Tag Archives: Temple football

06.17.16
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Camp Rhule

grind

One of the tried and true methods of keeping young people out of trouble is getting to them young. There are all sorts of educational programs directed at young people and some of them really work. Heck, when I was a freshman in high school, we had a heroin addict come in and speak to us in the auditorium. His story was so scary that I never even had as much as a cigarette.

There is positive reinforcement, too, as an incentive for young people. In a football sense, Camp Matt Rhule—officially called the Matt Rhule Football Camp—is one of them.

Temple is lucky to have a guy like Rhule, who rolls up his sleeve and gets to the recruits while they are young and impressionable.

Rhule recently tweeted over 2,200 students and prospective athletes interested in Temple attended camps on campus this year. In between camps, Rhule has made trips to Virginia Tech and the Air Force Academy to pick the brains of the head coaches there.

drills

One of the drills at the MRFC.

Temple fans know Rhule is a workaholic, but the level of offseason commitment to the program should pay off during the regular season. Short term, the trip to AFA should help the Owls prepare for Army’s triple option on the night of Sept. 2. Long term, the camps are giving young people the idea that Temple’s campus, program and facilities are top notch and that should pay off dividends.

The Owls have come a long way from the time where Bobby Wallace would vacation three—some say more—months of the year in Gulf Shores, Alabama, all while collecting a Temple paycheck.

There is a direct correlation between winning in the offseason of winning in the real season, and Owl fans have to feel good about what their head coach is doing this offseason.

Monday: What Temple’s TV schedule means

Wednesday:  Differences Between Al and Daz

Friday: New Approach for Army

06.15.16
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UAB: The Temple of The South

uab

UAB is spending $250 million on its stadium, twice as much as TU.

When I was working at the Philadelphia Inquirer, two cubicles down from me was a guy who, like me, was born inside the City Limits of Philadelphia, went to a high school inside the city limits and, also like me, graduated from Temple University.

The difference between the two of us was that he wore Alabama apparel to work and went crazy with each play every time Alabama was on the newsroom television and I did the same for Temple.

uabgraphic

 

Years after that played out every night at work, I am now an Alabama fan. Not the Roll Tide version, but the 2.0 rollout version of Alabama-Birmingham. (Don’t worry, unlike my fellow co-worker, Temple still comes first.) Unfortunately, the rollout doesn’t come until the 2017 season, but this is a story that is worth following nonetheless.

There are at least five reasons for this:

  • UAB is bringing back football after dropping it.
  • UAB is trying to do it by bringing in ready-made JUCO recruits.
  • UAB is trying to build an on-campus stadium after years playing in a stadium too large for its fan base.
  • Tyler Haddock is on the roster.
  • Mark Ingram is the athletic director.

All good, solid reasons to follow the Blazers, as Ingram was the assistant athletic director at Temple recently and Haddock held the Temple recruiting class together almost single-handedly between the time Steve Addazio quit and Matt Rhule was hired.

Haddock never got a chance to play for Temple, but it should be interesting to see what kind of impact he makes on the field. In order to get up to speed, the program recruited JUCO players with the promise of playing right away.

It should be interesting to see how well they do. I will be rooting for them, just not as hard as my former co-worker rooted for the Crimson Tide.

Friday: Camp Rhule

06.13.16
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Early Commits: So Far, So Good

daily

The Owls Daily List so far.

According to OwlsDaily.com, the early commits that Temple’s football team has been able to garner include a quarterback, an offensive lineman, a tight end and a running back.

So far, so good in more ways than one.

It looks like the Owls are following the Al Golden method of recruiting; that is, recruit an entire team every season. One player at all 22 positions, plus a couple of spots for specialists. That way, you both build depth and quality across the board and are not left short at any spot.

The Steve Addazio Method was more scattershot, often over-recruiting one position, say, offensive line, leaving the Owls short in other areas. That caused Matt Rhule to start out recruiting behind the eight ball, scrambling to fill areas of need rather than an equal group across the board. Looks like the Owls will be recruiting two quarterbacks this class. You might question that because they have a solid one for the next three or four years in Anthony Russo, but there are pesky things like injuries that the Owls need to insure themselves against.

As far as individuals, we do not get too much into the players before the signatures are on the dotted line because the nature of the business is that Temple will lose a few commits, but be able to poach a few more. If they are able to poach more P5 guys than lose guys to P5 teams, they will be ahead of the game.

Right now, I will be following the above four—there may be more soon—and hope the quarterback throws 30 or more touchdown passes (he threw nine last year) and the running back goes for more than 2,000 yards.

Then Temple will have something.

Wednesday: The Temple of the South

06.10.16
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Power 5 Health Care

 

nonpower

There are 64 teams in five FBS conferences who pretty much have it made when it comes to their financial health.

