Tag Archives: sports

12.18.25
by

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

12.14.25
by

The Temple Bowl Quote We All Need

After almost a full week since Temple got gift-wrapped a bowl bid and hemmed and hawed and fumbled it away, fans deserve an answer.

No, not the scripted answer released by the university but at least a comment from the CEO of the football operation, head coach K.C. Keeler.

It’s not only the quote we want, but also the quote we need.

Reading between the lines, here’s what probably happened: The Birmingham Bowl went down the Rolodex of eligible teams and asked each one for a “yes” or a “no” and moved on from on from the ones who gave a “no” and a “maybe” until they could get to a yes.

Two of the Owls’ best players were interested, as was probably the whole team.

Temple probably was one of the maybes.

As soon as Appalachian State said yes, all of the maybes were moot and they get to play Georgia Southern. Now Temple fans who do dial into that game get to point at the TV and said, “that should have been us.”

Until we get clarification, we have to assume the bowl got in contact with athletic director Arthur Johnson, who said the Owls needed time to talk to other parties within the school.

Birmingham didn’t have that kind of time.

That leaves us to the quote we need.

Keeler strikes me as the kind of person who is a straight-enough shooter to NOT cover for Johnson. If asked, my guess is that he would say: “I would have said yes but nobody asked me.”

This notion that because Temple was 5-7 it didn’t deserve a bowl is ridiculous. App State is also 5-7 and played a significantly easier schedule. Temple was two points from being 7-5.

It would have been great to see Evan Simon hoist that bowl trophy in one hand and maybe an MVP trophy in the other.

The fact that nobody in the media has even asked Keeler for his version of events is an indictment of the Philadelphia media and its interest in even covering Temple football.

Do you think this happens in other cities that have college football teams?

No.

I’m sure we’ll hear Keeler address the issue honestly at some point but Temple fans should not have had to wait a day or even a week to hear what he had to say.

It’s just one quote, but it would clear up a lot.

Friday: Key Commitment Coming

12.11.25
by

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
by

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

12.04.25
by

A Signing Day that could not have gone better

Lamar Best could pull a Bear Bachmeier (BYU) and be 11-1 as a true freshman starting quarterback.

Based on what happened Wednesday inside the Edberg-Olson Practice Facility, Temple is going to have a pretty good football team in 2026.

Certainly, better than the 5-7 product we saw in 2025.

That’s because Temple signed the No. 1 recruiting class–objectively, because that was determined by the 247.com rankings–in the American Conference and 21 of those 32 signees will be enrolled in the school by January, giving them a head start both in the weight room and with the program’s culture.

Signing day 2025 could not have gone better because of that.

It was a history-making class for at least a couple of reasons.

At No. 63 nationally, it was the highest ranked class Temple has had since Steve Addazio was able to bring in the No. 54 class after the 2011 New Mexico Bowl win over Wyoming. (Prior to that, Al Golden brought in a No. 52 class after the 2009 Eagle Bank Bowl game against UCLA.)

That was all in the middle of an historic Temple bowl run, which saw the Owls attain bowl eligibility for nine of 11 seasons. By comparison, Temple hasn’t been eligible for a bowl this decade and it is a decade that is getting pretty old.

Clayton Barnes showed every Temple fan why K.C. Keeler wouldn’t have taken the Owl job if he didn’t come along. He is the Howie Roseman of college football.

What determines the product on the field, though, will be the next signing day early in January when the Owls reap whatever they can sow from the transfer portal.

Probably the marquee pick of the 32 is St. Joseph’s (N.J.) Regional state champion quarterback Lamar Best, who played in a high school league every bit as good as the one current BYU true freshman Bear Bachmeier played at Murietta Valley (Calif.). Best not only knocked off national power Don Bosco in the state title game, he had a very similar sophomore season to Bachmeier in high school. Bachmeier threw for 2,853 yards and 26 touchdowns at Murietta while Best, then at Willingboro, threw for 2,607 and 35 touchdowns.

Whoever Temple brings in could very well lose the starting job to Best but the Owls probably won’t risk that scenario. To me, after an examination of both his film and the last true freshman Temple starter, P.J. Walker, he’s at least as good a passer but a far better runner. Walker was a true drop back passer in comparison to what Best can do with his legs.

