Latest on Temple football’s coaching search: K.C. Keeler emerges as serious candidate

With the football season now behind the Temple Owls, all eyes on North Broad now await the university’s next big decision: Who will become the 18th head coach of the program?

After finishing 3-9 for the fourth straight season, Temple has plenty of work to do — from an on-field standpoint and in recruiting, as the early signing period for the high school class of 2025 begins on Wednesday and the college football transfer portal opens Dec. 9.

During an interview last week with The Inquirer, new Temple president John A. Fry said he expects to hire the Owls’ next football coach quickly.

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“We are looking for a coach who can infuse new energy into the program and position us to compete for conference championships and play in bowl games,” Fry told The Inquirer last week.

With that in mind, here’s the latest intel we’re hearing about the Owls coaching position vacated by Stan Drayton’s dismissal with two games left in his third season, including candidates Temple has shown interest in.

According to two sources, Sam Houston State coach K.C. Keeler has emerged as a serious candidate for the Temple job. Keeler met with athletic director Arthur Johnson and had a phone conversation with Fry, one source added.

The Bearkats, who won an FCS national championship under Keeler in 2020 (moved to the spring of 2021), are 9-3 in their second season since moving up to the FBS. Keeler has been with Sam Houston State for 10 years, and missed the FCS playoffs just twice.

Keeler has local ties. The Emmaus, Pa., native got his first head coaching job at Rowan, where he took the Profs to five Division III national championship games. He coached at the Glassboro school for 16 seasons (seven as an assistant).

He took over at Delaware in 2002, won the FCS title in 2003, and spent the 11 seasons with the Blue Hens until he was fired after the 2012 season. He finished 86-52 in his Delaware tenure.

At the time of his 2020 national championship win, Keeler was the only coach in the FCS to win a national title at two schools, and was the only in NCAA history to take three schools to a national title game.

Across his 31 seasons as a head coach, Keeler has had just four losing seasons: three at Delaware, one at Sam Houston State. In terms of recruiting, since joining the FBS in 2023, the Bearkats ranked just outside the top 100 nationally each season, according to On3 Sports, but sat in the middle of the pack in the Conference USA recruiting rankings.

Keeler has had success throughout his career. The 65-year-old’s strong track record (a career mark of 271-112-1) aligns with what Temple is looking for in its next coach.

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Though Keeler appears to be the front-runner for the job, Temple has made contact with several other coaches across the FBS. Among them: Marshall’s Charles Huff, a former assistant coach with James Franklin at Vanderbilt and Penn State; Ohio’s Tim Albin, who led his Bobcats to their second Mid-American Conference title game in three years; and Bowling Green coach Scot Loeffler, who was Temple’s offensive coordinator under Steve Addazio in 2011 and has posted his second consecutive winning season after having four losing seasons to begin his coaching stint with the Falcons.

Huff’s name has been circulating for the open Southern Mississippi job, although his name has consistently come up as a coaching candidate elsewhere over the last three years. In his first head coaching job with the Thundering Herd, Huff has posted a winning record in three of his four seasons.

Albin has been with Ohio for nearly two decades, and his name is likely to come up for bigger programs such as North Carolina’s opening, while Loeffler could opt to stay put considering his recent success with Bowling Green.

Although Syracuse coach Fran Brown shut down reports of Temple’s interest in coordinators Jeff Nixon (offensive) and Elijah Robinson (defensive), don’t rule out Robinson as a candidate for the Owls job. The Camden native spent three seasons with Temple from 2014-16 as the defensive line coach and his Philly-area roots when he was with Texas A&M helped land several former Philly high school players for the Aggies, including Tyreek Chappell, Elijah Jeudy (now at Nebraska), and Enai White.

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One last name that Temple reached out to: Minnesota Vikings inside linebackers coach Mike Siravo, who coached at Temple twice (2006 and 2013-16).