The gross underuse of this talented player is borderline criminal.

Back on Cherry and White Day, I thought this version the Owls would be a winner for a variety of reasons.

First, I thought the players would play like crazed dogs, preferably pit bulls, to prove to the skeptical general Temple community that they were right in calling for Temple to hire Matt Rhule as a head coach.

Second, I thought Rhule would use his knowledge of the personnel to put them in the best position to win.

Wrong on both counts so far.

The Owl Club will host three watch parties tonight.

Instead, I detect a “comfortableness” with Rhule and I don’t see a team, particularly on the previous five Saturdays they lined up, that played like their hair was on fire. Quite the opposite. I see a team going through the motions way too much. Even against Notre Dame, the one game I thought they played “hard” they did not play “smart.”

Will the real Temple please stand up tonight against Cincinnati?

What is the real Temple?

Well, the team that I saw go 26-12 from 2009 to 2011 played like crazy every time out.  They won most of the time, played with a swagger and played smart. If that team played Fordham and Idaho, those games would have been over by halftime. They had a killer instinct this team does not appear to have. They also had a future NFL running back named Bernard Pierce. This team also has a future NFL running back, Zaire Williams. It’s just that they never use him. That’s one of the many things that separates Al Golden from Matt Rhule.

Bobby Wallace checking in?

It’s also where the putting “personnel in a position to win” comment comes into play.

When you have a talent on the team like Chris Coyer, truly in my mind one of the most unique talents in the American Athletic Association,  maybe in America, why haven’t you maximized that weapon? Here is a kid who can run and throw and catch, yet the only use I’ve seen the coaching staff make of him has been to target him once or twice a game as a tight end. Occasionally they put him in as a Wildcat quarterback, where everybody and his kid brother knows he is going to run the ball. Effectively, they are utilizing only 1/3 of the smorgasboard offense he brings to the table.

As I would tell my dog (if I had one), bad coaching staff. Bad, bad coaching staff.

The gross underuse of this talented player is borderline criminal.

Back on Cherry and White Day, I was told that Coyer would be used as a fullback and a tight end and that Coyer would be used to throw a “stealth” (i.e., trick) pass or two each game in addition to his running the ball straight ahead like the speedy fullback he would be.  As a fullback or tight end, he can be the recipient of a pitchout where he can chuck it down the field or run the ball. That way, whenever Coyer got the ball, the defense would not know what was coming and deception works, as Albert Einstein might say, in all sorts of endeavors. That opens things up for Williams and the run game and P.J. Walker and the passing game.

That’s the real Temple team I envisioned back in April. I hope it finally shows up tonight.

Four BE titles in five years helped fund renovations in Nippert Stadium.

Since 2005, Temple has had four head coaches: Bobby Wallace, Al Golden, Steve Addazio and Matt Rhule.
Since 2005, Cincinnati has had six head coaches: Mark Dantonio, Brian Kelly, Jeff Quinn, Butch Jones, Steve Stripling and, now, Tommy Tuberville.

Cincinnati doesn’t seem to be bothered by multiple coaching changes.

One of the reasons Rhule was hired was to stop the bleeding of coaches at 10th and Diamond.
The thinking was that the kids needed the stability of one coach and they could not go through the trauma of having a new coach every other year.
So, rather than get a big-time winning head coach, Temple University “settled” on someone no other FBS school even heard about or considered hiring, Rhule.

The coaching turnover doesn’t seem to affect Cincinnati, whose model is to get the best possible winning head coach available, rather than go after an assistant coach. Cincy got both Kelly and Butch Jones from Central Michigan, where they proved they could win as a head coach. There was no guessing and hoping that they’d win once they got to the big city.

And win they did.  After Kelly gave Cincy two Big East titles, Jones gave them two more. Coaches come and go at Cincinnati, like Temple, a prestigious major urban school but, unlike Temple, the administration went out and spent the big bucks needed to get the best available head coach with a proven winning record.

The Owls are only 1 game with 5 Chris Coyer passes off reverses, 5 CC runs and 5 CC catches from this kind of celebration at the end of the Cincy game. Sadly, since this coaching staff appears too stubborn to try that approach, can’t in good faith pick an Owl upset Friday night. Click over the Hoosiers for my upset specials, though.

While Golden, an assistant at Virginia, brought Temple to its first major bowl game in 30 years and gave another assistant, Florida’s Steve Addazio, the talent he needed to win the school’s first bowl game since 1979, Cincinnati doggedly went after and signed the best head coach it could find and its results were even more impressive:  Four first-place finishes in five years, thanks to two guys who proved themselves as a head coach somewhere else first.

Now another proven winner, Tommy Tuberville (formerly a head coach at Texas Tech and Auburn), is in charge and the Bearcats don’t seem to be regretting the move.

The same cannot be said at Temple, where few fans or administrators could ever have envisioned losing to the likes of Fordham and Idaho prior to the season. There is way too much talent at Temple to lose to a FCS team followed by another loss to a FBS team that lost 14 straight games and gave up 63 points in its last outing.

In a results-oriented business, the Temple Board of Trustees has got to wonder what is going on at the E-O.

Even though  then Temple AD Bill Bradshaw said he had several major “big name” head coaches including “head coaches with teams currently in bowl games” applying for the Temple job after Golden and Addazio left, he stuck with his business model by hiring another career assistant.  There can be no doubt that Temple had people with better resumes on campus but, for some reason or another, decided to go in the direction of hiring a  familiar campus face.

The Temple Hiring Model seems to be going after assistant coaches, producing no league titles in three different leagues. The Cincinnati Hiring Model is going after proven winners, producing four Big East titles in five years.  Those titles helped fuel a funding momentum that sunk millions of dollars into Nippert Stadium renovations.

In the maybe not-too-distant future, Temple could learn a lot by looking into how Cincinnati choses its football CEOs.