The fact that neither head coach K.C. Keeler nor recruiting guru Clayton Barnes want to leave the results of the 2026 season on a true freshman indicates the soundness of their roster approach. They brought in two other great high school quarterbacks, Brody Norman and Brady Palmer.

The only “cinch” starter among the group appears to be Upper Moreland High punter extraordinaire Luke Sword. If he doesn’t punt much, the Owls are either scoring touchdowns or kicking field goals and those are the preferable options.

If nothing else happens, they will need an experienced winning No. 1 quarterback. Keeler said they will bring in two.

If this is Luke Sword’s first punt at Temple, I won’t be mad.

Refreshing to hear for Temple fans who were absolutely screwed by Rod Carey when Anthony Russo went down and felt the same level of de ja vu with Stan Drayton when E. J. Warner missed several games with an injury. Temple will never be one hit away from a season-ending injury with Keeler as head coach.

Whether that quarterback is from the P4, G5 or even the FCS, it doesn’t matter. If anyone doubts K.C. Keeler’s ability to do that, we only need to refer you to the acquisition of Gevani McCoy. That came days after the Owls lost current Heisman Trophy candidate Trinidad Chambliss to Ole Miss.

McCoy earned the admiration of every Temple fan in that he battled holdover Evan Simon to a virtual standoff before the opener at UMass, lost his job, and became a good soldier in supporting his teammates until the end.

Temple needs someone like that, who is good enough to beat out a true freshman with all the talent in the world or back him up as insurance in case he gets hurt. Someone with the character of a McCoy.

If nothing else happens, the floor is six wins. The ceiling with an experienced winning college quarterback is double digits.

If the next recruiting season (portal) is as exciting as the one concluded on Wednesday, Temple fans are in for a treat. They will need to get off the sugar high of the last treat and a month should be enough time.

Monday: Room At The Top

Friday: Burying The Lead

11.30.25
by

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

11.27.25
by

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

11.22.25
by

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

11.20.25
by

Temple wins if it pulls out all of the stops

Gary Segars says K.C. Keeler is always a good bet as an underdog. He’s usually right.

The phrase “pulling out all of the stops” means to use all available resources to achieve a desired outcome.

At least that’s what both the Merriam-Webster and Oxford English dictionaries say.

The good news is that Temple head coach K.C. Keeler is starting to get that term in the sense that he admitted that the two close losses to the service academies caused him some introspective in analyzing what one or two things he could have done to get him over those 1-point humps in losses.

If Kajiya Hollawayne throws a TD pass, you’ve got the Temple Football Forever guarantee of a win.

He was kind of referring to next year.

Here’s a thought: Do it now.

As an outside observer, we’re going to offer a couple of theories how that desired result could be achieved for Saturday’s Senior Day home game against 24th-ranked Tulane (3:45 p.m., Lincoln Financial Field).

One, keep doing what you are doing 97 percent of the time.

That means offensive coordinator’s Tyler Walker’s innovative motion offense, which involves a lot of moving parts causing defensive confusion. It also means Brian L. Smith’s core belief of pressure on the quarterback, ostensibly with the front five, but also including blitzes if needed. Make Jake Retzlaff as uncomfortable for the entire game as you did to UTSA’s Owen McCown in the second half a few weeks ago.

Speaking of McCown, take a page out of the book he used to beat Tulane, 48-26. Go 31-for-33 with 370 yards, four touchdowns and zero interceptions against that secondary.

To do that, you’ve got to give Evan Simon a chance to throw the ball at least 33 times against a banged-up cornerback room even more depleted than the one McCown faced three weeks ago.

That leaves the other three percent of the time, which will probably determine the outcome of this most important Temple game in a decade.

Temple, especially on the offensive side of the ball, has done very little to “fool” the opposition in terms of “using all available resources to achieve a desired outcome.”

The last few games showed that Keeler and Company are starting to get it in terms that they used a third-string quarterback on a number of surprise packages that called for a QB run or a QB pass.

When the Army defense recognizes No. 14 is a backup QB and calls the reverse pass before it happens, that’s probably not the kind of play you want to use.

Ditch that. Ditch the entire Tyler Douglas package.

“Great throw Kajiya. I was saving this play for Senior Day.”

