Tag Archives: Stan Drayton

06.09.24
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State of The TU Football Union: Stuck in 1987

Thanks to Joe Tolstoy, who released this video yesterday, the first time I’ve seen it in 37 years.

The closest thing to a Temple football State of the Union address is what head coach Stan Drayton had to give to a group of supporters at the 1912 Club last week.

The biggest takeaway was Drayton’s statement that he expects the Owls will be a “totally different football team.”

Sometimes, different doesn’t mean better but Drayton went on to say that the team will be bigger, faster, stronger with greater depth on both sides.

Drayton will not be judged on what he says, though, but what he does. He knows the bottom line has to go from three wins to six wins. Or better. Three to four wins or three to five wins won’t cut it. This is his third year. Time’s a wasting.

Temple fans will see a five-win season as a fifth-straight losing one, not a significant bump from a trifecta of three-win seasons.

So, what has he DONE so far?

It looks like he’s used 1987 solutions (recruiting JUCOS to fill key holes in the lineup) when the 2024 solution is to get P4 backups looking for playing time. Drayton has done that with RB Antwain Littleton, who made an impact at Maryland, but with few other spots on the roster.

So far, no quarterback in sight with nearly the explosive ability of E.J. Warner and that’s a piece that doesn’t look like it’s coming.

What worked in 1987 probably won’t work in 2024 but that’s on Drayton.

The advantage Drayton has over back then is that his schedule is ranked No. 127.

The 1987 Owls of Bruce Arians also had three wins but played the 10th-toughest schedule in the country and won at No. 16 Pitt, 24-21, beat Toledo (13-12) and played relatively competitively in a 27-13 loss at No. 14 Penn State. (Pitt lost to Temple that year but shut out Penn State, 10-0.)

Back then, Arians filled areas of need with JUCOs.

Now Drayton, who played Division III in those days, is reaching back and going with an old solution in a brave new world.

He’s going to try to do it with mostly JUCOs.

That’s the State of the Temple football union and, while it doesn’t look good now, Drayton will look like a genius if the formula works.

For his sake, and Temple’s, I hope next year’s State of the Union address takeaway will be “I told you so.”

06.06.24
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Teams with Temple’s resources poised to do better

Had to laugh at one of the responses to my last post demanding do better in football. He responded saying that college football has devolved into a transactional business and that Temple football can’t compete because it can’t match the transactions.

What that comment missed was the fact that there are teams in the same boat as Temple but they are paddling upstream while the Owls are letting the tide take them downstream.

Same money. Same boosters. Same transactional problems.

The smart guys figure out a way to win with roughly the same NIL money. The dumb guys write down excuses they will mention on the way out.

Mike Farrell Sports did a nice job with this theory mentioning that the G5 schools most aggressive at the highest-profile positions will probably leave the Temple’s of the world behind.

General Phillip Sheridan (err, Arthur Johnson) appoints General Custer (err, Stan Drayton) a couple of years before Little Big Horn.

While Temple “settled” for the second-best quarterback from the 130th-best FBS offense, a team like FAU went out and got QB Cam Fancher from Marshall (who was available to Temple for the four months immediately after E.J. Warner took the lateral move to Rice).

In that story, Farrell mentions that Sam Houston State, Bowling Green and Colorado State–all with coaches making a fraction of what head coach Stan Drayton makes–upgraded their rosters with a slew of P4 talent to move to the head of the G5 class this season.

There is no way you can convince me that UL Monroe– located in the highest crime city per capita in the entire United States–can get a General Booty transfer from Oklahoma to be its quarterback and Temple, located in a world class city (the only World Heritage city in the United States) has to settle for a Rutgers backup and a JUCO who got beat 55-0 by SMU last year as its triggerman at the most important position on the team.

General Booty is only about 10x better than Evan Simon and Forrest Brock combined and but he will play in Lafayette, Louisiana and not Philadelphia, Pa. Hard to believe, Harry.

In a roundabout way, that’s exactly what Stan Drayton told some boosters at a “Temple Takeover” event a couple of days ago.

It was almost a decade ago now since a magazine correctly predicted that the Temple Owls would be No. 1 in football. Now the Temple football coaching brain trust should be concerned that the Owls are being picked for last.

Drayton correctly identified the No. 1 issue for the Owls has being that triggerman but said that it’s between the guy with more career interceptions than touchdown passes vs. the guy who got beat 55-0 and gave no indication that there is any interest in a player currently in the portal.

