Last night, you could make the claim that I finally "returned the favor" for Temple accepting me for a summer over in Tokyo, by catching its football team in action against UMass-Amherst down in Philadelphia! Unfortunately for Temple football, its campus is too small/urban to hold much more than a few academic buildings, and facilities for its other sports teams, forcing football into the Philadelphia Eagles' home stadium, Lincoln Financial Field... What is lost in the expanse of "the Linc", though, is more than made up for by the crowd, which scoots down as close as possible to the field, in ways which I'm certain are impossible during Eagles home games (given the price differences between college and pro sports), and, as is expected with college football, there were even a few UMass fans who made the trip down to Philly, although not as many as there were Villanova fans just last weekend, in checking highlights of that game (which is honestly shameful, at least to me, considering Villanova is basically on the same level as Fordham, which, as you know from a couple of weeks back, just got run off the field by Army)... The pre-game itself was interesting, with the Temple band marching from outside the stadium to its section, later emerging from the same tunnel from which the team itself would later emerge for the start of the game, which is probably only possible because
On the topic of "obligations", yes, I felt, on top of visiting the Temple campus, which I did once last summer (2016), that I had to catch Temple football in action at some point, which isn't the most difficult thing, given that Temple travels to places like Cincinnati, Navy, and UConn every so often, that if I didn't catch them in Philly, that I would have been able to catch them in either Annapolis, Cincinnati, or Hartford, or vice versa (having said teams visit Philly), depending on (conference) scheduling each regular season!
On the topic of "obligations", yes, I felt, on top of visiting the Temple campus, which I did once last summer (2016), that I had to catch Temple football in action at some point, which isn't the most difficult thing, given that Temple travels to places like Cincinnati, Navy, and UConn every so often, that if I didn't catch them in Philly, that I would have been able to catch them in either Annapolis, Cincinnati, or Hartford, or vice versa (having said teams visit Philly), depending on (conference) scheduling each regular season!
As for the game itself, it only took Temple about the opening two minutes or so to open the scoring this time, with a 60+ yard run play leading, ironically, to a stop within field goal range, which, again, gave Temple the early lead, but, after that, both offenses just kept stalling after just a few plays, and, even, in some cases, going backwards, leading to punt after punt, not exactly helped by the UMass kicker having an incredibly rough start to the game... The second quarter only seemed like an extension of the first initially, as UMass did to Temple what Army kept doing to Fordham, swatting away a rather long field goal attempt, and that later served as the bit of "momentum" that UMass eventually turned into the first of what would end up quite a few touchdowns on the night, as the UMass offense mostly used rather short passing plays to either side of the QB (mostly "screen" passes, with the backs/receivers/tight end(s) basically all helping to "clear the way" for the running back or whoever happens to be the recipient of some little "dump-off") to keep the Temple defenders scrambling every which way, eventually leading to UMass taking a 7-3 lead, although that wouldn't last very long, as Temple decided to do the opposite, and just launch a few passes, most of which actually ended up connecting, at least when the QBs weren't under-throwing their intended receivers, which happened a few times then, giving Temple a 16-7 halftime lead!
After a "summer in review" halftime performance by the Temple band (which exposed some of the limitations of the team playing in an NFL stadium, as the band was "wired for sound", yet seemingly all of it was only to one sideline, like some (malfunctioning) old stereo receiver or something), the offense added another field goal to extend the lead to 19-7, although just as Temple let Villanova hang around last weekend, it did the same with UMass, as the lead ended up getting cut to 19-14, extended once again to 22-14, and 29-14, once again with a bunch of "deep ball" passes, and cut yet again near the end to the final score!
Temple recap:
UMass recap:
AAC YouTube channel highlights:
...speaking of the American Athletic Conference, it's apparently issued "orders" to its member teams to make the case for the conference, instead of the actual conference itself making the case to the NCAA, to get more influence on the weekly rankings/bowl game placements, as, when the Temple players made their "run" pre-game, they did so with the American flag, a team flag, the conference's flag, and a "P6" flag, as the conference has been completely left off New Year's Day thus far, which is arguably the biggest day of "bowl season"...
Also, being a night game, Temple wore special all-black uniforms, instead of the usual "cherry" red the team wears during afternoon home games, arguably helping the contrast with UMass' maroon-trimmed uniforms!