You will know Temple is going to win this game maybe early as the first offensive play from scrimmage. That’s been almost always a boring straight handoff to Jay Ducker. Let this one be a Jet Sweep to Kajiya Hollawayne. I don’t care if he gains 3 yards, 12 yards or goes to the house, it will be a successful play for Temple.

I know Hollawayne is a 4*star quarterback recruit from UCLA. You might know he is a 4* QB recruit from UCLA and both Keeler and Walker might know that, but it’s highly doubtful Tulane does. That Jet Sweep sets up another Jet Sweep down the road where the Tulane corners come up on run coverage and allow Hollawayne to use that 4* arm to hit JoJo Bermudez in stride for six points.

This is how open Bermudez would be on that kind of pass:

Especially since Temple hasn’t used that play all year.

To date.

That’s one of our 3 percent suggestions.

Here’s another: Temple hasn’t used the “tush push” or “Brotherly Shove” so far.

Doug Pederson said he got “The Philly Special” from watching this Temple play against Penn State in 2015. Nothing more Philly than Temple. The Owls have a long history of winning big games on trick plays.

Do it with 6-6, 265-pound tight end Peter Clarke doing the pushing for one or two 4th-and-1s.

You know what that sets up?

Certainly not a pass, but a “fake tush push” to “Temple’s Saquon Barkley” a pitch the speedy Keveun Mason, for maybe another six points.

Those dozen points might make a difference for the seniors who deserve one after three long years with this program.

Pulling out all the stops hasn’t been tried once this season, especially in the two 1-point losses.

Now that approach deserves the kind of chance it hasn’t been given for the first 10 games.

Very, Very Late Saturday Night (since I will be at the stadium until 9): Game Analysis

11.16.25
by

The biggest Temple-Tulane game in 91 years

Last year, this story ranked the Sugar Bowl between “Temple” and Tulane as the 12th best of all time

Most of the time when Temple plays Tulane the Owls are either very good or Tulane is very bad.

Or, as we’ve seen over the last couple of years, Temple being bad and Tulane being good.

The twain never met until now.

It’s finally time to get revenge for that loss 91 years ago.

Now, on an unusually beautiful 60-degree day on Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field (3:45 p.m. kickoff), both Temple and Tulane are pretty good and the stakes are higher than any other meeting between the two teams in a long time.

How long?

The last time that happened was 91 years ago when the two teams played in the first Sugar Bowl game, won by Tulane, 20-14. (They brought the same refs that officiated this year’s Army game.)

Tulane is playing for an American Conference championship a spot in the college football playoff. Temple is playing for a bowl game.

Both things mean just as much to each team as the other thing does so something has to give.

From the Temple game plan perspective, it’s time to pull out all of the stops.

Attacking your opponents’ weaknesses means unleashing Evan Simon on the 127th-ranked passing defense by throwing more than 30 passes.

That doesn’t mean to panic but it does mean a lot more “imaginative” plays than what we have seen through 10 games.

That means setting Kajiya Hollawayne up for the reverse pass by giving him the ball a few times a jet sweep. Only after a couple of successful jet sweeps, have the former four-star UCLA quarterback sucker the defense into him and use that arm to hit JoJo Bermudez in stride for six. Being a great coach means taking advantage of the unique talent of your players and, when you have a wide receiver with a 4* arm, not using that arm is coaching malpractice.

Should be a beautiful day to enjoy the last home game of the season, so Temple fans should make plans now to support these kids.

Also, trust in the numbers, which never lie.

Attacking your opponents’ weaknesses means unleashing Evan Simon on the 127th-ranked passing defense by having him throw more than 30 passes. UTSA’s Owen McCown demonstrated the wisdom of that approach by going 31-for-33 for 370 yards with no interceptions four touchdowns.

Not surprisingly, UTSA won that game against Tulane, 48-26.

Simon is a better quarterback than McCown, at least in our opinion, and that is also is matchup advantage Temple needs to lean on heavily. If Temple’s Mon-Friday practices emphasize all of that, it’ll be a pretty sweet “T for Temple U” afterward. If it’s the same/old, same/old we’ve seen on offense all year, that won’t do.

Bombs Over Baghdad. Or at least South Philly.

Friday: Temple-Tulane Preview