Despite a report that Temple was putting on hold its feasibility study for a new football stadium, Philly.com reports they’re still pursing it:

A source said that Temple is putting its full efforts into working with the community, considered one of the major obstacles of building the $130 million on-campus stadium.

If Temple doesn’t get the cooperation of the neighborhoods, then a feasibility study, which is budgeted for $1.25 million, becomes unnecessary.

But does that mean things are sailing along smoothly? Absolutely not.

Two Temple sources have said throughout the process that they knew it would be a challenging task to work with the neighborhoods on an agreement. There are many other challenges in getting this project done, not the least of which is fund raising.

$130 million for Temple to build a football stadium that they’ll play in six times per year in a part of the city no one wants to go to. I CAN’T IMAGINE WHY COLLEGE TUITION COSTS ARE SKYROCKETING DISPROPORTIONATELY TO, WELL, EVERYTHING ELSE IN AMERICA.

Can I make this a Villanova post? You bet I can!

After winning the National Championship, Villanova received a donation for $22.6 million from William Finneran to renovate the Pavilion, which is awful and sorely in need of renovation. I’m all for it. One could argue that makes me a hypocrite, but there’s a huge difference between renovating an arena that will forever be too small for its occupant to make it at least viable… and building a football stadium in North Philly for a program that peaked when it eeked into the top 25 for, like, a week in 2015, just lost its coach, and hasn’t had less than four losses in a season since 1979(!!!). Their deal with the Linc sucks, but it’s more or less the best option they have. Temple doesn’t need its own stadium. And they probably wouldn’t be able to fill it anyway. The proposed stadium, in North Philly, would have 35,000 seats. Not once this season – one of Temple’s best, which resulted in a bowl loss – did Temple get 35,000 fans for a home game. In fact, they only surpassed 30k once– a 28-3 loss to Army on September 2. The basketball program, which is generally better and more respected than the football program, doesn’t even come close to filling its outstanding arena on a regular basis, so why would football be any different?

Temple says the stadium would also be used for high school games and community events, and they claim they don’t want to use tuition dollars to pay for the proposed stadium. But that sounds a lot like NFL owners saying they don’t want to use taxpayer dollars for their stadiums and then the city winds up footing the entire bill. Temple cites similar sized stadiums (stadii?) in the AAC in Cincy, Houston and East Carolina as examples of why their plan could work, but those are all in more college-friendly markets and cities without four pro sports teams. Philly is simply not a great college sports town, and it’s a downright bad college football town.

I’m just blown away that Temple, despite basically no one thinking this is a good idea, continues to pursue the stadium at all costs.

Apparently this is a thing in college sports. We saw James Franklin chopper into Woodlawn like a fucking lunatic. I don’t get it. As someone who is still paying college tuition, it kind of pisses me off. This is where rising tuition fees are going– to choppering in egomaniac college coaches who want to impress high school kids? I will eat my hat if Jay Wright has ever taken anything other than his loaner Land Rover* to recruit someone. You don’t need a chopper when you have the trophy.

But for real, if this is going to continue to be a thing, can we at least set some ground rules? James Franklin– you can do it because you coach a respectable (on the field) football program. [Googles Temple’s new coach] Geoff Collins– you can’t. I feel like if you don’t have a stadium you can’t have a chopper. That’s a criteria that can be applied to all of society. Joshua Harris– he can have a chopper because he owns the Prudential Center, and he can park it wherever he damn well pleases, even build a helipad. John Middleton– chopper. The citizens of Green Bay– chopper. But Geoff Collins… sir, you can not have a chopper. Get over yourself.

*This year he’s doing commercials for Granite Run GMC, which must have paid him so much goddamn money to go off-brand and drive an American car from Media. For real, I question little that Jay does, but his decision to go with Granite Run GMC over literally any foreign car manufacturer on the Main Line kind of makes me mad. Am I an elitist? Probably. But I don’t care. You literally couldn’t pay me to drive a… wait, what’s that, you’ll give me a Chevy for our tailgate? LONG LIVE DETROIT! MICHAEL MOORE FOREVER!!!

Temple will announce the hiring of Florida defensive coordinator Geoff Collins as their new head coach tomorrow. Collins spent the last two years at Florida – Mississippi State and FIU before that – where the Gators ranked sixth and seventh in defense nationally.

At Florida, Collins was making over $1 million as a coordinator.

[headline h/t @LFN]

On behalf of Julie and our children, I want to express our sincere gratitde to Temple University, the City of Philadelphia, and Owls fans throughout the world. The passion and pursuit of excellence at Temple allowed for our student-athletes to achieve success on the football field and to develop as young men off of the field. Temple and Philly will always be a part of us and we will be cheering on the Owls from afar.

Estimated cost of a full-page black-and-white ad in the Inquirer sports section on a Wednesday*: $7k.

Estimated number of hours it will take Rhule to earn that much money coaching at Baylor**: About 6.

Not a bad deal.

*Based on an educated guess of the current Inquirer full-page rates.

**Based on the $4.25 million salary of Rhule’s predecessor at Baylor. He might be getting more.

H/T to (@ZBerm)

Temple press release:

Temple has reached an agreement on a three-game series with one of the nation’s most storied college football programs, the University of Oklahoma.

The teams will start a three-game series on Aug. 31, 2024 in Norman, Okla. with the Sooners traveling to Philadelphia for a Sept. 13, 2025 contest. The final game of the series will be at Oklahoma on Sept. 2, 2028.

“We look forward to starting a series with a great program like Oklahoma and hosting the Sooners in Philadelphia,” said Temple University Director of Athletics Dr. Patrick Kraft. “Our goal is to continue to schedule the best games possible for our program, alums and the college football fans in the city.”

Is this typical in college football, to schedule games a decade out? Feels excessive. But I’m going to withhold myself from snarking on Temple and their coup of landing a big-name opponent to potentially play at their ill-advised on-campus stadium 12 years from now when football will probably be a footnote in history because it prematurely killed thousands of athletes and President Trump, in a sweepingly anti-populist move – yet another in his remarkable transformation into a Commander-in-chief willing to make the tough decisions for the betterment of society – banned the sport in 2022, more than a year into his second term, during which he operated without fear of running for reelection and yet still managed to weigh each decision with the care and consideration such an important job demanded. So, I’ll just congratulate Temple on this small step but important step toward becoming a nationally respected program. J-E-L-L-O.