Bring on the Irish: Temple deserves national attention

Now comes the sexiest game on Temple's football schedule. In case you hadn't heard: Notre Dame is coming to town.

Another news alert: The Owls are 7-0 for the first time . . . ever.

The most telling game of this already crazy 2015 Temple football season may turn out to be the one the Owls played Thursday night when they showed up at East Carolina University and won a game that had an L marked all over it.

Here's the thing: It's not just that Temple traditionally would have lost that game. (That's true.) Most teams in the country would have dropped it under the same circumstances, those being a fourth-quarter road deficit, difficulty moving the ball, plus the pressure of an undefeated season, of a balloon possibly bursting right ahead of a monumental opportunity.

What people saw Thursday night - and let's face it, plenty of people were watching these Owls for the first time - was a team that could handle success.

You saw strong-armed Owls quarterback P.J. Walker badly miss some passes until there was no time left for such errors and his balls all of a sudden were delivered with precision.

Temple has dominated the fourth quarter this season, but Thursday night was a little different. The Owls had not battered ECU into submission. If anything, it should have been Temple's defense that was tired after getting the worst of the time-of-possession battle. The fact that didn't happen, that Temple's defense was again able to impose its will in the late minutes, was a real testament. This, quite simply, is a Top 25 football team.

The 24-14 victory had huge American Athletic Conference ramifications. The Owls, who also won for a third time as an underdog, are now officially in the driver's seat in the AAC East, 4-0 with tiebreakers over both ECU and Cincinnati, which each have two conference losses. The only other AAC East team that controls its destiny is South Florida, which is 1-1 in the league and hosts Temple on Nov. 14.

The AAC has itself been a national story this season, with Houston and Memphis joining Temple right now in the Top 25, and Navy with only one loss after hanging in at Notre Dame for a half.

It's revealing that right after Thursday night's win, most social media chatter about Temple wasn't about the thought of a conference championship but about whether ESPN's College GameDay might show up in Philadelphia on Halloween.

What a triumph of marketing that is, when a traveling pregame show is legitimately thought of as a prize itself. And it is legit. Half the teams in college football make it to a bowl, and the Owls will absolutely be one of them. But what's more memorable? An appearance in the Miami Beach Bowl or that day the ESPN gang came to town for the big Notre Dame game?

This kind of national pub only comes along once for this kind of turnaround story. I can remember getting on a plane for Chicago in 1995 to write about how Northwestern had shed its losing ways and gone on a magic carpet ride. This time, Temple, the school that was once dropped by the Big East for completely legitimate reasons, is on national network television, on ABC itself, in prime time, for equally legitimate reasons.

Yes, Temple could conceivably rise higher than the Miami Beach Bowl (not that that sounds bad) since one non-Power 5 school will be added to the big-boy table, at either the Fiesta or Peach Bowl. (Of course, the top four overall teams selected by a committee will be in a playoff.)

There are other barometers of interest in the Owls right now. I was at a local establishment during the Cincinnati game and noted how the televisions were tuned in to the Owls game that night. It seemed like a milestone, except I seemed to be the only one with even passing interest. Thursday night, I was in a different establishment, in Delaware County, and most of the place seemed riveted to whether Temple could come back. Some clearly had shown up specifically to watch this game, others got drawn in.

That's the way it's been for Temple this season. They've reached the stage, incredibly, where it's hard not to watch, to see what happens next.

Bring on the Irish. GameDay, you're welcome to join us.

mjensen@phillynews.com

@jensenoffcampus