Sadly, not a single Owl in sight

About this time every year (maybe for the last 40 or so), the routine is simple.

Go shopping, pick up milk, bread, some cheap suburban soda and check out the magazine aisle before leaving.

This is the time of year where the college football magazines come out and the sports fantasy has always been to see the Temple Owls if not prominently featured on the cover at least in one of those flaps in the corner.

Maybe one day, but that day wasn’t last week.

It never happens because money talks loudly in cases like this.

Penn State could have the worst team in history coming back and Temple could be favored to win the AAC and it will be PSU on the cover and not our beloved TU. That’s because the magazine editors see the 100,000 average fans the Nittany Lions pull in and contrast that with last season’s 28,167 Temple average and figure out who gets the press.

Journalistic integrity?

That went out the window a long time ago.

Still, it’s worth mentioning here how Athlon–considered by some the leader in college sports magazines–rates the Owls. Temple is ranked as No. 78 overall and, in a landscape that has the top 80 teams going bowling, that translates to a 6-6 record.

If so, I’m headed out to Parx Casino to put money on the over.

Interestingly enough, UCF is No. 22 nationally, Cincinnati No. 39 and Memphis No. 49.  Houston comes in at No. 53 but at least the Owls have ranked ahead of No. 80 Tulane and No. 102 Navy. (Houston is a team the Owls scored 59 points on in a road game last year.)

Both P5 Temple opponents have ranked ahead of the Owls as Maryland comes in at 65 and Georgia Tech at 75.

Other than the financial incentive of ranking these teams, the other factor is research. There’s so little interest in Temple from the editorial standpoint of these publications that they don’t put enough weight on factors that include Temple hiring a complete FBS professional staff, while Georgia Tech and Maryland enter the season with staffs that have largely underachieved elsewhere. Mix in both of them are home games for Temple and it is more than reasonable to assume the Owls will be able to duplicate their win over Maryland and beat an “easier” foe in Georgia Tech.

We might know that but they certainly don’t or don’t even care. Gotta think that they have those down as two losses for the Owls and why Temple is a 6-6 team from their perspective.

If Vegas agrees, then a trip to the local gambling establishment would be following the money from another angle.

There is nothing more satisfying than proving these magazines wrong and I that’s just what this Owls’ team is primed to do.

Tuesday: Bye, Felicia (UConn)

Saturday: A Stadium Partnership That Worked

Sunday (June 30): Our One-Week Annual Vacation=5 Straight Days of Best of TFF

The first step Pat Kraft must do to get Temple a P5 invite would be to rid future schedules of all FCS foes. It may be too late for Bucknell, but not too late for Idaho and the like.

We all know the short-term goals every year for Temple football are winning the AAC title and getting the coveted G5 slot in an NY6 bowl.

It hasn’t happened yet, but one AAC title appearance and one AAC championship in the last five years prove that goal is within reach.

Beyond that, though, what?

As Peggy Lee sang once, “Is that all there is?”

Maybe.

Nothing would help Temple more than a stadium full of these people

Yet one of the recurring themes of this blog is and has been that Temple belongs with the more regional great schools of the East like Maryland, Syracuse, Boston College, Rutgers, West Virginia and Penn State and not with the Tulsa’s and Memphis’s of the world.

Ideally, getting back into a league with those schools would be preferable but playing the same level of football with them should be the minimum objective.

Every major decision Temple makes should be with that eventual long-term goal in mind.

There’s no easy way there from what I can see.

College football now is a cartel of, really, 64 schools who have made it and another 66 who are on the outside looking in and Temple is in the latter group. The window is closing, though, and many of us believe it is already slammed shut.

If Temple drew 70,000 or even 50,000 to every home game over the last decade or so of relative success, there is no doubt in my mind the Owls would have had an invitation after the last stop of the merry-go-round. The TV market is great but the TV market combined with a rabid fan base is an unbeatable combination.

Sadly, with its “commuter school” roots and 20 years of administrative neglect of the football program, the ceiling of fan support is really about the 35,000 who went to see a 6-0 Owl team play Tulane in 2015.  There were no Green Wave fans there so that is a pretty good indication of the maximum amount of Temple fans who would support a winner.

How to change this?

One, schedule the regional schools who would be of interest to Temple fans (Maryland, Rutgers, ‘Cuse). Two, be a little more flexible with 2-for-1s until Temple is in a position to command 1-for-1s with everybody. It has 1-1s with Maryland, Georgia Tech, Miami, Rutgers and Boston College. Owls need to get Penn State in here every few years or so and, if 2-for-1s is the way to go, they must be flexible enough to do it. Pitt would also be an attractive in-state foe.

Bucknell is not.

If Temple wants to eventually play with the big boys (and this might be a decade or two down the line), it needs to schedule and beat the big boys on about as regular a basis as Northern Illinois has done over the last six years.

That would get the attention of the rest of the country, their own fan base and maybe a conference looking for both a growing fan base and the largest TV market without a P5 team.

That’s the long game and it can only be played within the administrative offices at the Star Complex.

Wednesday: The Bright Side

Saturday: Measuring Up