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Temple Needs to Open Up the Checkbook, Invest in Athletics, or Continue to Get Embarrassed
By Kyle Pagan
Published:
A rant after Temple was embarrassed against Villanova Monday night (again):
We can talk about the play on the court until we’re blue in the face, but nothing is going to change until the Temple athletics department and Temple administration wants to adapt to the revenue-share era in college sports. Until then, it’s going to be constant turnover every single year. They could dig up the corpse of John Wooden and he couldn’t win an American Conference title at Temple right now. For context, Villanova pays their basketball roster upwards of $10 million a year. Sources tell Crossing Broad that Temple pays 10% of that, a little over $1 million a year while football gets a little over $2 million.
For more context, Villanova paid Zion Stanford, one of Temple’s best players last year, over three-quarters of a million dollars and he didn’t see more than 10 minutes of floor time on Monday night. That’s a snapshot of how far Temple basketball is behind in the arms race. The fact that Nova is paying 75% of Temple’s roster budget for a guy who’s barely played this season puts it into perspective.
So what is Temple doing to change it? Not much.
This year, after the House vs. NCAA antitrust case was settled, the American Conference mandated that teams have to pay the players $10 million over the next three years in revenue share. Temple has opted to pay the bare minimum of $3.3 million over that span. Other conference foes like USF just approved a $16 million loan on top of the minimum to increase the revenue share for 2026-27. Even Charlotte football, which just went 1-11 this season, will most likely double Temple football’s money for their 2026 roster construction:
Charlotte fucking football people. This is how bad it is. The worst part is no one answers for it.
From what I’ve gathered talking to people in the know at Temple, there is no collaboration when it comes to NIL or revenue-share efforts. Plenty are frustrated with the nature of conversations being more, “We can’t do this because…” instead of being solution-oriented. There is no engagement with wealthy donors and there is very little buy-in from the Board of Trustees. When’s the last time you’ve seen a campaign like Charlotte’s or one that’s successful like La Salle’s today?
There are no measurements, no goals, and no creative efforts to engage students or alumni in fundraising efforts to dig Temple out of being a middle-of-the-road program. Across the board in every single sport the athletic department sucks at the one thing you can’t suck at in college athletics today. Good thing the head ball coach, KC Keeler, is used to not having a pot to piss in at Sam Houston State, so he’s going to lean on those experiences when he tries to build his roster like he told Devin Jackson at the Inky:
New coach K.C. Keeler and his right-hand man, general manager Clayton Barnes, are bringing a different strategy to North Broad. At Sam Houston State, the pair’s recruiting strategy relied on keeping Texas high school standouts in-state. Barnes, who served as director of football operations and player personnel, also said the Bearkats were at the “bottom of the barrel in FBS in terms of resources.”
There are more resources for the two with the Owls. Their plan is taking shape at Temple, where the idea is to recruit more players from the region, entice them to stay long-term, and reward them with NIL dollars. That way, the reliance on the transfer portal will not be so great.
Does it have to be like this though? A school in a top-5 media market with hundreds of thousands of alumni and rich sports history is going to act like Little Sisters of the Poor because the athletics staff doesn’t have a clue? What’s going to happen when we start getting outbid for recruits against teams like Charlotte or Tulsa? What’s going to happen when we become a feeder system to Villanova? Will it be enough embarrassment for the athletics department to finally react? If they don’t open up the checkbook and get creative with NIL and rev-share efforts, there won’t be much support left for Temple sports and there definitely won’t be much support left for the Big 5.
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