Hmm.

There is a player currently in the portal who was named MVP in the New Mexico Bowl in 2022 and beat that team who beat his favorite 55-0 losing JUCO QB.

Not only that, but the quarterback also still available is the former high school quarterback teammate of Drayton’s projected No. 1 RB, Antwain Littleton.

We won’t name names because a head coach getting paid $2.5 million per year by Temple should know who is in the portal and who played with his RB starter.

The fact that he has not indicated to any Temple boosters that help is on the way is really discerning and should temper any enthusiasm for Temple’s chances in September.

The message Drayton conveyed to the Temple faithful at Little Big Horn (err, The 1912 Club) was that the Cavalry in the form of a big-time quarterback was not arriving and the Owls will have to circle the wagons around the current meager QB ammunition they have now.

Captain Frederick Benteen and Major Marcus Reno figured that out in 1876 and were smart enough to watch from a distance as a clever enemy scalped General Custer.

If anyone is surprised at the imminent outcome, they never took a post-Civil War history course at Temple.

Watching a massacre is never a pleasant experience.

06.02.24
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Temple: The Unluckiest School in the history of sports

Yankee Stadium’s tribute to Lewis Katz, Temple great and part owner of the YES Network.

On the precipice of winning a national title in basketball, John Chaney recruited two of the top big men in the nation only a decade apart.

Robert Liburd, the 7-foot-2 High School Player of the Year in New York City, and Marvin Webster Jr., the 6-11 power forward and stretch five and son of the great Marvin Webster, were two of many McDonald’s All-Americans (others included Kevin Lyde, Donald Hodge and Mark Macon) who committed to Chaney.

Liburd and Webster tragically dropped dead before they ever got on the court for the Owls.

That robbed John Chaney of his national championship IMHO.

Fran Dunphy’s best recruit was Trey Lowe out of Trenton, N.J. and he never made an impact because of a car accident. Lowe was a top 150 high school talent who maybe might have worked his way into being a top 15 college talent.

That robbed Dunphy of his deep NCAA tournament run.

With some of that knowledge behind me, I got to thinking Temple sports was cursed but it really hit me the day Temple was the only football team to get kicked out of a major conference in 2002 when the Big East pulled the plug.

Fortunately, Temple made its own luck when Bill Bradshaw hired Al Golden (not a buddy) and Golden beat that conference’s Fiesta Bowl rep, UConn, 30-10, in 2010.

More luck was made by a Golden disciple, Matt Rhule, who beat Penn State, 27-10, in 2015 and got the Owls on night prime time TV after the program was celebrated all day on the major networks as Philadelphia turned out big time for ESPN College Football Game Day.

Unfortunately, Temple’s biggest athletic booster, Lewis Katz, never got to see that day because he died in a plane crash on May 31, 2014.

He did, though, live long enough to see his beloved Owls accepted back into a major conference (also the Big East).

No prouder New Yorker than Lewis Katz to see this big sign in Times Square welcoming the Owls back to the Big East.

He did not live long enough, though, to see his AD hire a guy to be head coach who left 18 days later for Miami. That might have killed him.

If that didn’t, surely what happened 18 days later–Pat Kraft hiring an Indiana buddy off a Manny Diaz rebound–would have.

Or maybe if Katz was here all of that would not have happened.

More bad luck.

If luck is the residue of design, Temple owns that, too.

Temple never learned from the bad Karma of the buddy system of hiring and allowed another buddy, Arthur Johnson, to hire another buddy, Stan Drayton.

Maybe that wouldn’t have happened if Katz was here but we will never know.

Now, in an NIL/Transfer Portal Era where the Lew Katz’s of the world are buying the best players, Temple’s luck might have ran out.

Temple needs a new Lew Katz more than ever and, sadly, there are no Lew Katz’s around or no one wants to step into that void. Those of us who do want to step in do not have the funds to own an entire TV network, as Katz once did.

So maybe Temple is the unluckiest school in the history of sports. Given what’s happened, I challenge anyone to find an unluckier school.

My fervent hope is that Temple’s luck has not run out. It is also my biggest fear.

Friday: Poor Survivors

Monday: State of the Union

05.26.24
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Grasping at one hopeful straw: The USF game

Nothing would please me more than Temple to be getting this kind of football publicity.

Anyone who has read this website over the years knows we call balls and strikes as we see it.

