Tag Archives: Temple football

01.01.16
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Owls’ Top Plays of 2015

Penn State v Temple

(Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)

In a long but historic season, limiting the great plays Temple’s football team to just five is an impossible task. Some just made the cutting-room floor, like All-American linebacker Tyler Matakevich’s two tipped interceptions against Cincinnati and a clutch fourth-down catch against Notre Dame by Robby Anderson. These five plays stood out as the team tied a school record for 10 wins.

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  1. John Christopher’s Throwback Pass

After Penn State took a 10-0 lead, the Owls scored 27-str

to win, 27-10. The key play in the drive that tied the game at 10-10 was a wide receiver throwback from John Christopher to quarterback P.J. Walker that was good for 25 yards and a first down on their second drive in the second half.

Memphis v Temple

(Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)

Kip Patton’s Tight End Reverse

The Owls absolutely had to win a late-season game against visiting Memphis and Kip Patton’s 13-yard score on a tight-end reverse sealed it in the fourth quarter. That put the Owls up, 21-12, and Austin Jones added a 35-yard field goal to make it 24-12 on the next drive. Patton is the kind of athlete who the Owls will have to get in space in 2016.

Notre Dame v Temple

(Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images)

  1. Brandon Shippen’s Spin

In the highest-rated college football game in the history of Philadelphia television, senior wide receiver Brandon Shippen made one of the biggest plays, catching a ball at the Notre Dame 2-yard line. He appeared to be stopped just short, but maintained his balance, bounced off two tacklers and spun in the end zone, reaching the ball across the goal line.  The Owls lost, 24-20, but led with 4:41 left in the game.

Tyler Matakevich, Temple, Notre Dame,

  1. Tavon Young to Tyler Matakevich

In the same game against Notre Dame, the Irish were driving in the first half with a chance to go up 21-10 but cornerback Tavon Young reached around Will Fuller to break up a touchdown. With the ball in the air, Tyler Matakevich was opportunistic enough to pick it out of the air and return it out of further danger.

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  1. Sharif Finch Fools Christian Hackenberg

Perhaps the play that made the Owls true believers against Penn State was with the score tied at 10-10 and PSU quarterback Christian Hackenberg dropping back. Hackenberg never saw Owls’ defensive end Sharif Finch, who dropped back in coverage and returned an interception to the 2. The Owls then took a 17-10 lead.

12.30.15
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A Primer for Temple AD Pat Kraft

If SMSC leaves …

Only on Pravda would you read a serious comment about the Philadelphia Eagles being interested in St. Matt of State College.

I kid you not, that’s what I red on the Red (Cherry) Square website on Tuesday night.

Just in case I’m the one who is delusional and not the SMSC fans, we offer this primer to Temple athletic director Pat Kraft.  If, in the unlikely event Matt Rhule leaves to coach the Philadelphia Eagles, Temple would do very well to follow the guidelines that led to these great five hirings of 2015. The next Temple head coach should be a guy who has done it someplace else before multiple times in the same position. It would help if that place was a harder place to win than Temple, but Kraft should not consider another assistant coach who would be learning on the job.

Here are the top five college hires of 2015. These guys are gone, but the next Temple coach should be a guy like four of these guys (Toledo is the exception here):

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Matt Campbell

  1. Matt Campbell, Iowa State

Campbell turned 36 on Nov. 29th, and his present on that day was a six-year contract as new head coach in Ames for $2 million-a-year. The investment will prove to be worthwhile, because Campbell crammed a lot of accomplishments into his short time as a head coach at Toledo.  He went 35-15 in four years, including wins over Iowa State and Arkansas this year.

Marmot Boca Raton Bowl - Temple v Toledo

Jason Candle

  1. Jason Candle, Toledo

Candle was the offensive coordinator under Matt Campbell before being promoted to head coach. Hiring from within proved to be a wise move because Candle led the Rockets to a 32-17 win over favored Temple in the Boca Raton Bowl. While Temple tried to balance fun and preparation, Toledo was focused on football and the businesslike approach paid off now and probably will in the future, too.

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Dino  Babers

  1. Dino Babers, Syracuse

Some might make the comparison between Babers and former Kent State coach Darrell Hazell, who has flopped at Purdue, because Hazell went 11-1 at another MAC school, Kent State, before being hired. The comparison ends there because Hazell was a one-year wonder while Babers has won at two places as a head coach over four years, Eastern Illinois and Bowling Green, capturing first-place finishes in all four years.

