For Temple football fans, it's boom, not doom
For Temple football fans, it's boom, not doom
- Temple runs over Kent State, 47-13
- Temple basketball beats Siena
- Villanova pounds Delaware, awaits seeding
- Penn State flies by Michigan State
- Hill, Reynolds are key as St. Joseph wins title
- For Temple football fans, it's boom, not doom
- College Basketball: St. Joseph's women win first at new arena
- Delaware survives Penn challenge, 97-94
In her time earlier this decade as a Temple undergraduate, Lisa Campbell confessed, she was not the most devout Owls football fan.
"I didn't know they had a football team when I went there," Campbell said. "The last time they went to a bowl game, I was 10 years old."
Now a Saturday-afternoon regular at Lincoln Financial Field, Campbell was on her way to yesterday's final Owls home game - three decades after that 1979 Garden State Bowl appearance - when she pulled up at a toll booth off the New Jersey Turnpike. The toll taker noticed her Temple Football sweatshirt.
"He was just excited - he was like, 'Oh, they're 6-0 in the conference!', " Campbell said.
An episode of Ripley's Believe It or Not? A fantasy sequence? Campbell sounded kind of surprised herself.
"He was like, 'Go Owls!', " Campbell said in the parking lot before the game.
What to make of this? Yesterday, the Owls won their ninth consecutive football game, beating Kent State, 47-13. In its history, Temple had never won nine straight in the same season.
A bowl bid isn't official yet, but it's coming.
How crazy is this getting?
"Two people got arrested outside for scalping," said a Temple administrator, sounding thrilled at the thought.
Or how about this third-quarter conversation at the top of Section 120?
"Are you going to Detroit?" asked a guy in a Phillies jersey, referring to the site of the Mid-American Conference championship game.
"Yeah," said an older guy wearing a Temple hat.
"And they'll go to a bowl game?"
"Yeah. Yeah."
The Owls still need to beat Ohio on Friday to win the MAC East Division and get to the conference title game.
They are 9-2 overall, and 7-0 in the MAC, but you can't say the Owls have captured the city. Any record in the MAC doesn't resonate in Philadelphia, even if it's proven to be the right league for Temple. A loss to Villanova in the season opener and a failure to stay closer to Penn State in the Owls' only other defeat may have prevented more excitement.
The announced attendance of 21,046 seemed slightly high - maybe old habits die hard. The sections behind Temple's bench, goal line to goal line, were close to full, and the sections between the 20s were full. But there also were virtually empty sections in the Linc's lower bowl. Kent State won't pack the place.
However, in those full sections, you felt as if you were at a college football game.
For the diehards, yesterday was sweet, they said. After decades of being a national punch line, Temple football had turned an obvious corner. Nobody is mocking the Owls. What's that like for the loyalists?
