It’s No Longer a Temple of Doom and Gloom
By DAVE CALDWELL
Published: October 25, 2007
PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 23 — Al Golden is not only the head coach of the Temple football team, but also its special-teams coordinator, the man responsible for assembling the squad that fields onside kicks from desperate opponents near the end of games.
That squad coughed up an onside kick in the final seconds of Saturday’s game, giving Miami of Ohio one last chance to salvage a victory. Temple intercepted a pass and won, 24-17, but the onside kick struck Golden as a meaningful moment.
Temple, forlorn for years, is not exactly accustomed to closing out victories. The Owls won 1 of their first 17 games under Golden, who is in his second season. The victory Saturday was Temple’s third straight, tying its longest winning streak in 17 years.
“Everything we do now is for the first time,” Golden said Tuesday in an interview in his office.
Golden, a 38-year-old New Jersey native who played tight end at Penn State and was an assistant at Virginia before Temple hired him after an 0-11 season in 2005, is attempting to carry the Owls far, far away from their dismal recent football history.
His steely demeanor and the circumstances that he faces are strikingly similar to those of another coach who also grew up in North Jersey and was hired at a young age to resuscitate a dormant major-college football program as a first-time head coach: Greg Schiano at Rutgers.
Schiano, 41, was a graduate assistant at Penn State when Golden played there. The two coaches keep in touch, but as Golden said, “We have a completely different blueprint — a completely different model.”
Temple was pushed out of the Big East after the 2004 season because it lost a lot and drew small crowds. The Owls are now in the Mid-American Conference and play at Lincoln Financial Field, the home of the Philadelphia Eagles.
Golden has tried to sell the conference affiliation and the handsome stadium to prospects. But it also helps that new buildings are popping up regularly on Temple’s once-bleak North Philadelphia campus.
“Kids are shocked by how beautiful the campus is,” Golden said.
He has made what he considers as one symbolic concession to the past. After constantly changing uniforms, the Owls wear uniforms that resemble those that Temple wore — and often won in — under Coach Wayne Hardin from 1970 to 1982.
The university’s name appears in white block letters on the cherry helmets. The pants carry a broken cherry stripe. The collar on the jerseys contains a diamond pattern, a reference to the Temple founder Russell Conwell’s “Acres of Diamonds” speech.
“Somewhere along the line, we lost our brand,” Golden said.
His attempt to rebrand the program as a winner was apparent before he even got the job. Twenty minutes into an interview with Golden two years ago, Temple’s athletic director, Bill Bradshaw, wrote on a legal pad, “This is our guy.”
“He believed he would turn Temple football around, but listening to him, I believed he would turn Temple football around,” Bradshaw said Tuesday. “He kind of put Temple’s pathetic performance in football over the last 25 years aside.”
Golden had a reputation as a masterly recruiter, and he described himself as a disciplinarian. He decided it would work out better if he stuck to his plan and paid no attention to those who questioned his career decision.
Temple won one game last year, over Bowling Green, 28-14. The Owls lost on back-to-back weekends to Louisville and to Minnesota by identical 62-0 scores. They lost later in the season to Clemson, 63-9, and to Penn State, 47-0.
“I kept feeling that I was the luckiest guy in the business, to be honest with you,” Golden said.
The Owls lost their first five games this year, including a 22-17 defeat Sept. 15 to Connecticut in which Temple’s Bruce Francis caught an apparent touchdown pass with 40 seconds left but was ruled out of bounds, a call that was upheld after a replay.
After a loss Sept. 29 to Army that dropped the team to 0-5, the players had a meeting and agreed that they were being undone by not paying attention to details set by Golden and his staff, all of whom had come from winning programs.
“Coach is a very positive person,” said Dominique Harris, a sophomore defensive back. “He believes in us, won’t quit on us. He won’t let us quit on ourselves.”
Temple beat Northern Illinois on a field goal with 14 seconds left, 16-15, then beat Akron, 24-20. The Owls lost quarterback Adam DiMichele to a season-ending leg injury Saturday, but Vaughn Charlton threw for a 61-yard touchdown to Francis.
“It’s fool’s gold if we go out next week against Ohio and lay an egg,” Golden said.
On Nov. 10, the Owls will play Penn State at home before a capacity crowd. Temple last beat Penn State in 1941, although the Owls tied the Nittany Lions in 1950 and barely lost to Penn State three times under Hardin — 26-25 in 1975, 31-30 in 1976 and 10-7 in 1978.
Beating Penn State would be another milestone for Golden. But he and his players say they are not as concerned with ending a 66-year losing streak as they are in accomplishing new things — for them.
“I can only be responsible for what goes on now and move on to the future,” said Marquise Liverpool, a freshman wide receiver from Teaneck, N.J. “I saw a great opportunity to come in and turn the program around.”
This article appeared in the New York Times on Thursday, October 25, 2007.