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Bronco Mendenhall

  1. Bronco Mendenhall, Virginia

As the head coach at Brigham Young, Mendenhall guided the Cougars to 11-straight bowl invitations—an amazing feat considering the school has played an independent schedule for the past five seasons. He was able to recruit enough talent to win 10 or more games in five seasons despite dealing with severe admission standards. That ability should serve him well with the Cavaliers.

Georgia State v Georgia Southern

Willie Fritz

  1. Willie Fritz, Tulane

Until recently, Fritz was the best head coach in America virtually no one knew about because he was toiling in relative obscurity at Georgia Southern. Pretty soon everyone will know Fritz because what he did there should be able to translate into success at Tulane. In two years at Georgia Southern, Fritz ran the ball 83 percent of the time out of a triple-option and finished 9-3 and 8-4.

12.29.15
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G5 Teams Need Own Playoff System

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If this had been a G5 playoff, maybe the emphasis would have been more on football and less on bowling alleys, boating and volleyball.

There is a pretty slick ad running on national TV regularly that mixes traditional New Year’s Eve music with the message that the four-team playoff is not to be missed.

The only thing missing from the promotion is a Group of Five team in the Final Four playoff and that’s why the Group of Five schools need their own. Sure, the BCS throws the G5 a bone and allows one of its teams into a New Year’s Six game, and this year that team is American Athletic Conference champion Houston, which will be playing Florida State in the Peach Bowl. Yet that bowl has no impact on the national championship and the AAC representative will be the only G5 team among the dozen in the featured bowls.

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Would have been a nice G5 Final Four game.

The process by which the college football playoff committee is rigged so that a G5 team will never get into the championship picture, so the G5 participating in a process that gives them only a crumb slot in a non-championship game like the Peach Bowl should be unacceptable.

As it was, even if Houston went 13-0, it would not have made the final four teams because its most impressive out of conference victories were against middle-of-the-pack Power 5 schools like Vanderbilt (34-0) and Louisville (34-31).  Had Temple run  the table, it would have been a different story because the Owls had a team which made a NY6 bowl, Notre Dame, on the schedule. The same can be said for Memphis, which beat a Mississippi team (37-24) that handled Alabama. Those two G5 teams, though, ran out of gas late.

Still, to ask one group of schools to go unbeaten and still not guarantee a spot in playoffs is an unreasonable requirement when three of the four P5 teams in the playoff currently have one loss. That’s why the G5 needs to break off and hold its own championship and surely can get some of the middle bowls to sponsor their own final four.

The reward of claiming a G5 national championship trophy surely outweighs the risk of giving up the one NY6 crumb the group currently receives.

12.28.15
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Lambert Trophy Another Casualty of 3-4 Finish

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Army accepts Lambert Trophy in 1953.

Ever feel like you have a train schedule for a pretty neat destination and just kept putting off getting on the train until you are standing on the platform not knowing if the last train left?

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Nov. Lambert poll with current records.

That’s the feeling I have as a Temple fan today, watching  some other team pick up a trophy the Owls had wrapped up most of the fall. I really think that this year might have been the Owls’ best chance at getting that elusive Lambert Trophy, emblematic of football supremacy in the East. They’ve been giving this trophy out since 1936 and Temple has not won it once. Chalk up another casualty to the head-scratching 3-4 finish.

There is a possibility another train arrives next year and the Owls better hop on it because the station closes after that. Penn State’s Top 10 recruiting classes will start to make an impact no later than two years down the line, and, after that, the rest of the P5 recruiting will separate other Eastern schools from Temple. I really believe Temple can win this thing next year with another 10-2 record or better, but the Owls will have to beat Penn State again. I think they can. After that, PSU is off the schedule and probably not coming back.

The Owls will be watching the Military Bowl today (2:30, ESPN) and the winner of that game gets the Lambert Trophy. It will be a reminder of how college football should be and not how it is.

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Since Navy was No. 1 and Pitt was No. 2 in the last poll released in mid-November, the winner will get this trophy. The leader in the September and October polls, Temple, was ranked No. 3 in the November poll and lost its bowl game.

