Temple football, we love you, but we have to talk

Three weeks into my first semester at Temple, I went home to do my laundry, enjoy Mom’s cooking, and watch a Saturday football game played by my dear old high school team.

Times were much different in 1977. High school football games often included updates of college scores over the loudspeaker. Here was a doozy at my game: Pittsburgh 62, Temple 0.

And Pitt was not done. The Owls — my Owls — would give up two more touchdowns. The big headline in the Sunday Inquirer: “Pittsburgh 76, Temple Oh! (It was tied at the coin flip).”

“Temple dropped football yesterday,” wrote the late Chuck Newman, the acerbic reporter who’d become my boss at The Inquirer a decade later. “Not the school’s program, although the 76-0 loss to Pitt at Veterans Stadium suggested it might not be a bad idea.”

It was not the first time dropping football at Temple had been mentioned — and it would not be the last. Now, 47 years after 76-0, Temple’s football team is struggling again, and now I am thinking that dropping football might not be a bad idea. I don’t write this casually.

John Fry, the university’s new president, told The Inquirer in July that he has “no plans to end the football program,” considering athletics as one “gateway” to the university. “No plans to end” is hardly the same as pledging a commitment to football, and using football as a “gateway” to Temple is a lousy way to sell everything else at this fine institution.

Look, I loved my time at Temple. My education was excellent. I met kids at the Temple News who became acclaimed journalists and remain friends. I tell my kids that my entire bill for four years at Temple, including room and board, was $13,000 — the best bargain of my life.

I have both followed and written about the Owls sports teams for decades, including the women’s basketball team when it was coached by Dawn Staley. In 2019, I took my older son, Ben, who graduated from North Carolina, to a bowl game in Annapolis, Md., between the Owls and Tar Heels. Carolina won, 55-13, but we had fun.

Temple used to be the cheeky underdog to big in-state schools like Pitt and Penn State. I am puzzled, though, as to why my alma mater sustains an expensive football program at the highest collegiate level, or even at all. What, exactly, is the point? Since I graduated 43 years ago, the Owls have had 30 losing seasons.

There have been brief revivals — Temple had eight winning seasons between 2009 and 2019 — but each of the head coaches of those teams left for better jobs. So Temple football is not a destination. Now the Owls appear to be on their way to their fifth straight losing season. A loss to Connecticut in their most recent contest, in which the Owls fumbled 1 yard from the goal line with a chance to win on the last play, almost felt cruel.

This was not unexpected. Of the 134 schools with Football Bowl Subdivision teams, Temple had been ranked among the bottom 15 in every preseason national football ranking.

But that is not the saddest part. The Owls don’t have their own stadium after decades of trying to build one, so they play their home games at the Eagles’ stadium, Lincoln Financial Field, which holds 67,000-plus and would be hard for the Owls to fill even if they were good.

They are members of the American Athletic Conference, a far-flung league that includes mostly opponents at schools hundreds of miles away. Of the Owls’ six home games this season, only one is against an Eastern opponent: Army, which walloped Temple on Sept. 26, 42-14.

I made the spur-of-the-moment decision to go to the Army game at the Linc. I bought a ticket in Row 22 on the 50-yard line from StubHub two hours before the game ... for $15, fees included. “I wouldn’t mind these seats at the Eagles,” said one of the two guys behind me.

The announced crowd for the game was 13,255. It seemed like only half that many people were there.

The scene sort of felt like sports during the pandemic, with games played at full speed but in all-but-empty stadiums. Nothing new: With rare exceptions (like a 24-20 loss to Notre Dame in 2015 before 69,280), Temple has never been a big draw at home.

Temple was thrown out of the Big East Conference in football after the 2004 season because the Owls failed to meet several conference standards, including attendance. Temple was an independent, then joined the Mid-American Conference, bounced back to the Big East for a year, then moved into the American Athletic Conference after the Big East axed football.

Using football as a “gateway” to Temple is a lousy way to sell everything else at this fine institution.

Temple ideally would regularly play several area schools, like Villanova and Delaware, that they used to play all the time, sprinkling in a big-time team like Penn State, which Temple beat in 2015 for the first time in 74 years. But I could see dropping football altogether.

Saying goodbye to a program that gave us some good coaches and players would be sad. But collegiate sports have become a costly free-for-all, of haves and mostly have-nots.

At the Army game, I noticed a cherry-red sign behind one of the end zones. It read, “Perseverance conquers.” It is a noble, Temple-like thought, but merely sticking with football won’t make it get better. Time to drop it, to focus on the school’s many, many attributes.

Dave Caldwell, who received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Temple, grew up in Lancaster County and covered sports for The Inquirer from 1986 to 1995. He lives in Manayunk.