There just a little bit more on the outside of the hospital looking in, with their noses pressed against the window of the emergency room. Some people say Temple has no shot, most say Temple has an outside shot, and then there is this website called the Big 12 Fanatics that raves over the Owls.

He gives Temple high marks for financial health and rates Temple ahead of a number of Power 5 schools as an attractive Big 12 candidate. I don’t know about you, but I hope Dr. Pat Kraft finds this guy and has him make the Power Point presentation for Temple to the Big 12.

The factors he looks for is total revenue, the profit of the athletic department and the total fan base. My guess is that he placed a little too much weight on Temple’s football season average attendance (an AAC-best 44K), but the Owls probably should make their case while the iron is hot. One thing they do have is the largest TV market available to a Power 5 school (fourth, all other top 20 markets have a Power 5 team in the metro area). No one knows if Temple is actively lobbying for a P5 spot, but UConn, Cincinnati, Memphis and UCF are. The AAC can probably survive the loss of UCF, but not of the other schools.

There is a significant portion of the Temple fan base that says the school does not belong in the Big 12 and, while that may be the case, the stronger argument in my mind is that the Big 12 is the only Power 5 conference considering expansion for the next few years. Temple has got to get in the Power 5 while it can or risk never getting into the money-making group. While they have tabled the expansion talk for this season, this is the only conference that will probably expand next season or the year after and Temple better be ready. Yes, the ACC makes more sense, but P5 conferences rarely make sense.

Waiting for a call that might never come from the ACC is just too risky.

Monday: Some Intriguing Early Commits

Wednesday: The Temple of the South

06.08.16
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Paul Palmer: Waiting Hardest Part

Temple Owls Paul Palmer

Paul Palmer

One of Bernie Sanders’ favorite sayings this campaign year has been: “Enough is Enough.”

It could be Paul Palmer’s as well.

lawhorn

Temple’s D1 national leaders.

In my mind, Temple’s all-time greatest player has waited long enough to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame’s 2017.

If he’s not Temple’s best player, to use another Sanders’ analogy, he’s in the top tenth of the top one percent of players who ever wore the Cherry and White. That should be enough to get him into the Hall of Fame.

Another good reason is that this is Palmer’s sixth year on the ballot, joining a group of just 81 players who have been on the ballot that long.

The wait is not over and will not be for a long time. It will be until Jan. 7th before Palmer hears whether he is a member of that class. Nothing has changed since the first time we heard Palmer was a candidate a few years ago when we wrote this story for Rant Sports.com.

He had done enough then, and enough should be enough now.

Friday: Power 5 Health Care

06.06.16
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Bill Lyon: Always A Friend Of Temple

book

A must read for anyone who loves sports.

In this space today was supposed to be another story on how the Power Five might view Temple football.

Those future friends can wait for another day, a time to write about Bill Lyon, whose Sunday column in the Philadelphia Inquirer might have been his best from a pure prose standpoint. Lyon is battling Alzheimer’s Disease and, if anyone deserves to win that battle, it is Bill. I sat next to Bill in the old Veterans Stadium press box many times and he picked my brain for Temple information as much as I did his for writing information. In those days, sometimes we were the only two reporters (especially for the Austin Peay game of 1990) on press row. He was always friendly and never ultra-critical of the Temple football program like current contemporaries Mike Sielski and David Murphy are.

Here is what Lyon wrote about Al Golden’s 2010 season:

By Bill Lyon

“Temple: For a long, dismal stretch, there wasn’t a sadder program anywhere. The Owls labored just to win one game a year. From time to time, impassioned voices were raised (ahem) imploring them to simply drop football. A lot of good men were sacrificed in that coaching shredder.

Finally, in 2006, after going 3 and 31 in the three preceding seasons, they brought in one Alfred James Golden, a Yankee Doodle Dandy, born on the Fourth of July, a pup out of one of those Joe Paterno litters. Al Golden had played tight end at Penn State, and then coached the linebackers. He was undeniably young, but he had the pedigree. Still, it’s a long, long way from Happy Valley to Broad Street.

lyon

Bill’s lede on Paul Palmer’s historic game.

First, there had to be a purge. First, the culture of losing that had set in like dry rot had to be scrubbed away. When all you have known is losing, it’s difficult to envision winning. In his fourth season, last year, Al Golden got the Owls to nine wins. Nine. That used to take half a decade. And he got them to a bowl besides. And now, for the second year in a row, they are bowl-eligible again – and the prospect of 10 wins, or more, lies shimmering on the horizon.

Temple’s opponents used to line up to schedule the Owls for their homecoming. So now, payback, it turns out, really is sweet.

And when you are successful, envious eyes are cast your way. Other programs in need of resuscitation circle. Names of suitors are floated. UCLA. Cincinnati. Tennessee. So far, Al Golden has spurned them. But it is well to remember that in the college coaching game, the market for saviors never closes.”