The Lambert Trophy comes from a different time when there were no conferences but football was played at a high level in the East. Joe Paterno of Penn State was the coach with the most trophies (28). The Nittany Lions added another trophy with coach Bill O’Brien in 2013.  Pitt has won it six times and Navy four. Had Temple not lost three of its last four games, it would have surely won its first Lambert Trophy ever this year.

The Lambert Trophy is a reminder of how a regional conference of the large, mostly public, institutions makes a lot more sense than having Eastern teams like West Virginia (Big 12), Syracuse,  Pitt and Boston College (ACC) and Navy and Temple (AAC) scattered all over the map.

How great would it be for a conference of the top seven teams in the latest poll? Those were, in order, Navy, Pitt, Temple, West Virginia, Penn State, Connecticut and Virginia Tech.  Throw in Boston College, Maryland, Syracuse and Rutgers and that conference just makes too much sense.

That’s why it will never happen, but the Lambert Trophy people should be applauded for keeping a nice thought alive. If college presidents had any sense, that’s the conference the Eastern schools should be playing in today. Those schools would save millions on travel and add millions of visiting fans in ticket revenue due to short driving distances.

That train has left the station, too.

12.26.15
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AAC Reputation Taking Hit in Bowls

These Sun Belt officials should be ashamed. 

It’s a good thing bowl games are being played for nothing other than pride, because any pride credits the AAC built up in an impressive regular season are being used up in the postseason.

A couple of years ago, MLB put a tangible reward in the outcome of another meaningless sports endeavor, the all-star game, with home advantage in the World Series going to the league that won. Fortunately, the BCS is too pre-occupied with creating artificial advantages for its Power 5 teams to care about how Group of 5 teams do in bowl games. Otherwise, we might see something tangible go to a less-deserving conference like the Mid-American.

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Frustrating night for next year’s leaders.

The AAC has lost three games so far but, really, only one team, Temple, entered its Boca Raton Bowl game favored and that was just by one point. The other two AAC teams which have lost, Cincinnati and South Florida, were underdogs and rightly so. In the Temple game, the Owls drew to within 25-17 with 2:50 left and replays showed they recovered an onsides’ kick that was awarded to Toledo, but, as North Carolina found out in the ACC title game against Clemson, onsides’ kicks are not reviewable.

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Pretty good when you get a retweet from both the Philly and Pa player of the year.

South Florida, the second-place team in the AAC East, lost to the Conference USA champion, Western Kentucky, while the Mountain West Conference champion, San Diego State, pummeled the third-place finisher from the AAC East in Cincinnati.

Toledo was a curious underdog because the 10-2 Rockets were coming off a regular season that saw them win all their road games, including those at Iowa State and Arkansas. Iowa State was so impressed by Toledo that it went out and hired its head coach, Matt Campbell, after the season.

Now, the really meaningful games for the reputation of the conference are the Military Bowl and the Peach Bowl and the AAC looks to be in good shape in both.

Houston is a touchdown underdog to Florida State in the Peach Bowl, and Navy is a slight favorite against Pittsburgh in the Military Bowl. A pair of wins against established Power 5 teams could give the AAC the good news it so desperately needs now.

12.24.15
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What’s Next? A New Slogan

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First of a great series of photos by Coach and Player Magazine’s Zamani Feelings. The Steve Harvey reaction Meme is mine. 🙂

Everyone will always talk about “The Call” in the 32-17 loss to Toledo, but there was also “the call” and that was a tipped interception that Tyler Matakevich appeared to control earlier in the game. You could see Tyler frantically waving his wrist for the Temple sideline to throw a challenge flag, but the challenge never came. I just watched the DVR, hit rewind three times and it showed Matakevich controlling the ball before it hit the ground.

Had those two plays gone the other way, who knows what would have happened? The Owls scored to make it 25-17, and Tyler Mayes recovered an onsides’ kick, but the Sun Belt officials blew that one and here is the visual evidence, courtesy of Coach and Player Magazine photographer Zamani Feelings, who looked like he was close enough to it to fall on the ball himself.

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These two photos show Mayes on top of the ball and the ball on the ground and, at that point, the whistle should have blown and the ball should have been called dead.  Who knows what would have happened after that? Sure, the Owls played like crap for most of the game but it still would have been fun if Mayes was rewarded for his great play.  People say the Owls had trouble scoring, but maybe momentum would have allowed them to tie it at 25-25 in the last two minutes. People also say that since Kareem Hunt scored, he would have scored again. I don’t buy that either, because the Owls were going for the ball and not the tackle at that point.

