When Al Golden was head coach of the football team at Temple, his stated goal for the program was that it become the “Boise State of the East” and the most prominent non-AQ (automatic qualifying) program East of the Mississippi.

The millions Miami paid Golden to move south to coach the Hurricanes derailed those plans but, if recent hires are any indication, the school’s football program has changed course and is trying to become the “Indiana of the East.”  The school’s current president, Neil D. Theobald, was Indiana’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and the school’s new athletic director, Pat Kraft, played football at Indiana. The man he succeeded, Kevin Clark, was also an administrator at Indiana under Theobald and yet another former Indiana guy, Craig Angelos, was brought in to raise money for athletics. The Angelos’ hiring is seen as key only because, while at Florida Atlantic University, he led a fund-raising effort that built an on-campus stadium for that school, also nicknamed the Owls. There apparently is a new football stadium on the horizon for Temple and the question of when should be answered on Tuesday when the school’s Board of Directors hold a rare mid-summer meeting. Right now, no one knows what the stadium will look like but, if those recent hires are any indication, do not be surprised if it looks a whole lot like Memorial Stadium in Bloomington (pictured).

Even if a stadium is not on the docket, that could be more telling than if it is, because the school’s BOT let both a May meeting and a March meeting come and go with no discussion of a stadium. If it is not on this agenda, there likely will be no stadium soon because the next meeting after this one is in October and the school’s 15-year lease with the Philadelphia Eagles to rent Lincoln Financial Field expires at the end of the 2017 season.

Temple fans on sports message boards seem obsessed with the topic, as seemingly innocuous discussion threads get turned into stadium ones at the drop of a hat. When it comes to the people who really matter, the BOT, the topic hasn’t even moved the needle. The question of where Temple will play in 2018 is an urgent one.  The logical answer is to extend the Lincoln Financial Field lease. That could be costly because the Eagles are asking for a 300 percent increase in Temple’s $1 million-per-year rent, but it is a price Temple must pay to remain a viable program and about 10 times less costly than building its own stadium.

If Tuesday comes and goes without a stadium decision, the October meeting will have to be to rubber stamp an extension of the current Lincoln Financial Field deal and, however disappointing that will be to the Indiana people running Temple now, time will have made that decision for them.

Mike Gibson is a writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @papreps , “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.