After the first two years of the Matt Ruhle Regime, we said that if he kept the spread offense that he was so set on that Temple football would be doomed.

Fortunately, Rhule saw the light and demoted Marcus Satterfield from OC and hired Glenn Thomas, went to a fullback-oriented, ball-control running game and turned the Lincoln Financial Field scoreboard into an adding machine.

Despite an ill-timed fumble from DMR and a pick from EJ, Temple was in this game to the end

The ancillary benefit of that was eight-minute drives that kept the ball out of the hands of the bad guys and gave the defense enough rest to cause havoc on their end. Two 10-win seasons followed and by then Rhule found the strike zone to the effect of earning a $7.4 million contract at Baylor.

In the Stan Drayton Era, it’s been high and outside in the sense that recruiting hasn’t been as good as advertised and the game-day coaching was a little suspect.

Temple fans welcoming USF fans to last home tailgate.

With the exception of one foe: USF.

Now USF is being touted as the “next great” Group of Five team but Drayton beat that team, 54-28, one year (getting head coach Jeff Scott fired), and the next year gave USF all it could handle on the road in a 27-23 loss.

If you are grasping at straws for a reason why the 2024 Owls can be significantly better than the 2023 Owls, that game is a pretty impressive straw.

It is the only one.

Think of it this way. The USF team that Temple SHOULD HAVE beaten that day (and if not for an ill-advised late hit would have beaten) went on to beat Syracuse, 45-0, in the Boca Raton Bowl.

Syracuse entered that game with a 6-6 record in a Power 5 conference, beating Purdue (35-20), Western Michigan (48-7), Army (29-16), Pitt (28-13) and Wake Forest (35-31).

Yet Temple … TEMPLE! … gave USF a much-better game than Cuse and that was a game where bowl eligibility was on the line for USF.

And many of the best Temple players from that game are still getting ready for the season at 10th and Diamond. They need quarterback help and it’s up to Drayton to get his players that help.

E.J. Warner had a nice game for Temple there but he still had a Pick 6 that turned the game around so an argument can be made that the Owls aren’t that far away from competing. We mentioned in this space that General Booty was available on May 4 and Temple should have grabbed him by May 5 but Drayton twiddled his thumbs until May 25 and UL Monroe got him. You think Booty would have picked Temple over UL Monroe (with a chance to get back at Oklahoma in the opener)? I do.

Drayton knows what he has to do but has let other programs get the best available quarterbacks.

Just get a taller quarterback who can see over the line and still make the throws E.J. made. Better said than done but the remaining kids on the team deserve their coaching staff to make every effort to find one. I guarantee you this: Booty will start and have better stats at UL-Monroe than any current Temple player in the QB room.

Drayton has sat on this QB situation since the day E.J. left in December. He needs to get moving.

If he sits on the ball and is satisfied with his quarterback room as is, he is dooming Temple just like Rhule would have if he was stubborn enough to stick with the spread after Year Two.

Stubbornness can get you fired. Rhule figured that out in time to make a fortune. Let’s hope Drayton can do the same.

05.23.24
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Could this be THE guy? Err, no

Close but no cigar.

That’s the best analogy I can come up with. Over the last few years, missed some of my buddies who used to be regulars at the tailgate when I walked over to their area and was told by a few people that they would skip this game or that game because they were watching it at a cigar shop.

Hmm.

Don’t blame them.

This was a solid group who tailgated every winning year at every home game in one corner of Lot K. No better fans of a team on the planet than those guys, mostly a group who played for Wayne Hardin in the late 1970s.

They were beaten down by 1-6, 3-9, 3-9, and 3-9 as were many of the most loyal Temple fans.

The cigar analogy applies this week as well.

Kajiya Hollawayne committed to Temple and that represents the closest quarterback skill set that the football Owls need right now.

Temple needs a quarterback who can both run and pass and a Power 4 recruit, at one time, Hollawayne was just that.

Close, but no cigar. Which probably mean half the tailgates this fall will be at the cigar shop, not Lot K.

The no cigar part is that Hollawayne has given up on the quarterback position and has designs on the next level as a wide receiver. Like most talented guys, he has a shot at that but receiving is not the position most in need at Temple right now.

Quarterback is.

Toledo and Liberty are getting their money’s worth. Temple is not.

Guys like Dante Wright and Zae Baines are two of the best receivers in the AAC right now and while Hollawayne adds a nice supplemental piece to that room, the major need is a guy who could once do what Hollawayne did–see the field, create some space for the wide receivers by his ability to scramble and make explosive plays in the downfield passing game.