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We will never know.

What we do know is that the team will need a new slogan.  Leave No Doubt was a great slogan, but it was all because the 6-6 Owls were bowl eligible a year ago and the “leave no doubt” referred to getting a bowl bid, not winning one.

Matakevich himself suggested one in an emotional post-game interview where he said he mentioned to the juniors: “Don’t Let This Happen Again.” It might be tough to fit on a Tifo.

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This year’s Tifo.

Until someone comes up with a more concise version, I like it because we play to win championships or at least hoist bowl trophies at Temple and, because of a 3-4 finish, neither one of those things happened.

So “don’t let this happen again” will stand until a better 2016 slogan comes along.

12.23.15
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The Real Reason for the Loss

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If you want to read a feel-good piece about what a great season this was and how we should all be happy about winning 10 games, please head somewhere else.

There is plenty of singing Kumbaya on social media and elsewhere. If you want to read the brutal truth, please proceed.

The brutal truth is that Tuesday night’s embarrassing loss to a MAC team—and it was an embarrassing loss—was not Matt Rhule’s fault, P.J. Walker’s fault or any of the kids’ faults. The fault squarely rests with the Temple administration, which should have never accepted this invitation in the first place.

Of course, we’ve been beating this drum since we heard the announcement (see yesterday’s post and two other posts linked below). My whole post yesterday was that Temple was walking into an ambush and, unfortunately, I was right.

There was no way Temple could match the emotional pitch Toledo was going to have coming into this one. No matter how much Temple could pretend Toledo was Auburn pretending is one thing and reality is another. Auburn is Auburn and Toledo is Toledo and never the twain shall meet, despite 6-6 and 9-2. Toledo had a coaching staff anxious to prove to its administration it made the right call. Temple’s coaching staff needed to prove nothing to its administration.

To Toledo’s players, Temple was Auburn and a step up. To Temple’s players, Toledo was just another MAC school, a directional equivalent of Western Michigan or Central Michigan or Northern Illinois. No matter how much you pretend, those facts cannot be changed.

That’s why Temple should have accepted the invitation that was on the table for Birmingham. There is no doubt on my mind that the Owls would have finished the season by beating Auburn in Birmingham. As you’ve read in this space the past week, there was plenty of doubt in my mind that they could beat Toledo.

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It wasn’t because Toledo was better, it wasn’t, but it was because of all the intangible edges Toledo had going into the game that was outlined in Tuesday’s post. Maybe next year, the Owls will do some homework on an opponent—if they earn the right to pick one—and do a little less snorkeling, beach volleyball or bowling. Invest that time in other pursuits, like better play calls in third-down situations.

A lot of Temple fans dropped a lot of coin going to Florida for this one. We hope that the good time they had made it all worthwhile. For me, I would have gone down there for one thing and one thing only—a win.

This should have been treated more like a business trip and less like a reward and, for that, you can lay all of the blame on Neil Theobald and Pat Kraft.

Related Posts:

Survey Says: Boca Raton

Finishing Near the Bottom of the Bowl Lotto

12.20.15
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Matakevich Deserves to Go Out With One Last Record

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Herschel Walker was head over heels for Steve Conjar’s record, but even Herschel’s records fell before Steve’s.

Going into his final college football season, it appeared that Temple’s Tyler Matakevich was poised to do a lot of special things, but one thing appeared out of his reach and that was the school record for tackles held by Steve Conjar.

Before the opening game with Penn State, he needed 138 tackles to break the record 492 held by Conjar, a linebacker who played between 1978 and 81, and even the most optimistic number-crunchers could see that averaging over 10 tackles a game might have been a bit much to ask.

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A dozen tackles for record.

Thanks to a season that saw him win the two top awards for national defensive player of the year (the Bronko Nagurski and Chuck Bednarik Awards), Matakevich has now put himself in a position to break the record.  He is sitting on 481 tackles and needs “only” 11 in Tuesday’s Boca Raton Bowl against Toledo to tie and a dozen to win.

