Looking Up To Temple

This article in SI is of interest “With a relentlessly local recruiting approach, Al Golden has the Temple Owls bowl eligible for the first time since 1979”:

Off the field, Temple is not an exactly ideal comparison for Tulane. It is enormous, has tons of local alums, the administration was horrified by the program’s competitiveness level rather than oddly complacent. But on field, it works better: no one goes, an urban orientation with a popular NFL and college team sucking interest, playing in the NFL stadium, a bad League, minimal facilities, losing forever.

But the Owls have tuned it around. It is just one year-but that radical gloom which both Tulane and Temple shared is gone there. It is very 1997 on Broad Street. I take two things from it.

First, in a bad League, you are never far from competitive (look at Rice and SMU).

To wit, answer this multiple choice question:

For Tulane to win a total of fifteen games in 2011 and 2012, what would do the best to ensure that result?:

A. Fire Toledo
B. Fire the administration: AD and university President
C. Build a new stadium
D. Have a Chase Clement clone appear on campus.

The honest answer is "D"! (although yes, "A" might help "D") We ought not lose site of that.

Second, this quote from the article is of particular interest. The author is speaking of the new coach Al Golden:

“While predecessor Bobby Wallace pursued far-flung junior college transfers, Golden has emphasized a local approach, rarely pursuing players who live more than a three-hour drive from Philadelphia. The roster boasts 68 players from Pennsylvania and New Jersey.”

As I have posted on here before, I am negative on jucos (they are jucos for one of three reason: they can’t play, they can’t make test scores, or some unhealthy combo of the first two). If the Green Wave were a mere player or two away- I could be brought round, but Tulane is not.

That being said, while I have no problem about keeping an eye on talent nationally (I mean, if you can organize the cost and headcount, why not?), I can’t imagine being consistently successful without locking down multiple talent pipelines within 150-200 miles from your campus.

Point being: Temple seems to have figured some of this stuff out- get the right coach, recruit an overlooked star- and in two years, due their League being pretty bad- their problems seem a whole lot less terminal. There is some good Temple stuff littered throughout here.

NONE of their solutions were big dollar or admin related. Let’s not reinvent the wheel here.