Tag Archives: nfl

01.09.26
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The New Reality: Is it sustainable?

From my seat at the Army game this year, I decided that Temple is going to have to find a way to beat the academies on a regular basis to have any success in this league. I was only able to attend due to the generosity of TFF readership. If you want me to attend a road game in 2026, please consider a small contribution today.

After watching one of the classic Fiesta Bowl games of all time, there is a reminder out there that not all that long ago Temple beat one of the two teams in that game by a couple touchdowns.

UConn was that team and Temple beat them, 30-16, a few weeks before that.

Both teams finished the regular season the same 8-4 record but the Huskies ended up in the Fiesta Bowl and the Owls bowless because one team was in the Big East (replacing Temple) and the other in the MAC.

That was exactly 15 years ago and college football has changed a lot since then.

Not for the better.

Short answer for players: You’re as fucked as the fans are and probably more because they have a regular job and you don’t. My advice: If you have a scholarship, room, board and cost of attendance, please keep it and stay at the school who showed you loyalty in the first place.

Temple was able to beat a Fiesta Bowl team back then because the playing field was relatively even as the Owls were able to identify top high school talent and keep those guys through all four years.

Now, no matter how good a job K.C. Keeler does on that end, he risks (and no doubt will) lose the best of that talent either the next year or the year after that.

The players don’t seem to notice how they are being played for suckers and that’s that sad thing. According to Rivals247.com, 3,156 players entered the portal last year at this time and only 1,511 found new spots. What happened to the others guys? In chasing riches, they ended up out on the street and losing a very valuable scholarship, room, board and cost of attendance … which, in the G5, usually averages about $3,500 a player.

The players (among them, a lot of really good ones) who lose it all in chasing the money and end up out on the street would be a terrific story for Dateline, 60 Minutes or any of those other news magazine shows but nobody seems interested in that cautionary story.

That leaves the fans holding the bag for players who make incredibly bad decisions due to predatory agents.

When you lose the fans, you lose the sport.

I don’t think it’s sustainable because North Texas lost its entire team after going 11-1 and will have to rebuild all over again.

Temple, on the other hand, is on the rise but what happens if the Owls overachieve and go 11-1?

They likely lose the entire team and start over again.

It’s not just a Temple problem or a North Texas problem. It’s a Tulane problem. It’s a Memphis problem. It’s a USF problem.

Ironically, it’s not an Army or Navy problem because those two schools have the Kryptonite that kills the NIL and transfer portal.

Yet for any team to win consistently in this league they have to figure out a way to beat Army and Navy by loading the box and selling out for the run. That usually goes against most coaching instincts.

And, after doing that, have a contingency plan on how to rebuild quicker than the competition.

Unless Congress acts and protects the smaller schools, that means a lot of winning seasons followed by a lot of losing ones and a wash, rinse and repeat cycle. Hard to build a loyal home fanbase that way.

Do you see a Congress that protects the big guy in other endeavors ever sticking up for the little guy in college football?

I don’t.

To Congress, I say: Surprise me.

Monday: Temple’s Secret Weapon

01.05.26
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Our predictions the last 2 years: One off, both ways

They should be breaking out the balls for winter workouts very soon.

One year we sold the Owls short. The next we oversold them.

By one game each year.

So close but so far away.

That’s the prediction business in a nutshell.

Having watched the final preseason of Stan Drayton’s Temple career, we wrote in this space that the Owls would finish 2-10 in May of 2024. We based that on Forrest Brock winning the job. When Evan Simon took over, the Owls got better but still not good enough.

They finished 3-9.

On May 23, 2025 we mapped out how each game would go and this was shockingly close to how the first few games turned out.

This year we saw what new head coach K.C. Keeler was doing (upgraded key areas like the DL, RB and backup QB), and upped that win total to six. The justification not only was the roster upgrade, but the fact that an established head coach and coordinators would eliminate the pre-snap penalties that killed Drayton, OC Danny Langsdorf and DC Everett Withers.

That largely happened and two single-point losses to the academies ruined the Owls’ chances of finishing 7-5.

On Memorial Day Weekend, we wrote the Owls would finish 6-6.

They finished 5-7.

We predicted a 24-10 win at UMass (it was 42-10) and a 48-7 win over Howard (it was 55-7). We also predicted a 34-14 loss to Oklahoma (42-3) and a 38-7 loss to Georgia Tech (it was 42-24).

