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Bill Conlin: College football boasts the only Wildcat in town

When I'm King of the World . . . Andy Reid will take notes on how Villanova coach Andy Talley uses Jack-of-all-Jukes Matt Szczur as the Wildcats' wildcat . . . Except for occasional appearances as a decoy, Michael Vick will be doing more clipboard-holding this season than wildcatting. Ba

When I'm King of the World . . .

Andy Reid will take notes on how Villanova coach Andy Talley uses Jack-of-all-Jukes Matt Szczur as the Wildcats' wildcat . . . Except for occasional appearances as a decoy, Michael Vick will be doing more clipboard-holding this season than wildcatting. Backup QBs are too valuable to be put in harm's way, so don't look for Reid to be too creative with Vick, not that he reinvented the playbook for him last season. And we thought the man Jeffrey Lurie chose to forgive would be a multidimensional piece in the West Coast offense.

When Temple and Villanova tee it up at 5 p.m. tomorrow in an attractive Mayor's Cup season opener between potential conference champions, there will be three hurricanes in the area. Hurricane Earl, which may or may not have begun the recurve to the Northeast that will spare the Eastern Seaboard potential devastation, will be passing offshore. We hope. Hurricane Szczur will be lining up in multiple sets, running from various formations, catching passes. Hurricane Pierce, Temple running back Bernard Pierce, who came from nowhere to national prominence as a true freshman last year, won't be doing a lot of recurving. The 6-0, 218-pound Glen Mills sophomore runs through people, then has the sheer speed to outdistance them.

Who would have thought when Villanova scored a stirring 27-24 comeback victory over Al Golden's Owls in last year's inaugural matchup that it would be the first step toward a FCS national championship? Or that 2010 MAC favorite Temple would enjoy a nine-game winning streak and a bowl appearance against UCLA? With Penn winning the Ivy League title, college football, dead in this town since the days of Chuck Bednarik and Reds Bagnell, has had an exciting renaissance. Good stuff, lads, good stuff.

When I'm King of the World . . .

Bernard Hopkins can continue boxing as long as he can both climb into and out of the ring under his own power . . . Usually when a fighter keeps feeding pugged nickels into the dated jukebox of his career, his opponents have more scar tissue around their eyes than a Beverly Hills cocktail party. They have slow hands and slower chins. They all seem to be named Tommy Morrison. They have fought everybody but Rocky Balboa. And lost to most. I thought I was hearing things when 27-year-old Jean Pascal called out Hopkins. The best Canadian fighter of his generation had just slapped around previously unbeaten Chad Dawson to retain his WBC light heavyweight title. It was supposed to be a tough fight for Pascal. Dawson had talked a lot of trash and some even thought the supposed hard puncher would win. But he offered little in the way of offense and spent most of a near shutout catching Pascal's accurate shots with all legal areas of his anatomy. OK, method to the Hopkins madness: If Pascal could punch, he would have taken out Dawson in an early round. Hopkins has a titanium chin and plays the kind of defense that let Archie Moore and George Foreman fight deep into their 40s. At age 45, Bernard is deep into his 40s. But he is a handful. Just ask Kelly Pavlik, who was the middleweight champion at age 26 when he made the serious mistake of fighting Hopkins in October 2008 at 170 pounds. Pascal is 26-1.

When I'm King of the World . . .

All radar guns will be drug tested . . . In his final Triple A relief appearance in Louisville, lefthanded Cuban phenom Aroldis Chapman threw a pitch that was clocked at 105 mph by the ballpark gunslinger. Has that gun been tested for PEDs? The reading is said to have been verified by a scout. OK, but I can only half buy it. Funny things happen to radar guns. I have a little gun about the size of a cell phone that fits in my shirt pocket. I was clocking a Gulf Coast League Phillies pitcher one day and the kid was consistently hitting 90-92 with his fastball, a reading substantiated by scouts sitting nearby using full-size expensive guns. Then the kid threw a fastball and, whoa . . . 107 came up on the display. And that kind of false reading seems to happen on a pretty regular basis. On the other hand, during his first appearance for the Reds on Tuesday night, the 22-year-old defector was clocked at 102 mph . . . Here's a Believe It Or Not: Tony Turco, an e-mail regular from Williamstown, N.J., took a recent family vacation to Maui. Now, on the list of the 20 things I would most like to do on that exotic Hawaiian island, taking in an independent league baseball game would not be one of them. The Maui Na Koa Ikaika were playing the Orange County Flyers in a Golden Baseball League game. (And Tom Sellick will stride to the plate any minute, right?) In the sixth inning, Turco wrote, the Maui reliever was none other than 43-year-old Jerry Spradlin, the former Phillies reliever. As if that wasn't bizarre enough, Orange County countered in the eighth inning with righty reliever Mark Prior. The ill-starred former phenom hasn't pitched in the majors since 2006, his final season with the Cubs. He will turn 30 Sept. 7. Turns out Prior signed with the OC Flyers in early August. After 11 innings of work, his ERA is 0.00 with 22 strikeouts. His new team is currently on a seven-game road trip to Maui. My kind of league. Tijuana is also in the league.

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For recent columns, go to http://go.philly.com/conlin.