Jensen: Chaney, Arians recall support from Liacouras

Did it bother Bruce Arians, new to his job as Temple's head football coach in 1983, that Temple's president, Peter Liacouras, publicly expected Arians' Owls to make it to the Sugar Bowl in short order?

It did not.

"That's what I thought, too," Arians said over the phone Friday afternoon. "I wanted to work for someone who thought like that. It was fun to work for someone who dreamed the same way you did."

It took Arians three decades to achieve such heights, in his second head-coaching job - in the NFL, with the Arizona Cardinals - but he hasn't forgotten his first head-coaching stop, which is why Arians, just off a plane, returned a call back to Philadelphia. He had heard the news that Peter Liacouras died Thursday night after a long illness.

"He was a visionary to me," Arians said, recalling how he would go to Liacouras asking for upgrades, "saying we need this or that - and he would do his best." What he really was asking for, Arians said, is what the school now has: a separate practice facility.

Arians talked of the passion he saw from Liacouras, "coming out to practice and catching punts before he spoke to the legislature in Harrisburg."

As it happens, Liacouras' big sports dreams hit on Temple's basketball court. His signature sports move was hiring a coach from Cheyney State to move up to Division I and take over the Owls.

"[Liacouras] was something else," John Chaney said. Talking about Liacouras for a half hour, Chaney kept using the word giant.

As Chaney's basketball program took off, Liacouras was always there. He'd be on the plane, handing you the RPI computer rankings as Chaney's Owls traveled to a road game. Chaney remembered how Liacouras would go swimming, "4:30, 5 o'clock in the morning," then wander into Chaney's early-morning basketball practice at McGonigle Hall. He sat and learned what was going on as Temple rose to the top ranking in the country in 1988. He'd also rebut fans who wanted to see some run-and-gun hoops - not the path Chaney took to five NCAA Elite Eights. On various Sundays, practice would be later in the day, and Liacouras would sometimes walk in with eight boxes of Cacia's pizza, direct from South Philly.

When Chaney would do something really crazy, "Peter would call me - what are we going to do with you?" Their relationship was such that "he probably got angry with me, but not at me," Chaney said.

And Liacouras, who had plenty of his own battles with faculty and others during his time as president from 1982 to 2000, knew how to use Chaney's no-holds-barred conversational skills to his advantage, such as when he was trying to get city approval for a new basketball arena that became the Liacouras Center. Chaney remembers how he was one of the people Liacouras sent down to City Council. Chaney wasn't polite.

"He was sending me down there to start some trouble," Chaney remembered. "That's how smart he was."

Liacouras' plans for Temple football mostly brought ridicule, as money poured into a hole that produced losses and empty seats. But Liacouras once told me that he believed even the bad publicity was important publicity, and he'd always talk to Chaney about the importance of raising the school's national profile.

Eventually, Liacouras let Arians go. Did it seem to Arians - who was a Cam Newton away from coaching in this year's Super Bowl, and was the 2014 NFL coach of the year - that while he was respected for his efforts while he was at Temple, he was respected even more for those same efforts after he left?

"Oh heck yeah," Arians said, laughing, remembering how Liacouras later would tell him that firing him was the worst mistake Liacouras ever made.

Arians' response?

"Not for me," he'd tell Liacouras, remembering the wear and tear of coaching those Owls from 1983 to '88, when going 6-5 twice was a real achievement, and how the job practically killed him.

Chaney, who was there for the whole ride, was hoping a memorial service for his old boss would be in the Liacouras Center, but it is scheduled for Friday across Broad Street at the school's performing arts center. Chaney just thought it would be fitting to be in the building named for the man.

"He was the most amazing man that I have known in my life," Chaney said. "He was a giant, man."

mjensen@phillynews.com

@jensenoffcampus?