (3:30 p.m., ESPN+) would be a good time to dust that one off because the Owls need a booster shot after being made sick by a heartbreaking loss to Navy.

When asked about trick plays two weeks ago, Keeler said he was hesitant to use them “when we’re not playing well.”

He didn’t say anything about the first play of the game.

Not going to be an easy game for the Owls because it’s Charlotte’s Homecoming in this compact 15,000-seat stadium.

The Owls have played six games and, on five of them, the first play of the game has been a standard handoff to Jay Ducker. I know that. You know that. The bad guys certainly know that.

None of those handoffs have gone for more than 3 yards.

Why not fake that handoff to Ducker, toss a throwback to Hollawayne and have the former UCLA quarterback hit Bermudez in stride for six?

Why not indeed?

This is how wide open JoJo Bermudez would be on a throwback pass from Hollawayne.

That would get the sideline pumped.

Mentioned this to Evan Simon’s dad the last couple of tailgates and he agreed. Also brought it up with Grayson Mains’ dad and he didn’t hate the idea.

Don’t know if these dads enough pull with their kids for them to draw this up in the dirt like a sandlot play but it wouldn’t be a bad idea for this game particularly.

This team is hurting (hell, I’m still hurting) from the toughest of tough losses and getting off to a spectacular start would just be what the doctor ordered.

That doesn’t mean a 3-yard handoff to Jay Ducker.

Showing the world that the Owls have bounced back means a touchdown on the first play of the game. Nothing ventured nothing gained is a great saying for a good reason.

Late Saturday Night: Game Analysis

10.04.25
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It’s official: Keeler is ahead of schedule

Leave it to first-year Temple head football coach K.C. Keeler to set the bar high and then do a Fosbury Flop over it by the fifth game.

As early as mid-summer, Keeler said he wanted his team to be thinking about championships this year, not some far-off year in the future.

Owls sing the school fight song afterward holding the best helmets (Cherry) in college football. (Photo Courtesy of Zamani Feelings.)

It’s official now. Keeler and the Owls are ahead of schedule because, while many had the Owls beating UMass and Howard, nobody had the Owls beating Oklahoma, Georgia Tech or UTSA in the pre-season prognostications.

By this week, though, some pretty knowledgeable college football observers–Gary Segars, Bud Elliott, Colby Dant and Ryan McIntyre–had saw enough of how hard the Owls played and how well Keeler coached in that first four to pick them to win outright today (see our Friday post for the receipts).

And they did, 27-21, at Lincoln Financial Field, rallying from a 14-3 halftime deficit to pull it out against a pretty darn good team.

How good?

UTSA hung with Texas A&M before losing, 42-24, and, at the time Keeler said he wanted his Owls to be thinking championships, some people actually picked the Roadrunners to win the American Conference. After that loss to the Aggies, UTSA head coach Jeff Traylor said: “We have championship fiber.”

It’s one thing to say you have championship fiber and it’s another thing to show it and the Owls were the team who showed it in the second half, outscoring the Roadrunners, 21-7.

They did it with an offensive line that kept Evan Simon clean and a defensive line that put the other guy on his backside and running for his life on the few occasions they didn’t. Going into the season, Keeler said this was the best defensive line he’s ever had and he won 271 games as a head coach coming into the season so he had some good ones.

Then he said he “never saw a group improve as much” as his offensive line, the product of “iron sharpens iron” for both spring and summer ball. They opened holes for both Jay Ducker (the MAC’s leading rusher in 2021) and Hunter Smith (the Sun Belt’s leading rusher in 2023). Smith’s 54-yard run for a score put the Owls up, 17-13.

That aged well.

On a beautiful 82-degree afternoon in South Philly, the Temple fans who made it found out that Keeler wasn’t blowing smoke. Nothing wins more football games than putting the other guy on his ass and the Owls did that in the second half.

Going into a two-game home stretch that included UTSA on the front end and Navy on the back end, the thought process was this: Split the two and the Owls have a chance at a bowl. Sweep both and the Owls have a chance to face Memphis in the league title game.

Might as well set that bar a little higher in one week and jump over it. That’s all Keeler ever wanted and that’s more than Temple fans could have ever expected.

Monday: What We Don’t Care About

09.28.25
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Game Week: How good is UTSA?

UTSA has had an up-and-down season but hasn’t faced the quality of competition Temple has.

In between worrying about getting a parking pass and navigating traffic on Saturday, the next-in-line question for Temple fans should be this:

How good is UTSA?

Evan Simon cuts last year’s game down to one score with this bomb to Dante Wright. With Jay Ducker and Hunter Smith being able to establish a running game, Temple should be in this thing until the end. If the players take care of things one play and a time and not watch the scoreboard, Temple could win handily.