Wow. That was the one-word response I had while finishing most of Bill’s columns. Wish Sielski or Murphy were capable of that kind of writing.

Like pretty much everything he wrote, Lyon turned out to be right in the end. Two weeks after that story appeared, Golden was off to Miami. Bill probably will never write about Temple football again, but what he did was always fair and that’s really all that matters. If life is as fair to him as he was to life, he will beat this.

Wednesday: Paul Palmer’s Wait Should Be Over 

Friday: Power 5 Questions and Answers

06.03.16
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Oklahoma at Temple Announcement Could Come Sooner Than Later

oklahoma

There are few athletic directors more engaging to fans out there than Temple’s own Dr. Pat Kraft, who joined a conversation I was having with former head coach Wayne Hardin during one tailgate last fall.

Coach and I were talking about past Temple opponents, and why we could not get some of those familiar schools on the schedule. I then threw a few names out to Kraft, including Indiana, which I thought might be a school the Temple administration might be interested in playing.

rubber

Rubber match?

“I asked,” Kraft said, “they won’t play us. We’ve gotten too good.”

(Getting too good is a good problem to have.)

Kraft later said that the days of Temple playing “2 for 1s” are over, so the news earlier this week that Temple is about to schedule a “big name” opponent that wants to come to Philadelphia and doesn’t mind whether it is at Lincoln Financial Field or the new stadium is big.

woodside

Mr. Woodside puts away the last meeting.

Temple head coach Matt Rhule indicated as much on 97.5 on Tuesday, saying that the Owls will be playing Maryland, Rutgers, “possibly” Duke and a “big name” opponent he could not divulge just yet.

It is a Big 12 school and, while West Virginia makes the most sense, it certainly doesn’t fit the kind of big national name criteria Rhule outlined.

All indications are that the opponent will be Oklahoma. That’s good news because it shows that Kraft never gave up trying to get someone and that the Owls are moving away from the Stony Brooks and the Villanovas of the world. For the Owls to get into big bowl games, they are going to have to not only win AAC titles but combine that with wins over big-name opponents. Even Houston, which beat a P5 opponent in the Peach Bowl, Florida State, did not get a Final Four invite despite a 12-1 record.

The parameters of national success are pretty clear for an AAC school. Win the league, but also beat a big name school. Oklahoma is a big name, if that is the team Temple schedules. Heck, Oklahoma might help the Owls get into the Big 12 some day.

Once the Oklahoma shoe drops in a couple of weeks, it should be big news. Maybe the Owls can schedule a road trip that includes Tulsa and Oklahoma back-to-back and stay out there and practice for a week.

Monday: Power 5 Health Care

Wednesday: A Look At Some Early Signees

 

06.01.16
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The Second-Easiest Schedule In College Football

templeschedule

Instead of heading to the beach or having a barbecue, I spent most of the entire Memorial Day evening watching guys a little older than me tell war stories.

The channel was 39, the PBS Channel in Allentown, and the guys were Vietnam Veterans telling stories about how absurd the rules of engagement were. One guy said that to break the boredom he and his buddies made up  a FKIA list. FKIA stood for “flies killed in action” and the guy who killed the most flies in a given week would earn the pot. As a lark, they included the FKIA list in with the EKIA “enemies killed in action” list and none of the superiors said anything about it. To make a long story short, the brass thought that FKIA and EKIA was  to differentiate between Viet Con and NVR troops and the killed in action lists eventually made it to the Walter Cronkite CBS News and Cronkite was reporting 100-1 kill ratios of Americans to bad guys.

As a result of the high enemy kill ratio, the GIs were told they had to get permission to return fire. In other words, if they were shot at, they had to call headquarters and ask to shoot back.

Absurd indeed.

The 2016 Temple Football schedule is a little like that FKIA list because it is the second easiest schedule in FBS. What does it all mean? It means in the absurd state of college football today, the Owls can go 13-0 and win the AAC title and quite likely not get a Final Four Playoff invitation, let alone play for the national championship.

Make that definitely not get a FF invite because the Owls’ strength of schedule is rated 127 of 128 FBS teams. As Temple fans, we would love to have that kind of problem.

While there are benefits of an easy schedule, the whole point of playing is to win and the whole point of winning is to compete for championships. That a 13-0 team would be left out of the national playoff picture is absurd.

Just like that FKIA list.

Friday: The Mystery Big-Time Team Coming To Philadelphia

05.30.16
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Burning Anthony Russo’s Redshirt

Montel Harris, Nate Combs

For Memorial Day, our favorite Temple-Army football photo of all time. Montel Harris telling Army captain and linebacker Nate Combs how he went off for 351 yards and seven touchdowns in a 63-32 win on Nov. 17, 2012. Combs, now a First Lt., is leader of a 40-man rifle platoon in the U.S. 101st Airborne Division.

