For Temple football players, some etiquette lessons

Temple's football team had just finished its last summer workout. The players all walked upstairs for lunch inside Temple's practice facility on Diamond Street.

Places were set, formally.

"You don't touch anything on the table, not even a sip of water, until the host does," the players were told.

Football players are used to precise actions - pointing a foot at a slightly wrong angle can blow up a play - so maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that Temple players seemed to immediately catch on to what was required of them. Their lecturer wasn't a football coach. She was an etiquette expert.

Last week's get-together may be the first time a college football team was ever told, "You want to be able to just lift a corner of your napkin to blot your mouth."

Temple head coach Matt Rhule had read how the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had gone through a similar session. Rhule told his director of football operations, Sean Padden, that they should do it, too. Padden searched for an etiquette expert. How did he find such a thing?

"Google," Padden said. "I Googled etiquette lessons, Philadelphia."

Up popped Gail Madison, a former schoolteacher from Huntingdon Valley. Madison was happy to put together a session. She's used to the etiquette business taking her to interesting places. She told Temple's players right away how she has worked with superstar rapper Meek Mill, mentioning that he had been ordered by a judge to undergo etiquette lessons. (She likes Meek Mill, calls him Robert, his given name.)

Of the full formal place settings set up at each table, Madison told the players, "Think of it as a little map. You're going to learn how to navigate that map."

A butter knife, for instance, isn't a knife: "This is called a butter spreader," the etiquette lady said, moving quickly through the utensils.

"Let's talk about eating soup." A table of wide receivers quickly grasped the concept of pushing their soup away from them in the bowl, and of taking only small spoonfuls.

"It's never about the food," Madison had told them about business get-togethers. "Eat before you go to business events."

Temple players grasped all this much easier than, say, a group of sportswriters, although Madison did catch one faux pas.

"Use your napkin if you get butter on your fingers," she told one player as she walked by him.

"What did I do?" he asked.

"You used your shirt," she said.

She laughed as she corrected. "I can pay you 500 compliments, but if I say one thing negative, that's what you are going to remember."

Her advice ranged from the obvious (cellphones should be turned off or on vibrate: "Phones are automatically seen as a third person"), to the mundane (where to leave your napkin if you go to the bathroom), to the savvy ("You never abuse people who handle your food"). And never season your food before you taste it, Madison told the players. "It says you're not a thinker, that you're in a rut."

She took questions: Is it unprofessional to pop your collar? (No, but don't do it at a work situation). If there's some food they really can't eat? (You pretend to cut it, you pretend to eat it).

"There is no hot sauce at a formal dinner," Madison said, answering one question. "No ketchup. You don't add things to a chef's creation."

She told the players to pace themselves eating, that you don't want to be the first finished or the last. Cut up your food, even meat, to bites the size of a nickel. "That's a pretty big nickel," a wide receiver told a freshman defensive back.

"This would take an hour!" another wideout said of this turn of events.

"It's never about the food," a teammate deadpanned.

"We both know that piece was entirely too big," a senior chided a freshman about his chicken.

The table, mostly wide receivers, enjoyed the thought of a group of offensive linemen eating their nickel-size bites.

And even the etiquette expert seemed to like how when the room got a little loud with chatter, some Temple player would yell a quick "Yo!" and everyone would quiet right down.

After Madison went over the fine points of toasting, an upperclassman stood up with his water and toasted his table: "I'd like to thank you for coming to this mandatory etiquette luncheon."

They all, however, easily grasped the point of the whole thing.

"You want to make yourself look good at all times," the etiquette lady told them.

One player, a sophomore wideout who had been expert with his utensil use throughout, thought he had an epiphany.

"You know why we're doing this?" he told the table. "We're going to a bowl game. Coach Rhule knows we're going to sit down and eat with the other team. We're going to beat them in everything."

@jensenoffcampus