Geoff Collins had the Owls practicing in the snow (2017). Fortunately, Keeler has a state-of-the-art indoor facility at 15th and Montgomery to weather any storms.

We predicted Temple would beat UTSA, 24-21 (remarkably close because the Owls won, 27-21), a 31-21 loss to Navy (Owls lost a game that will live in ignominy, 32-31).

We predicted Temple would beat Tulsa, 34-21 (Owls won, 31-30) and Charlotte, 28-14 (it was 48-14).

The one game we got really wrong was the East Carolina game. We thought the Owls would win that one, 28-20, but they lost, 45-14.

We predicted Army would beat Temple by three (it was by one), Tulane would beat Temple by 11 (it was 23) and North Texas would beat Temple by 14 (it was 27).

Not bad, except for a couple of outliers, Keeler and his staff outperformed the scores we expected. The bottom line is the number of wins.

We will be watching the offseason acquisitions, then attending Cherry and White and coming up with game-by-game predictions around Memorial Day. They need to find a proven starting quarterback in the transfer portal and then slowly work the future (Lamar Best) into the lineup as the season goes along.

By then, we should have a good handle on how things should play out.

Friday: Is it sustainable?

Monday: Temple’s Secret Weapon

Friday (1/15): Best Available

01.02.26
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What the Trinidad Chambliss story tells Temple fans

On the surface, Trinidad Chambliss’ story doesn’t say much about Temple football.

Underneath the surface, though, it tells everything about the future.

Why?

Because Temple did a very much un-Temple-like thing last February in offering Ferris State national Division II championship quarterback Trinidad Chambliss $300,000 to come here and compete for a starting job.

He accepted, and the Friday press conference was all set before Ole Miss swooped in with a $600,000 backup offer.

Bad news for Temple but good news for Ole Miss because he eventually earned the starting job and put his Rebels into the national semifinals.

What does it say about Temple?

It tells you that both head coach K.C. Keeler and General Manager Clayton Barnes have keen eyes for talent. There is a Trinidad Chambliss out there–whether he’s in JUCO, Division II or FCS–and the same eyes that saw the Ferris State quarterback will identify the next Temple one.

Maybe not Chambliss good. Maybe better. Maybe worse but there are no maybes about the eyes scouting that future Temple signal-caller.

“Their quarterback is just incredible,” Georgia’s Kirby Smart said.

Yeah, that’s what both Keeler and Barnes identified on the film a year ago today.

They were excited to get Chambliss and Chambliss was excited to come here before Ole Miss swooped in and got him.

Shit happens.

One team’s shit (Temple’s) is another team’s title (Ole Miss) but that doesn’t diminish the talent evaluation skills of Keeler or Barnes and that’s where Temple is at an advantage in this transfer portal season. Another thought is that Temple is so committed to winning in football that it put its money ($300,000) where its mouth was. Keeler knew that Evan Simon needed some competition and, while he whiffed on the first choice (Chambliss), he hit a solid double into the gap on his second (Gevani McCoy). If that’s not enough, here’s another Keeler/Barnes collaboration: They almost got Drew Mestemaker to commit to Sam Houston before Mestemaker decided to follow a high school teammate to North Texas.

Eye for talent indeed.

Four eyes to be exact.

They made a significant investment (roughly $100,000) in McCoy. They didn’t ask me for a contribution to cover the NIL but, if had the extra cash, I would have forked it over. That’s how much confidence I have in them.

Think about this: If Simon went down, Temple goes from 5-7 without him to 1-11 without a McCoy. If Simon goes down, and McCoy is the backup, Temple wins the same number of games.

That’s how this thing is supposed to work with a great head coach. One injury to a key player shouldn’t take out your season.

Nobody knows more than the CEO and the GM that Temple needs a Chambliss, Simon and McCoy.

Nearly getting Chambliss last year but getting thisclose means they will get someone good enough to compete for an American Conference title thisyear.

Those are the guys working the film room and that’s enough for me.

It should be for every Temple fan.

Monday: Reviewing Our Predictions

12.29.25
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Why the death of bowls may be premature …

Since about the time Temple was caught with its pants down on an invitation to play in the Birmingham Bowl (today at 2 p.m.), the conventional thinking was these so-called minor bowls are dead.