It’s going to be tough, but everything Matakevich has done in his Temple career has epitomized toughness and getting this record will be a fitting last hurrah. There is no bigger fan of Matakevich than Conjar and the two linebackers swap notes in the Lincoln Financial Field parking lot after home games.  Now Matakevich will have a chance to do something Conjar did and that was to bring a school a bowl win. Conjar was a major player in a 28-17 Garden State Bowl win over California in 1979.

Matakevich also did a lot of things Conjar never did, like playing in a league championship game—the Owls fell short to Houston—and becoming a consensus first-team All-American, the first at the school since offensive lineman John Rienstra in 1987.  He is the centerpiece of a senior class that has injected Temple football with a sense of legitimacy in the national eye after years of being known as a doormat.

All the while, Matakevich has had to overcome some hurdles placed in front of him, like playing in three conferences (Mid-American, Big East and American Athletic) in his four years. He also had to sit in a room in 2012 and be told his head coach at the time, Steve Addazio, was leaving to take the same job at Boston College.

After all of that, a dozen tackles remains his last individual goal in a team game. If he doesn’t get it and the Owls win, he will walk out with a big smile on his face. That’s why he deserves both.

Tomorrow: A Tribute to the Other Seniors

Tuesday: Game Day

Wednesday: Post-Game Analysis

Thursday: What’s Next?

Friday: The Boca Raton Photo Gallery

Saturday: Putting AAC Bowl Struggles in Perspective

Sunday: The Chinatown Syndrome

12.19.15
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Survey Says: Boca Raton

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About a month ago, season ticket-holders, myself included, received an email from Temple athletics.

The main question asked the fans where they would like to go for the Owls upcoming bowl game. Listed were D.C., NYC, Florida and other locations.

Nowhere in there was a question regarding possible opponents.

That was my first question. As early as the day after the Notre Dame game, the main goal was to be in the NY6 game. Failing that, I thought the best reward for the Owls was to find a Power 5 opponent in a bowl game and go beat them.

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One  post on a Toledo board speculated 20,000 Temple fans will attend. We can only hope. My guess is anywhere between 3,000-10,000.

That’s not going to happen and the reason is the survey, which hopefully will be better-worded next year. The overwhelming number of people picked Florida (duh?) for its nice weather and beaches.  There was no checkmark asking if Florida would be the pick if the Owls had to play a MAC team.

As the editor of Pravda likes to say, it is what it is.

The mindset changes from going out with a signature win to “better not lose” and that’s a tough mindset to take against a quality opponent.  Even though the hardcore college football fan knows Toledo is good and beat Arkansas and Iowa State, the facts are the Temple brand is better advanced by beating a 6-6 Auburn than a 9-2 Toledo. One of the reasons the Owls did not go to the Birmingham Bowl, with a payout of $1.2 million, is the money is evenly distributed among all AAC bowl teams. It didn’t matter that the Boca Raton Bowl payout was only $400,000. AAC has very interesting rules regarding bowl payouts. All bowl money is evenly distributed among all 8 league bowl participants, meaning Temple gets EXACTLY the same share of Houston’s $6.9 million Peach Bowl payout as Houston does. Independence Bowl gets a $1.2 million payout, and the AAC rep will be the 6-6 Tulsa.  Bernie Sanders would be proud of the way the AAC redistributes wealth.

So the Temple administration didn’t need to follow the money, just where it thought the most Owl fans will go. The Owls had a choice of Shreveport, Birmingham and Boca and went with Boca.

To those unable to attend, it’s all in the perception and the masses who watch these bowl games are not hardcore college football fans. They watch usually because it is the only thing on ESPN in the bar or at home on a Tuesday night. If they see Temple lose to Toledo, the Temple brand, built on wins over PSU and Memphis and a close to Notre Dame, takes a huge hit. On the other  hand, if the Owls were to lose to 6-6 Auburn, the casual fan would say, “Hey, wow, Temple is playing Auburn on TV. That’s great.”

The Owls have to take care of business because a win is really the only way these terrific seniors deserve to go out and because 11 wins will be a school record, but that’s a good team on the other side of the ball that will also have at least half a say in the outcome.

To them, beating a team that—at least in their minds—said it was too good for the MAC is a powerful incentive. Just like beating Auburn would have been for Temple. So it will be interesting to see how the Owls react. Hopefully, they will play like they did against Penn State and Memphis and the mindset will be academic.

At least that’s the theory.