The plan right now is for Hollawayne to be a wide receiver but the simple fact is that Temple doesn’t have a quarterback in the building now who did at the QUARTERBACK position what Hollawayne once did. Put it this way: Do you trust a guy who was recruited by Rutgers over a guy who was recruited by UCLA at the same position?

I don’t.

I’ll take a Chip Kelly quarterback recruit over a Greg Schiano one any day of the week.

Yet I do trust Hollawayne’s decision to convert to wide receiver which can only mean one thing.

Temple has no more than three months to find a guy with a Hollawayne skill set to play the quarterback position.

Or all of those great receivers will be waving their hands looking for a ball that won’t be coming their way.

Monday: Grasping at a short straw

05.19.24
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Way too early 2024 game-by-game projections

Every year around this time, we do a way-too-early game-by-game projection and, while it would be better served in late August rather in late May, it screams to be done now.

That’s for one reason alone.

Guess who’s still available?

If the Edberg-Olson Complex powers-that-be don’t see the urgency in getting a big-time quarterback in here before August, maybe a game-by-game reality check with the existing QB room could jar them into action.

If not, all hope is lost, not only for this season, but for several seasons ahead. That’s because after giving the Temple fans a taste of winning after 20 years of losing, the Owls have reverted back to those bad old days of 1-6, 3-9, 3-9, and 3-9. The university will not accept losing forever and it starts with the most important position on the team.

Why is the quarterback position so important?

You need only to look at the Owls WITH E.J. Warner the last two years vs. WITHOUT Warner the last three years. It is not an exaggeration to say that without Warner, Temple would have not won a game.

So what did the Owls do?

Settle for a guy who got beat 55-0 and a guy who was the second-best QB on the field in Warner’s first-ever college football start.

So that’s got to be factored into the equation.

Aug. 31 _ Oklahoma 77, Temple 6 _ Jim Woodside, the Temple defensive back whose interception return gave the Owls a 14-7 win over the Sooners in the 1940s, would be turning over in his grave as the Owls muster only two field goals in a national embarrassment on the main ESPN network. 0-1.

Sept. 7 _ Navy 34, Temple 16 _ Navy gets revenge on the Owls, who are missing their two impact players from that 34-16 Temple win in 2023, Warner and Jordan Magee (who should be attending the game since he will be close by in Washington Commanders’ camp). 0-2.

Sept. 14 _ Temple 17, Coastal Carolina 16 _ No team was decimated by the transfer portal more than the Chanteliers and, believe it or not, Temple did a better job replacing its losses than Coastal. Evan Simon manages the game just enough for a Temple win. 1-2.

Sept. 21 _ Utah State 34, Temple 7 _ Aggies famously made a trip East last year and beat UConn, 34-33. They beat Colorado State by 20 last year and lost at San Diego State in two overtimes. They will have a much easier time in Philadelphia. 1-3.

Sept. 26 _ Army 28, Temple 16 _ The Black Knights reprise their last nighttime visit to Lincoln Financial Field by winning by the same score they did in the 2016 opener. Except for last year against Navy, Temple DC Everett Withers doesn’t have a good record stopping triple-option teams. 1-4.

Oct 5 _ UConn 17, Temple 14 _ On the surface, this should be a competitive game and probably will. The teams shared one common foe last year (USF) and UConn lost by three at home and Temple lost by four on the road. Still, that was with Warner (who head coach Stan Drayton called “our E.J.” at the end of the game), slinging it. Plenty of guys in the transfer portal who can sling it like Warner but none are on Temple’s campus. 1-5.

Oct 19 _ Temple 24, Tulsa 13_ Owls have 10 days to get ready for a team that embarrassed them a year ago. There is not much of a talent gap between Temple and Tulsa and the home game makes a difference. 2-6.

Temple fans do the wave completely around the stadium in a 48-14 win over Tulane in 2015

Nov. 9 _ Tulane 48, Temple 14 _ At home, the Green Wave get revenge for the 2015 game where the home Temple fans did a wave entirely around the stadium. Temple won that game 48-14. Tulane wins this one by the same score. 2-7.

Nov. 16 _ FAU 29, Temple 7 _ After the game, FAU head coach Tom Herman addresses the rumors that Temple is considering getting rid of Drayton. “I know Stan. I worked with him. He’s a great man. Temple has got to consider there’s more to this job than winning and losing and just having a good man like that here should be enough to keep him.” 2-8.