If you put $10 on North Texas laying the 7, as I did, this hurt. Otherwise, a terrific game.

As Mark Twain once said, “Reports of my death have been premature.”

At least that’s the way I see it.

Yes, plenty of 5-7 teams joined Temple in turning down bowl invitations, but hopefully the Owls learned a lesson from the whole fiasco.

The next time the Owls are 5-7–which is hopefully a long ways away–hang by the phone and be prepared to say yes. (Long ways away meaning hopefully the Owls have winning seasons from now on…)

Lessons are to be gained by the experience.

Sort of like kicking a field goal with about 20 seconds left to beat Navy at Homecoming. But that’s was a story for another day.

Today, we celebrate the bowls because, from what I’ve seen so far, the games have been terrific and, at least from an American Conference standpoint, there haven’t been as many opt-outs as I thought might.

North Texas’ best quarterback and running back decided to participate in a 49-47 win over San Diego State.

Louisville and Toledo cared enough to get involved in a donnybrook knock/down, drag/out fight.

Hawaii coach Timmy Chang eschewed what would have been a sure field goal from the best kicker in the country (nicknamed The Tokyo Toe) despite having to use his backup quarterback on the last play of the game because the starter had to come out for one play due to an injury. All that backup did was throw a game-winning touchdown pass.

The crowd of 15,000 at Hawaii–which looked bigger because the Rainbow Warriors have an appropriate-size stadium–went crazy. By comparison, Temple had twice as many fans for Homecoming and while it was a decent atmosphere, they rattled around in a 70,000-seat stadium that was never built for college football.

ECU got absolutely screwed on an inadvertent whistle but survived to beat Pitt.

Terrific drama all around in the bowl games and those were just a few.

In my mind, much more compelling television than shows I never watch (The Batchelor, The Real Wives of Atlanta, etc.) and, because I love college football in general and G5 football in particular, I get a kick out of every time a G5 team beats a P4 one. Plus, the sports programming on ESPN next months shifts to wrestling, volleyball and the kind of bowling where you put a couple of fingers in a heavy ball and roll it down a lane to hit pins.

That’s the kind of bowling I hope goes the way of Mark Twain.

I hope the college football version sticks around for a while.

Friday: What the Chambliss story tells Temple fans

Monday (1/5): Grading Our 2025 Predictions

Friday (1/7): Is it sustainable?

12.25.25
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Can Mason McKenzie realize Temple is the place for him?

Over a month later, Temple’s feelings about Mason McKenzie remain the same.

The Saginaw Valley quarterback has been the No. 1 recruiting transfer portal target regardless of position for K.C. Keeler’s Owls, but other suitors have squeezed in since.

Boston College fan not excited about Mason.

Notably Boston College.

Certainly, the allure of playing in a Power 4 league is something to consider but there are no doubt other considerations for Mason.

One, playing for a team who gave him (in his words) “a lot of love” and, two, quarterbacking what would certainly be a contender for the American Conference championship. It is a roster that Keeler has been largely able to keep intact and a culture that rarely exists in modern day college football–a lot of guys willing to stay and turn a 5-7 program into a championship one.

The only evidence we have for that is Keeler was able to turn a 3-9 roster into a 5-7 one in his first season, only three points from being a 7-5 one.

That all has to be weighed against competing against Miami, Clemson, and Georgia Tech on a regular basis in the AAC. That also involves getting beat up (and sacked) on a regular basis and not able to show the talent demonstrated on a weekly basis at Saginaw Valley the last couple of years.

From this perspective, not a tough choice but we will admit we’re wearing Cherry and White glasses.

Obviously, from Mason’s, it’s a tougher call because he hasn’t committed yet.

Hmm.

An offensive line that will be able to protect him enough so he can show his talent vs. a team regularly playing defensive lines that overwhelm a bottom-feeding ACC team?

That’s the decision Mason has to make the next couple of weeks.

Mason McKenzie

Another consideration is Mason has a chance to play for the winningest active Division I head coach in Keeler and that’s not an opportunity afforded for many college quarterbacks.

Also, Temple lost its top two quarterbacks (Evan Simon and Gevani McCoy) to graduation so the path to being No. 1 starter is wide open.