For fans, not players nor coaches because it would behoove the Owls to practice and prepare for the Roadrunners like they are as good as Georgia Tech or Oklahoma.

Spoiler alert (players, please turn away): They are not.

Even though Vegas has the Roadrunners as a 6.5-point favorite, I fully expect that to be bet down to 4.5 Wednesday and maybe a field goal by kickoff.

Let’s examine what they’ve done so far:

They got blown out by Texas A&M, 42-24. The Aggies are a good team, maybe as good as Oklahoma and slightly better than Georgia Tech.

However, UTSA’s last game–a 17-16 win at Colorado State–might provide more clues. Off that result, you can pretty much say the Roadrunners are on a par with the Rams and the Rams are really not good. Colorado State got blown out by Washington (38-21) and barely beat Northern Colorado–Northern Freaking Colorado–and that score was 21-17. They also lost to possibly the worst P4 team alive, Washington State, 20-3. Northern Colorado barely beat Houston Baptist and lost to Indiana State, two teams I think most college football experts would agree are far worse than anyone Temple’s played, including Howard and UMass.

So however good UTSA looked against Texas A&M and that wasn’t much, that was canceled out by how bad it looked at Colorado State.

If UTSA lets a team like that hang around with it, that bodes well for Temple. Temple has to sell out to stop the run because Robert Henry Jr. is the leading rusher in the country, but TU DC Brian L. Smith understands that a lot better than we do so we think that will be part of the gameplan. He understands a lot about UTSA and has beaten them before at Rice, something UTSA head coach Jeff Traylor acknowledged this week.

“I know the defensive coordinator is from Rice, who’s given us a pain in the rear end for the past five years.”

On the other side of the ball, it should be interesting to see how Temple’s new Mr. Outside (Hunter Smith) combines with Temple’s Mr. Inside (Jay Ducker) to both control the clock and set up deep play-action passes for Evan Simon. With the departure of Terrez Worthy over the weekend, Ducker is now No. 1 on the depth chart and Hunter Smith is No. 2. That means Temple has the 2021 leading rusher in the MAC and the 2023 leading rusher in the Sun Belt topping a deep running back room that also includes Joquez Smith.

This is not Oklahoma coming to town (1 p.m., ESPN+) on Saturday. It’s not even Georgia Tech.

Temple has been sharpened by that iron and, other than one Texas A&M game, the Roadrunners have been sharpened by, let’s say, plastic.

What Temple learned in its Georgia Tech game was that, after spotting the Yellowjackets a 21-0 lead, the Owls played even with that team the rest of the way.

If the Owls have learned their lesson and applied it in the bye week, this is win No. 3 for Temple.

If not, it’s another disappointing loss.

Stan Drayton might let that happen. I’m guessing K.C. Keeler won’t.

Friday: UTSA Preview

09.14.25
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Keeler: Owls didn’t meet the moment

This Cherry helmet is the best in college football. Let’s stick with that going forward.

In the grand scheme of things, this is about the 147th-most important thing that happened on Saturday but seeing Temple football come out in those God-awful-looking white helmets certainly didn’t meet the moment.

Not when you have the best helmet in college football sitting back home in the equipment room at 10th and Diamond.

Georgia Tech’s stadium with Atlanta as the backdrop is one of the best homefield advantages in the country.

When you look sharp, you play sharp and the Owls certainly didn’t look sharp.

Then the game started and it wasn’t long before first-year Temple head coach K.C. Keeler made the most perspicacious statement of the day.

Doing a first-quarter interview on ESPN2, Keeler said: “I thought we didn’t meet the moment.”

This time, he wasn’t talking about the equipment room.

There were plenty of moments the Owls didn’t meet but a few of them came on defense early when they hit Oklahoma quarterback John Mateer early and didn’t bring him down. Other times they touched him and he spun away.

A decent crowd on Saturday at the Linc would have looked way more impressive if Temple had an on-campus stadium like GT has.

A lot of that is traced to Mateer’s talent but when the Owls were touching quarterbacks–good quarterbacks with FBS starts under their belts in the first two games–they were bringing them down.

That was meeting the moment. Albeit the moment became bigger against better players on Saturday getting to Mateer and not putting him down didn’t meet the moment. He’s human. If hit hard enough, he goes down, too.

The Owls had a minus-6 deficit in the turnover battle in last year’s game and lost, 51-3. They stopped Oklahoma on third downs 13 of 14 times in that game and still lost by 48.

The Owls cleaned things up this year to have no turnovers and still lost by almost the same margin. That does not compute except that they didn’t do as good a job getting off the field defensively as last year’s team.