Nov. 22 _ UTSA 59, Temple 14 _ Without Warner, Temple scores 20 fewer points in San Antonio than it did in Philadelphia a year ago. UTSA scores the same number of points. “That little son-of-a-gun (Warner) gave us fits last year,” UTSA head coach Jeff Traylor said. “Thank God Temple didn’t get a similar skill set guy to replace him. I’m kind of shocked, really.” 2-9.

Nov. 30 _ North Texas 30, Temple 17 _ Temple ends its most dismal season since Covid. North Texas loads up the box and takes away the Temple running game, showing complete disregard for the pass. There is a huge celebration in the Mean Green locker room. “They said we couldn’t win in the cold,” North Texas head coach Eric Morris said. “People forget it gets pretty cold at times in Denton, Texas.” 2-10.

There you have it, the 2-10 2024 Temple Owls.

We will revise these projections once Temple brings in a proven FBS or FCS starter at quarterback.

IF Temple does, we mean.

Friday: Could this be the guy?

05.17.24
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How others see Temple should set off alarms

“Stan Drayton? He’s probably going to be fired at the end of this year.” Nice way to start this video

Had to laugh at another post on social media from a well-intentioned Temple football fan who saw that the Owls were picked to finish last again in the AAC and responded with this:

“Bulletin board material.”

Yeah, that’s one way to look at it but that was the way MOST Temple fans looked at it in the last three years when the same damn projections were made with similar results six months later.

I don’t look at it that way, sorry.

Even when Temple lost, the Owls had pride and a swagger and trolled their opponents and Keita Crispina won the day here. Temple needs more players like him.

Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

This is the way I look at it.

You have a head coach who is being paid $2.5 million a year to win–one of the highest salaries in the AAC–and he should see those warnings as a five-alarm fire and this is the one guy who should be scrambling for extinguishers instead of whispering: “Do you smell smoke, too? Somebody must be lighting up a cigarette in the Edberg-Olson poll room. We should be OK.”

Instead, the whole $17 million place is on fire.

The consensus to the outside world is that it’s going to be a long 2024 for the Temple football Owls. See the above video. Those guys got a couple of minor facts wrong but their overall consensus is solid.

It’s IS going to be a long 2024 for the Temple football Owls and head coach Stan Drayton, the guy who is making the $2.5 million, hasn’t done enough to this point to improve the roster.

He might think he has but he has not.

He’s running out of time.

When you upgrade at the 21 secondary positions and downgrade significantly at the No. 1 position on the team, you are not giving the other 21 guys a chance to succeed.

You had a chance to get a better quarterback than E.J. Warner since the day he left in early December and so far you haven’t done a gosh darn thing.

Let’s go. Let’s get moving.

The Owls went from one of the best young quarterbacks in the country to probably the third-best starting quarterback on a FBS team in the state of Pennsylvania.

Not good.

Here’s where we are right now. On a Temple fan facebook site, several people are excited about getting a defensive tackle from Division II Livingston College who had exactly one sack of a Division II quarterback.

Stevie Freaking Wonder could recruit a guy like that.

The only way to up those totals is to grab one of the six or seven remaining QBs in the portal who have demonstrated to be better than E.J. Warner. Stan Drayton is on the clock and time is running out.

Where are my backup DLs from Michigan, Alabama, Georgia looking for a starting spot?

Nowhere to be found.

Most importantly, where is my quarterback who is better, not worse, than E.J. Warner?

Nobody on the outside thinks Temple is going to be any good until the Owls sign a big-time quarterback with bonafides and the guy making $2.5 million doesn’t see the need to call in the fire department when this conflagration is about to burn the house down.

I’ll tell you what. If that was me making the $2.5 million, I would set aside at least $500K of my own money for a big-time quarterback to make sure my paychecks don’t get cut off at the end of this calendar year.

Or I could make the calculation to take the Temple money, suffer the 3-9 and go back to doing what I did before I got to Temple.

Greatness doesn’t quit. Nor should it.

Monday: The way too early game by game

Friday: Could This Be The One?

05.12.24
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Succession plan: There’s already a blueprint

Proof positive that G5 football programs can still thrive with similar resources to Temple.

When Stan Drayton was first hired as Temple’s head football coach in December of 2021, very few people attending that first press conference would have told you that the 3-9 season that preceded him would be followed by a couple of more 3-9 seasons.

