by Jack Kerwin | ydkjack1@gmail.com
Yeah, OK it’s the NIT, so it doesn’t matter.
Unless you happen to support the Temple University men’s basketball program, or its former whipping post on the hardwood, Penn State.
It has come to this for the Owls’ family:
A loss, a blowout loss at that, is a win – a WIN – for the program.
It’s beyond the kiss and make up stage with head coach Fran Dunphy.
This painfully slow drifting into the abyss is forever locked under his reign. There is no turning back. There is no righting the ship.
It is what it is now … a disaster, with no hope for change – without change at the top.
A complete overhaul is needed. That begins with ousting Dunphy.
A task that seems so monumentally impossible to the current administration as it applies silly values to such arbitrary things as “he runs a clean program,” “he represents the school so well,” “he’s a good man,” “he’s a likable guy,” and, apparently, the most critical of all, “he’s a Philly guy” that any sane-thinking person not affiliated with the program or the school or Philly would chuckle. Hell, probably more all-out guffaw.
It is preposterous that Dunphy, on the cusp of his third 16-loss or worse season in the last five, remains at the helm now.
No doubt he’s dealing with different parameters than John Chaney did in taking Temple’s long-ago, on-the-cusp-national-psyche from theory to reality during a Hall of Famer tenure, but that is no excuse for taking a program that reached five Elite Eights under Chaney and reducing it to irrelevancy.
Such irrelevancy that it finds itself as a double-digit underdog to a football school. Oh, the humanity.
Thing is, it is embarrassing, and to all the faux bleed-Cherry nitwits who cling to these nonsensical and out-of-date/out-of-touch beliefs about hating Penn State, and professing that “no REAL Temple fan would ever root for Penn State in any way, never mind against Temple,” yo, get a freakin’ clue.
The only way your beloved Owls are ever gonna get headed back in the right direction is for Dunphy’s regime to completely implode, to the point excuses do not even exist, even in the most sublime, pathetically rationalized of ways.
Temple wins tonight, in State College, that only further prolongs the agony, people.
It’s not going to be a turning point. It’s just going to keep Dunphy in charge, and continue the step-by-step march to total dumpster fire.
He is a good guy. He’s even a good coach. Just not at Temple.
He was never a fit, and never will be.
No shame in that.
Why people cannot accept that, no idea.
But the reality is, at this point, the best thing for Temple’s program is to lose, and lose big, tonight, tomorrow and any other time the Owls step out on the floor with Dunphy there … because it’s the only way he’s ever going to get outta there, and that’s the only shot the Owls have of becoming, first and foremost, relevant again.
After that, then they could look at regaining some ground on a national scale and start positioning themselves, just as in the good ol’ days, as the proverbial “Daddy” to programs such as the one at Penn State.
So, yeah, a loss would be a win here.
Time to get on board and grasp reality my fellow Owls.
Yeah, OK it’s the NIT, so it doesn’t matter.
Unless you happen to support the Temple University men’s basketball program, or its former whipping post on the hardwood, Penn State.
It has come to this for the Owls’ family:
A loss, a blowout loss at that, is a win – a WIN – for the program.
It’s beyond the kiss and make up stage with head coach Fran Dunphy.
This painfully slow drifting into the abyss is forever locked under his reign. There is no turning back. There is no righting the ship.
It is what it is now … a disaster, with no hope for change – without change at the top.
A complete overhaul is needed. That begins with ousting Dunphy.
A task that seems so monumentally impossible to the current administration as it applies silly values to such arbitrary things as “he runs a clean program,” “he represents the school so well,” “he’s a good man,” “he’s a likable guy,” and, apparently, the most critical of all, “he’s a Philly guy” that any sane-thinking person not affiliated with the program or the school or Philly would chuckle. Hell, probably more all-out guffaw.
It is preposterous that Dunphy, on the cusp of his third 16-loss or worse season in the last five, remains at the helm now.
No doubt he’s dealing with different parameters than John Chaney did in taking Temple’s long-ago, on-the-cusp-national-psyche from theory to reality during a Hall of Famer tenure, but that is no excuse for taking a program that reached five Elite Eights under Chaney and reducing it to irrelevancy.
Such irrelevancy that it finds itself as a double-digit underdog to a football school. Oh, the humanity.
Thing is, it is embarrassing, and to all the faux bleed-Cherry nitwits who cling to these nonsensical and out-of-date/out-of-touch beliefs about hating Penn State, and professing that “no REAL Temple fan would ever root for Penn State in any way, never mind against Temple,” yo, get a freakin’ clue.
The only way your beloved Owls are ever gonna get headed back in the right direction is for Dunphy’s regime to completely implode, to the point excuses do not even exist, even in the most sublime, pathetically rationalized of ways.
Temple wins tonight, in State College, that only further prolongs the agony, people.
It’s not going to be a turning point. It’s just going to keep Dunphy in charge, and continue the step-by-step march to total dumpster fire.
He is a good guy. He’s even a good coach. Just not at Temple.
He was never a fit, and never will be.
No shame in that.
Why people cannot accept that, no idea.
But the reality is, at this point, the best thing for Temple’s program is to lose, and lose big, tonight, tomorrow and any other time the Owls step out on the floor with Dunphy there … because it’s the only way he’s ever going to get outta there, and that’s the only shot the Owls have of becoming, first and foremost, relevant again.
After that, then they could look at regaining some ground on a national scale and start positioning themselves, just as in the good ol’ days, as the proverbial “Daddy” to programs such as the one at Penn State.
So, yeah, a loss would be a win here.
Time to get on board and grasp reality my fellow Owls.
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