I’m claiming this story before Pagan can get his grubby Temple hands on it:

Rice plays in the same conference and stinks only slightly less than Temple, so this isn’t some amazing football upgrade. Yes, it’s true that Rice is closer to home. Warner went to high school in Phoenix. People actually go to the Rice games, so that’s something different for him moving forward. It’s also a great academic school and a nicer campus, so there’s that. More NIL opportunities, probably. Maybe we slice and dice with Occam’s Razor and find the simplest explanation here. It’s less about how great Rice is and more about how undesirable Temple is.

To be clear, nobody thought Warner was transferring to Oklahoma, but Temple losing him to another AAC team says what about Temple? It’s a kick in the balls, no matter how you slice it. It would be one thing if he went into the transfer portal and came out as the QB of a power five team, but he didn’t. This would be like Eric Dixon leaving Villanova to go to Providence.

I don’t know if Temple is a shambles or if the football program has simply fallen back to what it was before Matt Rhule showed up. Maybe two straight seasons of 3-9 and zero interest is the rule, and not the exception. But for people who are fans of college football in general, it feels like those super-fun days of Temple relevance never even happened.