Drayton seemed to be that enthusiastic about winning, if not the first year, then certainly his second.

Temple certainly has been treading water since.

Winning is the only measuring stick. It always was and always will be.

Wiesehan (right) with Manheim Township head coach Mark Evans and Geoff Collins on a 2017 recruiting trip.

If 2024 is another 3-9 season (or worse), Temple will have some tough decisions to make. Under normal business circumstances, the logical move would be to get the next head coach.

The nuclear one would be to give up all together on football but that will be determined probably if the new President is a more egghead type (David Adamany) than an ex-Division I football player type (Jason Wingard).

Give me the football player type any day but that’s a decision for the BOT to make.

Everyone around here is rooting for Drayton to go 6-6 or better but it doesn’t look good right now. There isn’t a single AAC-level starting quarterback on the roster and the defensive coordinator who allowed both FIU and Temple to give up nearly 40 ppg. is still here.

The fact that Drayton was hired by his Texas buddy and that Drayton kept his Texas State buddy here as DC doesn’t present the best optics to the rest of the college football world.

Or even the Temple BOT.

Let’s say business as normal and Temple is determined to succeed in football. Then you have to start thinking about a succession plan right now.

A blueprint of success already exists even in the G5 space. New Mexico State made a couple of straight bowl games by hiring a proven Power 5 head coach (Jerry Kill). Troy did the opposite by grabbing a guy (Jon Sumrall) who worked under Neal Brown there and knew the formula to succeed at Troy.

Temple probably won’t have the option of hiring a proven P5 head coach but does have one of those other kind of guys in Chris Wiesehan. Chris was here under both Matt Rhule and Geoff Collins and knows what worked at 10th and Diamond and what did not.

I had text convo with someone who is in the building every day and he said most of Drayton’s staff is standoffish to outsiders with the exception of Wiesehan, who takes time to talk to everyone. That was Collins’ personality. It was also Rhule’s. Drayton himself has the same personality but, for some reason, most of his staff does not.

The thought here after the recent revolving door situation that it would be a good idea to name a “coach in waiting” instead of going through an exhaustive search should Drayton bolt.

Maybe Wiesehan is that guy. Maybe he’s not but a lot of people smarter and closer to the program than me have told me this: “Mike, that guy is the real deal. He would make a great head coach at Temple.” Here are just a few things I like about the guy: 1) He left Hawaii to come to Temple; 2) He left a Power 5 program to come BACK to Temple; 3) He was part of the recent past Temple greatness.

That would make for a pretty good Temple football trivia question. Keith Kirkwood also left Hawaii to come to Temple but Keith was never a P5 assistant who loved Temple enough to come back to take the same job in the G5 realm.

That’s a demonstrated affinity to the school not just through words but through deeds and that should count for a lot.

Some of the same things the same people told me about an unheralded assistant named Matt Rhule a decade or so ago are the same things they are saying about Wiesehan now. There’s a lot of street cred in that.

I’ll have to take their word for it. Certainly, makes sense from the standpoint that Wiesehan knows the landscape from the perspective of three different coaching staffs and was once a nominee for the Frank Broyles Award as the best assistant coach in the country (2018) while …. wait for it … at Temple. He knows every nook and cranny of 10th and Diamond unlike any other “national search” guy would. He was part of success stories under both Matt Rhule and Geoff Collins.

He already knows the blueprint to succeed at Temple. He might be the only one in the building who does.

Just like Sumrall did at Troy.

Friday: How Others View Us

Monday: The way too early game by game

05.10.24
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Smoke and fire: The Drayton to The Ohio St. Story

Do a twitter search for “Stan Drayton Ohio State” and there are about 87 results over the last three months.

Do the same for “Stan Drayton Temple” over the same time period and there are roughly three results. Not 87. Not 67. Not 12.

Three.

Where there is smoke there is fire.

We will never know if Drayton, the head coach at Temple, applied for the running back position coach at OSU but he can provide a few clues over the next few weeks.

OwlsDaily.com, the best site covering Temple athletics, did its due diligence and asked Drayton about the OSU situation after the Cherry and White game and he denied it.

Err, what’s he gonna say?

“Shawn, you got me. I applied but Ohio State backed off when they heard about the payout they would have to pay to Temple. So I’m stuck here for now.”

Deny all he wants, Drayton can convey to Temple fans that he really wants to stay here and win over the next three weeks–not months–by grabbing one of those big-time quarterbacks still remaining in the portal.