Mason probably had a lot of nice gifts under the tree yesterday but the one wrapped in the Cherry and White paper probably shouldn’t be ignored.

A Temple scholarship.

That trick play at the 50-second timestamp became the inspiration for the “Philly Special” according to Doug Pederson.

Monday: Rumors Premature

12.21.25
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Musical chairs could help Temple football

Every year pretty much every successful team in the American Conference is going to go through turmoil afterward.

Every team except Temple.

That might be the biggest football news of this offseason for K.C. Keeler and the Owls, whose wife has put her foot down. Both feet, really, firmly implanted in her hometown of Philadelphia, where the two met and married. She told Keeler that this is the last stop and he has agreed.

While Keeler is the CEO of the Owls, Janice Keeler is the CEO of the Keeler Household and the grandkids are here and every Temple fan should breathe a sigh of relief, really, for the first time since this whole NIL and transfer portal nonsense began.

The Keelers on the Bethany Beach Boardwalk last Feb.

That’s because, while there is some stability here, there isn’t throughout the league and Temple is left with perhaps the best coach in the league, although Army’s Jeff Monken might have a say in that.

Tulane played its final game of the season on Saturday night and replaced Jon Sumrall with assistant coach Will Hall. While that might provide some stability for the Green Wave, it also replaces a guy who won championships both at Troy and Tulane with a guy whose only head coaching experience was 16-30 at Southern Mississippi. He was fired after going 1-6 there in 2024.

Speaking of Southern Mississippi, Memphis hired his head coach, Charles Huff. Nice hire but if Huff leaves Marshall after winning a championship and then only gives a year to Southern Mississippi, what are the chances he moves on with any kind of success with the Tigers–maybe even after a year? Pretty good I’d say.

Hooter isn’t allowing K.C. Keeler to go anywhere.

North Texas replaced Eric Morris with Neal Brown, who was also a good head coach at Troy, but there are a couple of problems with that. Rumors are that Morris is taking his quarterback and running back with him to Oklahoma State, meaning that Brown will have to start all over again.

UAB replaced Trent Dilfer with Alex Mortenson, who has never been a head coach on any level, and USF replaced Alex Golesh with Brent Hartline, who was a coordinator at Ohio State. Unless he brings some Ohio State talent with him (doubtful), he’s going to have to rebuild that roster.

All are a year behind Keeler and the Owls, who have done a decent job of retaining the talent already here and procuring a dynamite freshman class.

Where that puts the Owls in the conference pecking order, no one really knows at this point but, thanks to K.C. and Janice Keeler, they are close to the top.

Friday: New Suitors for Targets

Monday: Rumors Premature

Friday: Grading Our 2025 Predictions

Monday (1/5): Temple’s Unsung Hero

Friday (1/7): Is it sustainable?

12.18.25
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A Wednesday Night championship to remember

Plenty of Asa Locks highlights here and he should compete for a starting safety job.

Thanks to someone dropping the phone two weeks ago, we Temple fans have no football to look forward to involving our favorite team.

That said, some meaningful championship football was played as recently as 24 hours ago that has a direct impact on the future of Temple football.

Coach Crounse knows exactly where the Temple University stop on the SEPTA Regional Rail is.

Iowa Western University won the national championship in JUCO football on Wednesday night and Asa Locks was a big part of the defense that locked it down.

More importantly, it demonstrates the detail which Temple head coach K.C. Keeler and General Manager Clayton Barnes are taking to roster building.

In this case, replenishment.

The Owls will have both the need and room for talented defensive backs and Locks certainly falls into that category.

Finding Jaylen Castleberry was the perfect example of that a year ago. In the final year of Stan Drayton, one of the weak spots for the Owls was the cornerback position and Keeler identified that as an area of need in his second week on the job. So he went out and got Castleberry with the hope that he would win one of the cornerback positions and that’s exactly what happened.

In a pinch, Locks can return kicks

Now a similar signee will show up on campus in Locks, who is slotted to play safety. If the Owls can add a big-time quarterback like Mason McKenzie of Saginaw Valley, that would be another valuable addition. Let’s hope he commits soon.

One advantage Asa will have over the rest of his teammates is that he played the most meaningful recent ball and earned a trophy. That’s a year after he was named freshman of the year at VMI and returned a pick 6 for a touchdown there.