The formula to win wasn’t there against Oklahoma but the formula to stay in the game certainly was and the Owls didn’t have the right mix. Limit turnovers. Check. Repeat last year’s performance on third down. Not check.

Throw some trick plays in there to keep Oklahoma off-balance.

Definitely not check. Would have loved to seen Evan Simon toss a throwback pass to Hollawayne and have the former UCLA QB hit JoJo Bermudez for six on that first series. That would have fired everyone up. Instead, a couple of boring handoffs to Jay Ducker got nowhere.

OC Tyler Walker–who had a fantastic first two games–didn’t meet the moment, either.

You won 55-7 with these home helmets. Don’t mess with Karma. (Photo Courtesy Zamani Feelings)

A lot of national type guys–Chip Patterson of CBS sports and Kirk Herbstreit of ESPN–thought the Owls had a chance to stay in the game against the Sooners. Now that those national guys saw what happened, they are off the Owls. The Owls showed in the first two games that they are deep and talented along both lines but allowed themselves to get bullied by the Sooners.

I didn’t see that happening. Maybe neither Patterson nor Herbstreit did.

Maybe that’s what Keeler meant by not meeting the moment but they really have one more big-time moment to meet on Saturday at Georgia Tech.

Like Oklahoma, the Yellowjackets have a big-time quarterback in Haynes King. The lesson of Saturday is when they get their hands on him, they have to put him down.

That’s meeting the moment on the field.

Off the field, leaving the White helmets home might not help, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.

Friday: Georgia Tech Preview

09.13.25
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Oklahoma: The Best Team Money Can Buy

Somewhere along the last decade or so, college football has lost its way.

Oklahoma’s football team provided a pretty good example of that on Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field in a 42-3 win over the Temple Owls.

With a player reimbursement budget only about 100x–probably closer to 10,000x–higher than Temple’s, the Sooners proved you get what you pay for.

The lower bowl was pretty much full.

That wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.

After World War II, the NCAA established the “Sanity Code,” principles that covered financial aid, recruitment and academic standards and were intended to ensure amateurism in college sports. The idea was to level the playing field, to make sure no school with more money would have an advantage over another school with less.

For a long time, it worked.

In 1987, the NCAA put its foot down and gave SMU the so-called “death penalty” for paying players.

Now, the only code is “The Insanity Code” otherwise known as the NIL and the transfer portal.

Owls have a much better chance against the UTSAs of the world than the Oklahomas or Georgia Techs.

Since the NIL and the transfer portal, though, paying players is legal and that’s a sad state of affairs.

As former Oklahoma head coach Barry Switzer once said, “NIL stands for Now It’s Legal.” That was my second-favorite quote of this new era (error, really) of football.

That’s great for the Oklahomas of the world and terrible for the Temples.

All that was on display at LFF on Saturday afternoon.

Through no fault of the Temple kids or the Temple coaches, a bigger, faster, stronger Sooner team dominated the Owls and put on display the widening gap between the haves and the have nots.

My favorite quote was what I saw on twitter a few weeks ago by a P4 fan who said, “it’s all fun and games until Mark Zuckerberg takes an interest in Temple football.”

What he meant was the man with the deepest pockets wins and the only way to show how ridiculous the NIL is would be for some billionaire to fund a historically downtrodden program.

At this point, I don’t really care if it’s Temple, Troy, South Alabama or Kent State. Just would love to see a billionaire back one of those programs and have them win the natty every year. I wonder how fast the so-called “blue bloods” would scrap the current system if that happened.

For Temple, neither Zuckerberg nor a Saudi billionaire is walking through that door any time soon.

The reason a No. 21-ranked Temple was able to stay with a No. 9-ranked Notre Dame on national TV a decade ago was because the Owls were able to recruit good players, put them in a rigorous offseason training program and retain them.

For one a few nights in 2015 and 2016, Owl fans were in Heaven.

No more.

Now a team like Temple will probably forever be stuck in the Purgatory of being outclassed by P4 and with its only hope of competing being against similarly situated schools. The best the Owls can hope for is to compete for bowl games every year and maybe challenge for a league title every five years or so.

Because Georgia Tech–next week’s opponent–has many of the same advantages over Temple that Oklahoma has, the real season begins in two weeks. That playing field in Atlanta will be tilted in the home team’s direction, too.

It’s not what the NCAA had in mind when it set the rules.

Now there are no rules other than the guy with the most money wins.

That’s not the sport I signed up to be a fan of when I was in college so many years ago but it’s the one I’m watching now.

If things don’t change soon, the NFL business model–which gives all teams an equal chance–looks more appealing every day for the few entertainment dollars I have left. College football would be wise to study it.

Monday: The Moment Too Big

Saturday: Georgia Tech Preview