Somewhere, somehow, Anthony Russo is getting ready to play football when he arrives on the campus of Temple University in a little over a month.

Sounds like a solid plan to me because, based on what we saw this spring, he is as good as any of the other Temple football backup quarterbacks right now. The Owls normally do not like to burn redshirts, but in the case of a special talent like Russo, that’s an exception they have to make for at least a couple of reasons.

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Anthony Russo.

Frank Nutile (pronounced  NEW TILE) is the current backup, having won the No.2  job from Johnny Manziel-clone Logan Marchi. Yet, it has been a long time before Nutile was on the field as a starting quarterback and that was as a high school player at Don Bosco Prep. In that year, 2013, Nutile threw for 1,392 yards and 12 touchdowns. Compare that to Russo’s numbers at Archbishop Wood last year: 2,452 yards and 35 touchdowns.

So you have a guy in Russo who put up numbers more than twice as good as Nutile and who is nowhere near as rusty as Nutile is against live competition. Does Nutile being at Temple more than make up for that stark difference in pure talent?

Probably not.

The other reason to get Russo some time in 2016 is that he will most likely be your 2017 starting quarterback in the game at Notre Dame. The last time Temple played a true freshman at Notre Dame, kicker Jim Cooper Jr.,   he was more shellshocked that the Germans defending Berlin in May of 1945 and that scared him for the rest of his Temple career.

Getting Russo some time in some of the blowout wins this fall sounds like a plan. He’s getting ready. The Owls should give him a decent shot to be P.J. Walker’s backup come August. He’s probably their second-best quarterback now and they will have to lean heavily on him in 2017 so burning this redshirt should be considered.

Wednesday: The Second Easiest Schedule in College Football

05.28.16
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Be All, Or End All?

houston

Houston is more like Temple than any other AAC school.

This will be the last post, at least on this site, on a stadium until Temple University officially makes some sort of pronouncement about a timetable for construction.  The prediction here is that will not come for another year or two, so any further speculation on the topic is really silly.

All that has happened so far is that Temple has announced it wants to build a stadium and the city has announced it is against Temple building that stadium. We have reached, with apologies to Donald J. Trump, a Mexican Standoff.

This is going to be a long, drawn-out, process. First, the uni is going to have to get past the minefield that is City Council and, once past that, artillery of the “community” and, after that hurdle, the tanks and suicide bombers of possible law suits holding up the project. People who are talking like there could be a game in the new stadium in two years are really kidding themselves. More like two years until there is the first shovel on the ground.

If that.

This post, though, is largely to tell the tale about Houston’s beautiful new facility and the similarities that Houston has with Temple, which are many. When I first heard that Temple was considering a football stadium,  oh, about 50 or so years ago, I found the idea more than intriguing but necessary.

The Owls were nomads at the time, playing at a sub-standard stadium, the Vet, or at the tail end of their long-term relationship in Mount Airy. Then, the Owls talked about building a 35,000-seat indoor football/basketball complex on the site of Wilkie-Buick, and that’s probably what should have happened. The Owls would have solved two problems, football and basketball, and dealt with the community and the city once, not twice.



“There’s the games-are-at-the-(pro stadium)
excuse, so there’s no college environment,
and if UH just moves games to campus,
things will be fine. … then there’s
the neighborhood-isn’t-safe excuse.
And the traffic-sucks excuse.
Don’t forget the problems-with-parking,
or there’s-not-enough-good-spaces
-for-tailgating excuses.”
Sound familiar?
It’s Houston, not TU

Now, the Owls are in a half-billion dollar palace just seven miles south of the campus with a dedicated subway stop at each end taking as many students who want to attend games door-to-door.

There are a lot of things to consider about a new stadium, and chief among them, is the question about it solving all or most of the program’s current ills. There are a couple of working studies to consider and one is the 15-year Liacouras Center history. In the years since the LC was built, Fran Dunphy had the team winning three-straight A10 titles and there were plenty of seats to be had in those years. You can complain all you want about Dunphy, but when he gives you three-straight league titles and that arena comes nowhere close to selling out  on a regular basis, you’ve got a fan problem that is deeper than an on-campus facility. Another is Houston’s beautiful stadium, where the Cougars have completed their second season.

In this story, head coach Tom Herman complains about attendance, and the writer cites many of the concerns some Temple fans have about an on-campus stadium. There are a lot of sides to this stadium story, and it’s not all crystal clear.

While l would love to be able to walk from one end of the campus to a football game on the other end of the campus, it’s worth five minutes of your time to read that what happened in Houston wasn’t the be-all or end all it was cracked up to be.

Monday: Anthony Russo’s 2016 Role

Wednesday: The Second Easiest Schedule In College Football