If he can repeat that feat in a dozen months, it will be further validation of the talent acquisition skills of Keeler and the kind of roster upgrade the Owls need.

Monday: Musical Chairs

12.11.25
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No more conventional thinking about Temple

Evan Simon (left) is leaving, but all signs point to pass rusher extraordinaire Sekou Kromah returning after surgery. Temple will miss Simon but hopefully the white helmets will also leave with his graduation.

At the most optimistic level, the conventional thinking about Temple football last year going into this one would have been to double the output of Stan Drayton, reach 6-6, and get to a bowl.

The Owls came oh so close. Three Victory Formation Knees short and a game-winning field goal against Navy close.

After that, all things being equal, Year Two in the K.C. Keeler Era would have been an 8-4 type season and falling just short of an American Conference title.

All things are not equal anymore.

With all of the great coaches leaving in the conference, there is no more room for conventional thinking about Temple in 2026.

We’re not saying an American Conference championship is the floor, but it is certainly a realistic ceiling.

Shocking that Temple is dealing with the new CFB reality.

Why?

Because with K.C. Keeler, Temple now has the maybe best head coach in the league. On top of that, Temple has done a pretty good job of retaining players.

Head coaches from Memphis, Tulane, South Florida have left for greener pastures, both literally and figuratively.

Keeler is still here. Arguably, Jeff Monken is a better head coach but Keeler and Navy head coach Brian Newberry are at least in the conversation for No. 2.

If Keeler wins the title in 2026, there is no conversation.

His culture is starting to take hold.

The Owls signed Giakoby Hills to a two-year contract. They offered Trinidad Chambliss $300,000 to play quarterback last year and Chambliss accepted and was set to announce on a Friday in Feb. before Ole Miss swooped in with a $600,000 offer. A week later, they grabbed the starting quarterback from Oregon State, Gevani McCoy, as an insurance policy.

Keeler needs to replace Kajiya Hollawayne (11) with a 4.4-40 type speedster and away we go.

Since Evan Simon didn’t get into a wreck, they didn’t need to use that policy but Keeler demonstrated a foresight that neither Rod Carey nor Stan Drayton had. Both were willing to blow up Temple seasons with an injury to the starter and both did.

Keeler sees the big picture.

The Owls’ No. 1 priority is to get an experienced winning transfer portal quarterback here and Keeler is on record as saying he will bring in two.

What does that look like?

Without naming names, it probably means a proven FBS starting winning quarterback as the first signee and a proven winning FCS starting quarterback as the second.

If the Owls were in the battle for Chambliss, and they were, and McCoy, who they got, expect something better in a month.

With Clayton Barnes handing the procurement of the players and Keeler handling the coaching end, Temple is in good hands.

If that happens, bleep an 8-4 season. A 10-2 one and a conference title is firmly in the crosshairs. Aim, ready, fire.

Monday: The Quote We Need

12.07.25
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A bowl selection Sunday to remember for Temple

My three-letter reaction when I heard the news on Sunday night.

The last Bowl Selection Sunday that went this bad for Temple came in 2010, when an 8-4 Temple team was told there was no bowl for them.

That time it was the bad guys’ fault. This time the blame falls on the good guys.

Both TE Peter Clarke and DE Cam’Ron Stewart wanted to play.

It was pretty hard, even in those days of 2010, for an 8-4 Temple team to not be chosen but that’s exactly what happened.

“Guys, it’s over,” Al Golden said in a team meeting. “We didn’t get picked.”

A few hours later, Golden left for the Miami job and had to have another meeting to give those kids further bad news.

That was a pretty good Temple team. They beat a BCS bowl (Fiesta) team (UConn) by 20 points and deserved to a chance to bring back some hardware for the Edberg Olson trophy case. The bad guys didn’t want to give Temple a bowl spot that day.

So much for the bad guys.

The question might be who held a gun to Temple’s Temple?

Five weeks ago, Temple was sitting on a 5-3 record and looked like a sure shot for a bowl game. The the Owls lost four-straight games to close out the season and bowl hopes went out the window.

Or so we thought.

A nice bowl trophy fell into their laps on Sunday afternoon–not to mention a nice trip to a warmer place and three weeks of needed practice–and the Owls said thanks but no thanks to a Birmingham Bowl spot that would have put them up against 6-6 Georgia Southern. In my estimation, the Owls would have been a double-digit favorite in such a game and a bowl win, even for a 5-7 team, would put a nice taste in everyone’s mouths and maybe even helped ticket sales for next season.

