Manning up is the Rhule at Temple

MATT RHULE is here for the long haul. He wants to build a program, not just a team. So sometimes, it's mostly about getting the point across.

Yesterday, when his players gathered around him at the end of Temple's practice, was another one of those moments.

The 3-1 Owls, coming off their second bye in 4 weeks, host 1-4 Tulsa Saturday. But both are among the six teams tied atop the American Athletic Conference standings at 1-0. The Owls are favored by a little more than two touchdowns, which hasn't happened that often. So Rhule, coming off a 2-10 debut a year ago that could easily have included two or three more wins, let them know once again where he's coming from.

"I don't mind sharing my message," Rhule said. "It's very simply this: We have a way of doing things which is designed to make guys act [like] and become men. My feeling is if you do what a man does - which is you don't do what you want to do, do what you have to do, you're accountable for your job, you're honest, all those things, work hard even when you don't want to work hard - [then] you have a bunch of men in your program, when you go out on the field you have 11 men playing football. And 11 men beat 11 kids. Last year we had a bunch of kids running around. Just trying to grow them.

"And so, the way we do that is we have a process. We show up at breakfast at 7 o'clock in the morning. We go to study hall until 9 o'clock at night. We don't miss class. We sit in the first two rows of class. If you miss class, you're not going to start that week. If you fall asleep in class, you're not going to start that week. That's just the way we do things. I always try to take that [opportunity] to explain why. Now all of a sudden everyone's telling them that they're good, right? Because when people say you're good, you start to relax. I don't want to relax. I want to do what we do every single week. If you do that, you have a chance to have a good program. I was just explaining to them that we're going to follow our process.

"We're going to practice harder today than we did yesterday."

The Owls have won by 30 at 1-5 Vanderbilt. They lost by seven at home to 2-4 Navy. They beat FCS Delaware State (1-5) by 59. They won at 1-4 Connecticut by 26. They're doing a lot of good things in a whole bunch of statistical categories. Rhule stressed that this week was about working on the stuff they're not doing well, which tends to get lost in the record. They're obviously better than they were. But they were supposed to be better. The second half of the season promises to reveal much more about their progression.

Right now, well, you never want to lose one that, on paper, you're not expected to. But it happened to them under Al Golden, and Steve Addazio. Rhule was part of that. He knows.

"I just want them to understand why we're doing what we do," he went on. " 'Coach, how in the world does me not showing up at breakfast and eating eggs instead of grabbing a doughnut on the way out have anything to do with winning?' It has everything to do with winning. And it has everything to do with being focused on what you're doing. And if you get guys who can do that, in the game when things are going wrong and our fans are yelling and the coaches are yelling, you can just settle down and say let me just do my job and we'll be fine. Just keep trying to teach them that.

"None of us can let up any day. You work all year. We make these guys do such hard things. I wish people could see sometimes what we make these kids do. You do all that and get to a game, why in the world would you get to that game and not play well?

"Tulsa reminds me a lot of us. We had games last year where we'd play really good defense and give up a big play here and there. So the stats look awful. But you watch the tape and you're like, 'Man, [they] can play.' We've seen it. We're trying to show our guys that the process is to watch the tape and not read anything to evaluate the guy you're playing against. Every game is dangerous for us. We're not a good team yet. We're fighting to be good. We haven't done anything yet. We have a stretch of six games where we're going to face some good teams. So understand our goal is to try and be good. A good team comes to practice. A good team goes to breakfast. A good team watches film. A good team goes to class. That's what I want us to do."

We should find out soon enough just how good they are at listening.