Quite a Snow job at Temple

ABOUT THIS time a year ago, there were at least a few Temple folks wondering if Matt Rhule was the right guy to coach the Owls' football team. And definitely many more than a few who were questioning Rhule's choice of making well-traveled veteran Phil Snow his defensive coordinator.

But that's what can happen when you lose your first six and opponents keep converting long passes at the end of a lot of those games to erase whatever good had come before.

"My oldest boy said, 'Dad, do you read message boards?' " Snow remembered. "I said, 'No, what are they saying?' 'It's not good.' He's been around it his whole life, too. So we both laughed.

"It's part of the deal. I'm going to be 59 in December. I like the challenge of building things. At this point in my life, it doesn't bother me."

Rhule will turn 40 in January. Snow has been coaching almost that long. They met when Rhule was a graduate assistant working with the defensive line in 2000 at UCLA, where Snow was the DC.

"I knew then that someday, if I got my chance, I wanted to have him with me," Rhule said.

Now the Owls are 4-1 for the second time since 1979. Tonight they'll face what looks to be their toughest test yet, at Houston (3-3, 1-1 American). The Owls are one of three teams still unbeaten in AAC play. They'll play the other two - Central Florida (also on the road) and 18th-ranked East Carolina - in the next 2 weeks.

The anonymous voices don't seem to be complaining anymore about what's going on at 10th and Diamond. Funny how that stuff works.

"It's not easy, but I don't pay attention to it," Rhule said. "At the same time, you have to hold yourself to the same standards you hold your players to. We'll tell them, 'Don't listen to anything outside.' Just trust what we're doing. But I understand [the criticism]. We were saying the same things. 'What the heck's going on?' But we knew we were trying to build this thing for the long haul, doing it the right way and not taking any shortcuts. It's all driven by the players. We just needed the young guys to get bigger and stronger and better.

"I remember at the very beginning [Snow] told me, 'Matt, it's going to take about a year. The offenses we're facing, you can't play just one defense.' We're not in the MAC anymore."

Yes, the early schedule has been favorable. But it's still the only FCS program scoring more than 36 points per and allowing less than 15, which sure beats 2-10. The defense has forced 17 turnovers, scored five touchdowns and been better than anybody in the country when opponents get inside the red zone.

"I was at Cal [1987-91], it took 4 years to turn it around," Snow related. "It's just part of the process. The system that we run, the players at the age they were, I knew it was gong to be a struggle. What was hard was keeping everyone else on line. I've been through it.

"Arizona State [1992-2000], it took us 4 years. You just got to be tough, in what you believe in and demand. We only have to sell it to the people in this building. They've heard all the negativity. But that's from people who aren't football coaches, right?

"If you watched us in the second half last year, our kids competed. We still did some dumb things at dumb times. We never blamed the kids. That's a reflection of us. That's our job. We've got to keep pounding it. Sometimes it doesn't work. I was with the Lions [2005-08]. We never got it turned around. But fortunately, right now we're getting better every week."

They're going to have a lot of these guys for another 2 or even 3 years. And they will be bringing more guys in. So this could simply be the beginning of something good, maybe even something lasting.

"We've moved guys around," Snow said. "We had to get faster on the edges. So we looked at the roster and said, 'OK, let's do these things.' It's helped us.

"Any time you have success, you start to believe in what you're doing. You have to play one snap at a time. You have to be really consistent, in how you approach everything. If you watch us practice and a ball is caught, they get mad. It's the product of all 11 having something to do with it.

"Bad things are going to happen during a game. But you're going to make good things happen, too. Matt's fun to be around. I want to work for people that I enjoy. It's a hard enough job . . . We're still a work in progress. I try to be the same all the time. I don't think the players look at me any differently. Win or lose, when it's over you have to come back the next week and be ready to do it again."