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The Temple Owls Are Not Going Bowling & Some Thoughts On a Hopeless Athletic Program’s Future
By Kyle Pagan
Published:
There will be no rice and beans or lawnmower sponsored bowl game for KC Keeler and the Temple Owls this season. You’d expect me to get used to this. I mean can you really complain about anything Temple football? Look at the history of the program. They’re the only team in college football history that’s been asked to leave their conference twice for a reason. But still after going 5-3 and having four more games to become bowl eligible I thought they’d at least sneak into one. Nope. They ended the season with a whimper, getting dog walked by North Texas:
Now listen when you’re a Temple football fan you take any positivity you can. I think this season is considered a win? I mean it’s definitely a positive in the right direction when you look at what Vegas thought we’d do. We cashed this bad boy by Week 7:
It’s more impressive when you step back and look at a new head coach, tons of transfers coming and going, and a program on life support that at least showed a pulse. It’s just tough to be a fan, have the start KC Keeler and the guys did, and not go bowling. That Navy loss still hurts:
Cause people forget there was legitimate buzz for this Temple team heading into that game against Oklahoma. Sure it was like an annoying fly buzzing in your ear, but you can’t deny there was buzz! I mean we sold out the TWO SIDELINES in the Linc. There was actual shit talking from OU reporters. People were doing Oklahoma drills in the lots:
There was Temple football Fever and if you weren’t careful you’d catch it!
Now I think this is a season Temple can build on and that’d be something to hang your hat on any other year – if you actually believed this current administration cared about sports being anything but a stepping stone program forever. Everything looked to be heading in the right direction until a couple months ago. Now I think if you gave truth serum to those superfans who dress up and wear crowns to every game, they’d all admit they’re waiting for the inevitable after President John Fry’s comments via Shawn Pastor at 247Sports:
David Boardman: “A topic we hadn’t necessarily planned on talking about, but I had a couple people ask me about and I thought I’d bring to you, and I know you have thoughts about it: How do you see the role of athletics in Temple’s future? And I know, you talk about challenges, amateur athletics, college athletics right now is in turmoil. What’s your vision for athletics?”
John Fry: “So with the teams that we have right now, great coaching, but especially with the commitment of the student-athletes, we’re doing the work that we have to do, which is we’re giving them opportunity, they’re coming, they’re excelling in the classroom, they’re excelling on the playing field, and then they’re graduating and they’re going off and living good lives. We don’t have 20 percent graduation rates. We have over 90 percent. So that’s job number one.
“Now that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to be a top four power conference type of thing. We can’t afford that. And frankly, if I have to spend my money on research or financial aid or innovation or athletics, I know where I’m going to spend it. With the recognition that we need to do more, have to do more for athletics.
“I think that my vision for this is that highly competitive programs that understand the core piece of what they’re supposed to do, but are on a regular basis competitive and strong and bring pride to the institution, and also provide a front door for the public to access Temple, because in many ways, that’s the best way to access a University.
“But I don’t want to overdo it. I think we’ve underdone it more recently and I think we need to fix that.”
Lip service. What he’s really saying is we’ll continue to give the mandated bare-minimum in rev-share and you’ll see consistent turnover on the basketball and football teams every single year and they’ll struggle to build a consistent winner and gratitude with the fanbase. Rinse and repeat. All this while USF’s Board of Trustees is approving a $16 million increase in student-athlete revenue sharing even though they didn’t have too. On the other hand Temple’s AD Arthur Johnson still has no idea what to do with NIL or revenue share and he’s been here for four years. In this current direction Temple will never be able to build a consistent winner in the NIL-era. And I don’t think any Temple fan is expecting us to become a Power-4 program ever, but we’d at least like a chance to become a regular participant in March Madness again. I just never understood why a school with a colossal alumni base and in a top-5 media market wouldn’t want to try to be good at sports. All we hear is it’s too expensive. Well if we’re being honest, sacrificing the football team would make the majority of Temple fans happy – if of course they allocated those funds to basketball. But if we’re being honest GentriFRY would probably use that money to buy another shiny glass building on Broad Street he can add to his real estate empire (a real estate empire he left Drexel in debt with when he left). By the time I hit publish on this blog he’s probably bought two more.
I’d be shocked if Temple is playing in the new Eagles stadium and the basketball team isn’t in some red-headed stepchild conference worse than they already are. There’s no vision or even want to build a successful athletics program and that sucks. John Chaney is rolling over in his grave and I bet right now he’d like to Calipari some people in the athletics department. We need to send in the goons now more than ever!
Kyle writes blog posts and does Man on the Street-style videos all around Philadelphia. He graduated from Temple University (a basketball school) in 2015. contact: k.pagan@sportradar.com