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Jensen: Coach Matt Rhule took unique path to Temple football job

The Rhule family took off from Kansas City, setting out for New York City with two young children, family mutt squeezed in, U-Haul behind. Dennis and Gloria Rhule don't want to sound too lofty, but they saw their next move as a calling. Dennis, graduated from the Nazarene Theological Seminary, was ready to begin work as an urban missionary, as an assistant pastor at a church just off Times Square. Gloria would work with at-risk women and children.

Temple head coach Matt Rhule.
Temple head coach Matt Rhule.Read moreClem Murray / Staff Photographer

The Rhule family took off from Kansas City, setting out for New York City with two young children, family mutt squeezed in, U-Haul behind. Dennis and Gloria Rhule don't want to sound too lofty, but they saw their next move as a calling. Dennis, graduated from the Nazarene Theological Seminary, was ready to begin work as an urban missionary, as an assistant pastor at a church just off Times Square. Gloria would work with at-risk women and children.

Their son remembers most of it, but Matt Rhule, now Temple's football coach, might not recall how before the Rhules reached the East Coast, a rainstorm proved the U-Haul's roof had a leak. The brood stopped in State College, Pa., at the house of Dennis' parents, staying until a mattress dried out. Along the way, they found out that the head pastor was leaving their new church.

"The Lamb's Church of the Nazarene," Matt Rhule said of his father's church on 44th Street in Manhattan. "That's back when Times Square was not Disney. It was rough."

Now 41, about to start his fourth season as Owls head coach, starting with Friday's game against Army, Rhule would spend almost a dozen years living in New York. As a five-year-old, he saw the whole thing as a big adventure. It would not be a typical path toward being a big-time college football coach.

Does any of this make a difference in coaching a football game? Let's assume, not a bit. And if Rhule doesn't keep winning football games, nobody will care about where he came from. But Rhule has always seemed like the type who can see past his office window. Certainly not a bad trait for Temple's head football coach.

Interestingly, being a football coach is how Rhule always saw himself.

"I tell people, when he was five, he'd tell people, 'I'm going to Penn State, play football and become a coach," Dennis Rhule said. "I was like, 'That's nice.' I patted him on the head."

"My dad was a coach, and I wanted to be like my dad," Rhule said.

In addition to being a minister, Dennis Rhule coached all sorts of sports at Manhattan high schools. That's how the bills were paid, as a schoolteacher and coach. Dennis had played football and baseball at Lock Haven.

"By day, my dad would work with kids at this elite private school, and at night and on weekends he would go run the youth center and run midnight basketball until 2 in the morning in rough neighborhoods," Matt Rhule said. "My dad was never the head pastor of a church. That was never really his calling. That was my dad's ministry, being a coach."

Of the congregation, Dennis Rhule said, "A very transient crowd. A lot of people came to New York trying to make it, a lot of actors and actresses. The thing that really drew my wife and I there, they had a huge ministry for the poor. We had a feeding program, a clothing program, a health clinic."

Most of their time in New York, the Rhules lived on Roosevelt Island, in the East River, connected to Manhattan by aerial tram. There was a grade school there and friends to play sports. For youth football, a trek farther up the river to Randall's Island.

These days, Rhule lives in Philadelphia with his family. This summer, his parents moved to Philadelphia from State College. Comfort with city living was ingrained in them all.

On Roosevelt Island, there was grass to play on, Gloria Rhule said, but the games didn't require grass, "sometimes on concrete or a brick courtyard or sliding down steps."

Not a traditional path toward big-time football, but Rhule also had access to that world and lived it in the summer. His uncle, Chuck Sponsky, was a successful high school coach in Western Pennsylvania, and Rhule would spend much of his summer in Sponsky's house. His cousin was a little older and a good football player, going on to Towson State, later a coach.

"I can remember reading coaching books or football theory books when I was 8, 9, 10, 11 years old," Rhule said. "The single wing . . . I had like Bill Yeoman [former Houston Cougars coach] on the split-back veer."

Sitting in his office, Rhule grabbed a book from the shelf behind him.

"This is one of the books that changed my life. Jack Tatum, 'They Call Me Assassin,' " Rhule said. "I keep it here still."

How did it change his life?

"When your dad is a coach, your uncle is a coach, you want to play football," Rhule said. "But you start playing football, sometimes you can't stand it, right? So some kids just quit."

But when your dad is a coach, Rhule said, it's hard to tell your dad, your uncle, "Hey, I don't want to play."

"So I remember playing a year and not really loving it," Rhule said, holding the worn book. "Always wanting to be a coach. Reading that book - the fearlessness and aggressiveness with which he played, within the white lines of course - I read that. It's amazing how one person's mental approach, you can take on. So I tried to take that on. From then on, I loved playing football. It was just from reading one book."

Interesting since Jack Tatum, one of the great hitters in the history of the game, wrote the book two years after his most famous hit (which didn't draw a flag) paralyzed Darryl Stingley. Rhule said he didn't think too much about that. "It was more about his mentality of enjoying hitting and physicality, because that wasn't my personality at first. He caused me to shift my paradigm."

The family moved to State College for Rhule's last two years of high school. He played football for a very good State College High team before walking on at Penn State. Since the bulk of his childhood was spent as a New Yorker, how does Rhule think that impacted him?

"I think being able to communicate and being around people of all different backgrounds, ethnicities, socioeconomic whatever - just being able to be around everybody," Rhule said. "My mom and dad, we lived here. They worked with all different kinds of people. On Thanksgiving, we would feed 400 homeless people at our church, then go out and see the parade. Then I'd go to a friend's house who lived in the Upper East Side and have dinner at their penthouse. I had this unbelievably diverse background that to me makes a coach. You learn to talk to and appreciate and love all people."

Rhule brought up another point.

"If I had a problem with a coach or teacher, my dad made me go talk to him," Rhule said. "If I had a problem with a credit card company, he made me make my own phone call. Now you're a college football coach, and you have to be able to pick up the phone and call people and call parents and recruit. I feel so comfortable for that. My parents always made me be my own man from a young age."

Another lesson that doesn't hurt if you're Temple's head football coach: It should take more than a leaky U-Haul and rain-soaked mattress to keep you from where you're going.

mjensen@phillynews.com

@jensenoffcampus