My guess is that call was made above the K.C. Keeler level but we should find that out in the next few days.

Whoever made the call, though, is a supposed good guy representing Temple.

There are reasons for turning it down including costs, travel and players, but those reasons apply more to the other teams who turned the bid down, not Temple. These Owls were three points away from 7-5 and, in those two games, some extremely questionable calls by the refs robbed them.

These kids deserved a bowl, too.

Back 15 years ago, the prevailing thought was maybe that someday Karma would pay Temple back by giving the Owls a bid on a day they didn’t expect it.

Sunday was the day that something nice fell into their laps and, instead of dusting it off putting it in a place of honor, they threw it out the window.

Somebody has got some explaining to do.

Update: Temple statement below….

So you’re basically saying everybody either said no or “get back to us” but App State said, “Hell Yes!!!! Where do I sign?”

Friday: Room At The Top

11.27.25
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Temple-UNT: Moving parts offer some hope

If the Owls can visualize a 34-28 OT win at North Texas, they can do it.

If nothing had changed over the past few days, the prognosis for Friday’s football game at North Texas would have been exceedingly dismal for Temple.

Now it’s just regularly dismal. Or to be optimistic, more interesting.

This would be K.C. Keeler’s greatest win of his 276 as a head coach and enough for Temple to commission of statue of their living legend placed at the E-O.

A couple of moving parts, though, have given the Owls some hope in their final attempt to secure a bowl bid to make it a magical season at the 22d-ranked Mean Green (3:30 p.m., ESPN). One, North Texas head coach Eric Morris is headed to Oklahoma State and, two, quarterback Drew Mestemaker is probably following him.

How well UNT compartmentalizes those distractions probably will determine whether the Owls can stay in the game so we did a deep dive only over the last 10 years to find out how similar teams and coaches handled those situations.

Spoiler alert: Not very well.

Most head coaches who get other jobs at or near the end of the seasons go right to the other job and skip the final game with their old teams. Over the last decade, we’ve found 14 FBS head coaches who did stay and coach both the final game of the regular season and the bowl game.

In those 28 games, those coaches were 12-16. Shocking, because in every single one of those cases, all 14 of those head coaches had winning records in those seasons.

No data available if that also includes the star quarterback.

Breezy and 68 for Friday’s game on ESPN.

That’s an indication of a couple of things. One, their level of detail to the job currently at hand probably isn’t as comprehensive. Two, their eyes are on the next big thing.

None of that applies to Temple, though, and, if the Owls have an advantage, that’s it. The Owls have a committed coach and a roster of players whose stated goal at the beginning of the season was to make a bowl and turn this program around.

If they can visualize this win, they can do it. If they can’t visualize it, they can look at the video at the top of this post.

Their level of detail should be razor-sharp. For this game, that detail includes resurrecting the running game of Jay Ducker and Hunter Smith against a UNT defense whose Achillies Heel is run defense. Keep the ball. Control the clock. Use play/action passes from Evan Simon to keep drives alive and, most importantly, keep the ball out of the hands of Mestemaker and his explosive offense. North Texas is ranked No. 14 and last in the American Conference in run defense, giving up more than 211 yards a game. Put it this way: Ducker has 746 yards and, if he gets those 254 yards Friday to hit 1,000, Temple wins.

Plain and simple.

Or maybe get 150 and Smith get 100.

Sounds like a game plan head coach K.C. Keeler can get behind.

Also, that coach has been here before.

In Keeler’s 276 college football victories–the most ever as an active head coach–he has won 11 games as an underdog of 20 or more points. He is “only” a 19.5-point dog right now but that could change by kickoff.

Never, though, has Keeler beaten a ranked FBS team as a 20+ point underdog. He’s got everything else on a stellar resume so why not add this? No better time than now.

If he and the Owls are able to pull this one off and get to a bowl, it should be enough for Temple President John Fry to commission a statue of him placed right inside the gates of the E-O. Or at least approve a Go Fund Me to get the project going.

That would be one moving part Temple fans can get behind.

Late Friday Night: Game Analysis

Monday: Season or Bowl Analysis