If he does not, he is sending a clear signal to Temple fans, the Temple players, the entire Temple community that he doesn’t think he has a viable future here and he is riding out the inevitable third-straight 3-9 season his current quarterback room dictates is going to happen.

Temple possibly has the worst quarterback situation of all 130 teams and that’s not just an opinion. It’s supported by the numbers. Its top two depth chart quarterback guys include one who lost 55-0 to SMU last year and another who has a career four FBS TD passes against six FBS interceptions and played for the 129th-best FBS offense last season.

Not good.

Has Drayton thrown up his hands and given up?

Seems so or we would have had General Booty in here on May 5 after he decommitted from Oklahoma on May 4.

Some 3* and above uncommitted QBs still left in the portal desperate for a home.

Drayton would not be the first big-time coach in this transfer portal/NIL era to give up. Chip Kelly left a lucrative and successful job as head coach at UCLA to step down and be an OC at Ohio State. In that vein, a few other successful head coaches–Sean Lewis of Kent State comes to mind last year joining Colorado as an assistant–and leaving HC jobs and dropping down to staff jobs seems to be a trend, not an outlier.

Kelly wasn’t the only HC to be fed up. Nick Saban quit at Alabama. No doubt they’d still be in the same spots if they didn’t have to deal with the NIL and portal.

No head coach wants to go into a recruit’s house when the first words that 17-year-old kid says is “how much are you going to pay me?”

With the recent rumors of a more equitable payout of the TV money across the board, the solution for schools like Temple is to hang in there and ride this out.

Giving up is not an option and Drayton has one chance to prove to Temple that he hasn’t.

Get a big-time quarterback in here STAT.

He has no more than three weeks to do that. If he doesn’t, we will have our answer.

Monday: Succession Planning

05.06.24
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Laying the foundation means something different now

Right after the Cherry and White game was over, construction crews started working on a whole new Edberg-Olson Complex practice surface, laying the foundation the old-fashioned way.

Ripping up the E-O field, putting the piling underneath and foam padding on top of that and finally the new turf.

It’s going to take six weeks to get it up and in shape for use.

Fortunately, fields can be built the old-fashioned way.

College football programs no longer are built the way Al Golden and Matt Rhule built Temple into a respected one. Golden and Rhule could recruit high school kids, put them through a rigorous weight program for a redshirt year, then work them slowly into the lineup by the second year.

Now you can’t afford to recruit high school guys. You need ready-made players.

That was pretty much illustrated perfectly in the CBS Sports article yesterday. In it, the author, Ryan McGrady, debunks the popular notion that the G5 is getting raided without getting anything in return. The first part of that last sentence is true; the second is not.

McGrady points out that, while the G5 lost 239 players to Power 4 schools, they got 325 incoming players from Power 4 schools.

What’s that mean?

Charlotte and North Texas should be two of the most improved AAC teams as they seem to get how to build a team in this transfer portal era. The Owls are on the clock. Temple’s only chance to win is to get a big-time quarterback.

The G5 schools who load up on P4 talent probably will be successful. The G5 schools who rely on JUCO transfers probably won’t.

There was a reason those P4 guys got scholarships at the highest level of college football in the first place and it was because they were at one time deemed good enough to play in the SECs and the Big 10s of the world. A G5 scholarship gives a P4 player something no amount of NIL money can give him: A chance to be a starter.

McGrady’s example of Peny Boone should be of particular interest to Temple. Boone was stuck as the second-team running back at Maryland two years ago, gaining 258 yards and scoring a pair of touchdowns in two seasons. His transfer to Toledo turned out to be a genius move on his part as he had 1,400 yards and 16 touchdowns. In Antwain Littleton, Temple has a backup from Maryland this year with better incoming credentials –with three times as many yards and seven more touchdowns at Maryland than Boone had.

If he duplicates at Temple what Boone did at Toledo, the Owls are going to win a lot of games.

Temple had the right idea to go out and get a productive Big 10 player but it might have dropped the ball, figuratively speaking, in putting the emphasis on JUCOs rather than productive P4 backups.

There is still time to get a P4 quarterback who actually was productive at that level and, unlike the field being installed at the E-O, the clear evidence is that from a personnel standpoint, laying a foundation really isn’t a priority.

In this new era of college football, fields are built from the ground up but programs are built from the top down. The sooner Temple recognizes that, the better the Owls will play on that field.