On top of the band's "wiring" being somewhat off (unfortunately, the same could not be said about the PA announcer, who sounded more like a spokesman for Temple football, at one point even proclaiming "a whole host of Temple tacklers" on a defensive stop, instead of a (somewhat) impartial observer, along the lines of the Giants' or Yankees' PA announcers historically - that is to say, the late, great Bob Sheppard and replacements, among others who refuse to "emphasize" their in-arena/stadium announcements), the video boards were practically the only things used for live stats/etc., as the "ribbon" boards along each side only ever displayed historical achievements by Temple football, or a few graphics pertaining to the live action - honestly, I feel that's something that doing something similar to what Navy does, giving its stadium over to the NCAA's bowl committee for the Military Bowl every December, and welcoming a pair of non-Temple teams (since Navy got a "home" game in the 2015 Military Bowl against Pittsburgh) to Philadelphia every December, much as Yankee Stadium currently hosts the Pinstripe Bowl around that time of the year, would fix, since the stadium and team alike would basically be forced, then, to tailor the equipment there, such as the video board graphics, in favor of the participating teams!
Unlike West Point, however, Temple borrows from the Eagles' "secret stash" of fireworks (as in, literally at the top of the stadium) for its scoring plays, along with just about halfway through the national anthem, along with a few surprise blasts between the third and fourth quarters, during a different band show, so, thankfully, Philly "lowers the 'boom'" to a much more reasonable level than Army, which kept firing all of its cannons on campus basically "willy-nilly" as its football team proceeded to rout Fordham a couple of weeks back!
Some more thoughts on the game itself - there were tons of injury timeouts during the second and third quarters, which seemed to "blunt" both teams' momentum, as it seemed that said timeouts always followed longer plays, rather than little "dump offs", although it seems as if every venue treats such situations similarly, as the boards simply showed the Temple "T" logo, and nothing more, during those timeouts...
Also, one of the music courses on my campus (which I'm not taking, personally, since there's another that's all about jazz) is basically all about "rap and rock", and it seemed as if that was all that was on the stadium's playlist throughout the entire game, although the producers made sure not to play anything over top of the band, unlike some other venues I've been to recently!
Now, if I may give my thoughts about a different (set of) game(s) a few days ago, I'd like to comment on what MLB did recently, sending the Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays over to Queens, while keeping Tampa as the "home" team during that trio of games - as you might recall, the Yankees got forced over to (then) Shea Stadium against the Anaheim Angels (which, "fun fact", everybody seems to know that Disney owned the Ducks up through the 2004-05 NHL season, which ended up getting canceled because nobody in that league could seemingly get along back then, but they also owned the Angels up until then, when I guess the company figured it might as well sell both teams, instead of sticking with just one of them...), and the management over in Queens gave everybody who showed up "comparable" seating to what they might have had over in the Bronx - while I understand why the Rays were made the "home" team, it would've made more sense literally anywhere but Citi Field, like (these were just some of the places I saw mentioned in the lead-up to a few days ago, during that series) Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, or Philadelphia here, or even Montreal, which, while the Olympic Stadium there is basically falling apart more and more each day now, at least there aren't any current (full-time) tenants there, instead of subjecting the Yankees to some potential "gamesmanship" on the part of the Mets organization (although I'll give that the Yanks have at least become accustomed to being the "road" team over in Queens, between Shea Stadium previously, and Citi Field currently)!
Now that I've basically "paid dues" to Temple now, by it having accepted me over in Japan, and me now attending this football game, I'll just be looking ahead to the ice now, quite honestly, especially, as I've been mentioning for months now, in Connecticut (Bridgeport/Hamden/Hartford/
...apparently, a Denver theater production company slipped a stage adaptation of Disney's (very late) 2013 smash hit (as in $1.3 billion) Frozen right past the company's sights, before its scheduled Broadway debut (late) next February, since there was, according to ^that^ N.Y. Times article above, quite a bit that got left out of the original movie that ended up in that live stage show, along with taking the whole thing in a bit of a "darker" direction, with less dialogue about "true love" and more about "struggle", which was apparently the direction in which Disney itself was apparently headed with that for years leading up to 2013, which was when we all ended up finding out that the finished product was more "kiddy" than "epic"!
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