Churning through all the previews lately and felt compelled to comment on Temple as the SZD Philadelphia correspondent:
It’s even worse than you’d think. Negative juice. Saying Temple football is an afterthought in the current Philly sports culture would be kind. I live in the city, commute past the stadiums every day, and have not noticed a single billboard, banner, radio spot, etc. promoting Temple football’s upcoming season. Either they’re quietly broke, don’t want anyone to acknowledge them until they fix this program and other administrative messes, or think it’s futile to spend money attempting to convince locals to do this instead of watch the Phillies play postseason baseball.
To a degree, I can’t blame them. A large majority of people in Philadelphia don’t follow college football and don’t understand the appeal of the sport. I have actually gotten a few confused looks when I share my interest in college football - as if the only relevance and usefulness of CFB is to have a few highlights of the guys the Eagles drafted.
As a university, Temple continues to experience dysfunction and disorder from a multitude of organizational issues - turnover of university presidents including multiple resignations in disgrace and a sudden death, a business school accreditation scandal from falsified data, national headlines and NLRB involvement from a grad student union strike, and constantly frayed community relations from violence and harassment between off-campus students and North Philly residents.
In fact, on that last point: the only real attempted momentum out of the Rhule/Collins era was a push from the board chair to build an on-campus stadium, which would involve the displacement of blocks of black, low-income North Philly residents. Needless to say, the plan and public comment forums caused a firestorm of tension and race/community/city relations for Temple. What started as a vision in a public press release in November 2015 after a ranked Temple hosted Gameday at Independence Hall for a matchup with Notre Dame, died out quietly in June 2018 when Temple failed to meet their deadline to submit a stadium proposal to the City Planning Commission. Shortly after that, they were caught falsifying graduate business school data submitted to US News and World Report, and the rest is history.
In summary, Temple has a lot of alignment work to do as a university, community, and city institution before they can successfully do anything about the football program. And whenever they get around to football, they’ll have to find a space to occupy between the Big Four pro sports, Big Five city basketball schools, agnostic private school alumni, and strong alumni base of flagship state schools that offer better game day experiences (Penn State, Rutgers, and even 2025 FBS newcomer Delaware).
I've learned there's 4 basic types of SZD segment over my years of listening and supporting the show:
1. RJ and Godfrey find new ways to tell Alex "shut up, nerd"
2. Rowdy nephews Alex and RJ clown ol' Uncle Godfrey for no longer being "with it"
3. Alex and Godfrey lose patience with RJ for mostly caring about teams and conferences are most likely to win things
4. The rarest type of segment where all the fellas unite to say either "this thing sucks" or "this thing rules"
Alex’s aspirations vs Godfrey’s realism is my favorite bit of preview season
Godfrey's no fun, you mean
Churning through all the previews lately and felt compelled to comment on Temple as the SZD Philadelphia correspondent:
It’s even worse than you’d think. Negative juice. Saying Temple football is an afterthought in the current Philly sports culture would be kind. I live in the city, commute past the stadiums every day, and have not noticed a single billboard, banner, radio spot, etc. promoting Temple football’s upcoming season. Either they’re quietly broke, don’t want anyone to acknowledge them until they fix this program and other administrative messes, or think it’s futile to spend money attempting to convince locals to do this instead of watch the Phillies play postseason baseball.
To a degree, I can’t blame them. A large majority of people in Philadelphia don’t follow college football and don’t understand the appeal of the sport. I have actually gotten a few confused looks when I share my interest in college football - as if the only relevance and usefulness of CFB is to have a few highlights of the guys the Eagles drafted.
As a university, Temple continues to experience dysfunction and disorder from a multitude of organizational issues - turnover of university presidents including multiple resignations in disgrace and a sudden death, a business school accreditation scandal from falsified data, national headlines and NLRB involvement from a grad student union strike, and constantly frayed community relations from violence and harassment between off-campus students and North Philly residents.
In fact, on that last point: the only real attempted momentum out of the Rhule/Collins era was a push from the board chair to build an on-campus stadium, which would involve the displacement of blocks of black, low-income North Philly residents. Needless to say, the plan and public comment forums caused a firestorm of tension and race/community/city relations for Temple. What started as a vision in a public press release in November 2015 after a ranked Temple hosted Gameday at Independence Hall for a matchup with Notre Dame, died out quietly in June 2018 when Temple failed to meet their deadline to submit a stadium proposal to the City Planning Commission. Shortly after that, they were caught falsifying graduate business school data submitted to US News and World Report, and the rest is history.
In summary, Temple has a lot of alignment work to do as a university, community, and city institution before they can successfully do anything about the football program. And whenever they get around to football, they’ll have to find a space to occupy between the Big Four pro sports, Big Five city basketball schools, agnostic private school alumni, and strong alumni base of flagship state schools that offer better game day experiences (Penn State, Rutgers, and even 2025 FBS newcomer Delaware).
Eat at Arby’s
appreciate this added context. good to know that if i'm off base it's by not being harsh enough in calling it the bleakest situation in FBS
I want to know what Alex has said about St. Louis for the context of the laugh
I just can't stand the Cardinals; that's all
Cannot handle Alex’s newfound love for Memphis.