In 2005, the Big East bade farewell to Temple, a founding football member that had outlived its usefulness to the then-burgeoning conference. The presumption at the time was that the Owls, a feeble football pushover, were gone and gone for good.
Fast-forward to 2012, and “good riddance” has given way to “good to see you.” Now, the league couldn’t be happier to welcome back the only school ever to be kicked out of the conference.
Or at least that’s what they’re saying.
“Today is an exciting day for the Big East conference,” Commissioner John Marinatto said Wednesday at a press conference at Madison Square Garden announcing Temple’s return to the conference.
“We are extremely pleased with our expansion efforts and are very confident that the future of the Big East is as bright as it’s ever been.”
But in truth, it’s a dark day for the Big East, and the decision to invite Temple back into the conference reeks of desperation.
Radical realignment has ravaged the league for the second time in the past decade, leaving it with no choice but to hand out a hastily assembled invite to the Owls, for better or for worse.
Temple will begin competing in football this fall and in basketball in 2013, and the league is all too eager to discuss Philadelphia’s gargantuan television market (one the league already reaches in the form of Villanova basketball) and Temple’s hoops program, which boasts about its 29 NCAA tournament appearances and two Final Fours (albeit in 1956 and 1958).
But this move was all about football — as most moves are — and more particularly, scheduling.
Already by far the smallest of the current BCS conferences, with just eight teams, the Big East was left with a gaping hole to fill as a result of West Virginia’s immediate departure for the Big 12. Even with a full complement of teams, the Big East is criticized as the weakest BCS member, so the league hardly could afford to field just seven squads in 2012 — forcing some teams to play each other twice just for the sake of filling out the conference docket.
So they did their best to get one of the five teams scheduled to join the league in 2013 — Boise State, UCF, Houston, Memphis and San Diego State — to join the fray. They all declined, however, leaving the Big East with no choice but to add someone else and add them now.
Golden opportunity, meet Temple.
The Owls competed in the Big East in football from 1991 to 2004, going 30-126, including 14-80 in conference play. In 14 Big East seasons, Temple went winless six times and won one game twice. The vote to remove Temple from the league actually came following the Owls’ best season in the Big East, a 4-7 campaign, in March 2001.
Things only went downhill once the league handed the Philly institution a brutal reminder of its place in the grand football landscape. Temple went 7-28 during its final three Big East seasons, and over the course of the 2003 and 2004 seasons, the Owls went 1-12 in league competition and 3-20 overall.
So it was no wonder that the Big East, still stinging from the departures of Virginia Tech and Miami to the ACC and bracing for Boston College to jump ship as well, was happy to send off the Owls, making room for Louisville, Cincinnati and South Florida to join the conference.
Temple’s next two seasons, played without conference affiliation — a matter of necessity, rather than choice — didn’t go much better. The Owls went 1-22 as an independent before joining the Mid-American Conference for the 2007 season, and the losses were ugly: 63-16 to Arizona State; 65-0 to Wisconsin; 69-7 to Bowling Green; 51-3 to Virginia; 62-0 to Louisville; 62-0 to Minnesota; 63-9 to Clemson; 47-0 to Penn State. The list goes on and on.
In 2007, the Owls joined the MAC and made small strides over the next two seasons. A nine-game winning streak in 2009 propelled Temple to its first bowl berth since 1979, and in 2011 the Owls got their second bowl win in school history, 37-15 over Wyoming in the New Mexico Bowl to cap a 9-4 season.
Next year, in the most unlikely of twists, they’ll be competing with a BCS bid on the line.
“I’ve been in the Big East conference before, and I’m looking forward to coming into the conference again,” said Temple football coach Steve Addazio, who served as an assistant coach at Syracuse from 1995 to ’98. “There’s great rivalries, geographic rivalries, and now with the national scope of the conference, it’s really exciting.”
Temple’s return to the Big East is almost hard to believe, given the way the Owls were unceremoniously dumped such a short time ago.
“It was dreadful,” Temple Board of Trustees member Lewis Katz said Wednesday. “You know, we didn’t deserve, truthfully, to be in the football competition in those years, but it’s hard to get kicked out.”
The implication is that now they do deserve a spot in the Big East, but the evidence backing that claim is hardly overwhelming. If what they’ve accomplished — a couple of decent seasons against sub-par competition — is all it takes, then you’re probably not setting the bar high enough.
But the Big East is between a rock in a hard place, and you can’t really blame it for making an invitation any more than you can blame Temple for putting its pride aside and taking the opportunity.
“At 6:30 this morning, I’m driving down the Schuylkill (River), right by the Gladwyne (Pa.) exit heading east to Temple, and the sun is shining, ” Temple athletic director Bill Bradshaw said Wednesday, beaming about his program’s good news. “There’s not a cloud in the sky, and I turn my radio on and it’s Ruby and the Romantics from 1963, and the song is ‘Our Day Will Come,’ and I said, ‘This is going to be a special day.’ ”
It’s a special day for Temple, but a sad day for the Big East, a once-mighty conference forced to bite the bullet and readmit a perennial loser for the sake of saving face and hopefully holding onto a valuable BCS bid.
For the sake of the league, I hope the move works and the Owls emerge as a viable football program and justify the Big East’s hurried move to add them back.
I hope that Temple becomes the next Boise State, a future Big East member, or TCU, a former Big East member that left the conference before ever playing a game. And if that happens, I hope the Owls stick around long enough for the conference to enjoy the fruits of their success.
“It’s an exciting time,” Addazio said, turning his attention to Marinatto. “We’re so happy to be a part of this Big East family. It’s a special, special day. It’s a landmark day, and we’ll make you proud, I promise you that.”
But recent history — the same history that got Temple kicked out of the Big East less than a decade ago — says that it won’t.
Follow Sam Gardner on Twitter: @sam_gardner
