On a team most neutral observers have listed down in the 100s, it’s been pretty clear for awhile that Temple two of the best units not only in the AAC but in all of G5 football.

Specifically, offensive line and wide receivers.

Despite finishing 1-6, the offensive line allowed a league-low 1.7 sacks per game in 2020. It returns four starters and a junior college All-American comes in to replace the oft-injured Vince Picozzi, who was the other starter. Really, if you count tight end David Martin-Robinson (and you should) the line returns five starters not only from 2020 but from the 2019 regular season when they finished 8-4. They proved to be good run-blockers more during the 2019 season than the 2020.

Pretty impressive but not as impressive as the wide receiver group, led by Temple’s all-time leading single-season record-holder Jadan Blue. As good as Blue is (and he’s an NFL player), Randle Jones on the other side is slightly faster and has been called a “flat-out stud” by head coach Rod Carey.

There’s plenty of depth, too, with a productive Power 5 portal transfer in Purdue’s Amad Anderson Jr. Anderson caught 36 passes for 362 yards and three touchdowns for Purdue in a couple of seasons and, with Blue and Jones, should get a lot of single-coverage opportunities. (Hell, you can’t double-cover a single Temple receiver because that opens things up for the other two.)

What does this mean for the team’s bottom line?

Not much if the defense and special teams can’t be fixed.

That’s something that Carey should be placing a priority right now during two weeks of practice in the Bronx.

Still, good defense or no, when the Owls have the ball there is a chance … a chance .. that they can turn the Lincoln Financial Field scoreboard into an adding machine.

If so, the season could be more exciting than the experts say and that something is better than nothing.

Friday: Some areas of concern

Monday: Camp surprises

Friday (8/20); Rutgers fans

Lately, we’ve been having an explosion of expansion mania in college football.

The Big 12 commissioner, Bob Bowlsby, accused ESPN of conspiring with the AAC, of all conferences, to take break up his group.

ESPN has denied it.

Over a month now and that’s all it’s been: All talk.

This time, it seems like something might happen. Does, say, Kansas going to the Big 10 help Temple?

No.

Nobody really knows what’s going to happen, if anything, but I will take a guess.

The current Group of Five schools largely remain in the G5 and the current Power 5 schools largely remain in the P5.

That’s it.

The only change I see is that the schools in the P5 will consolodate into four mega conferences. The leftovers from the Big 12 are more likely to join the PAC-12 than they are the AAC.

The AAC won’t be absobing the remnants of the Big 12. There won’t be a Power 6.

Why?

Money talks and the 64 schools in the P5 have never shown one iota of sharing that money with any newcomers.

This whole thing reminds me of the talk about Temple’s ill-fated football stadium.

Back in March of 2012, a big football contributor was willing to tell anyone he saw at Temple basketball’s NCAA basketball game with North Carolina State that the stadium was a “done deal” — meaning that it will be built.

Knowing the North Philly neighborhood like I do, I said: “Wake me up when the first shovel hits the ground.”

Almost a full decade later and the first shovel has never hit the ground.

Now it’s a done deal the other way.

Temple has signed a 10-year Linc lease extension and not a single official affilated with the university wants to talk about the status of the stadium. That kind of tells you all you need to know.

That’s kind of the way I feel about all of this expansion talk. Wake me up when Temple joins a Power conference.

Until, then, like the stadium, it’s a nice thing to dream about while smoking a pipe.

Monday: Two reasons for optimism