Temple Football Recruiting Takes Big Hit With Blizzard Of 2016

Being a Temple sports fan means accepting odd things happening at strange times that seem to stunt the Owls’ growth in the two marquee sports. Fans can now add the latest episode of Snowmageddon to the history of bad luck.

With only a few days to go before signing day, the Owls reserved this weekend to try and close the deal on five top-ranked football recruits, and the crippling blizzard that will eventually drop 24 inches on the campus cannot help things. Once in a while the Owls will find a player from Florida who never saw snow and considers it the greatest thing in the world so he decides to commit on the spot.

Unfortunately for them, those times are too few and between.

It was a good idea in the first place, because the perennially strong Temple basketball team was going to host unbeaten AAC rival SMU on Saturday night in a game that figured to pack the Liacouras Center and show the recruits the spirit of the 12,500 students who live on campus. Now, that game is moved to Sunday and probably will not have nearly the same atmosphere as students escaped campus due to classes being canceled.

Ironically, it had not snowed all winter — not even a flake — and the winter had been relatively mild with quite a few 50- and 60-degree days. You can tell the recruits that all you want, but they see what they see. Logistically, it is just not going to be a good thing. Even though the recruits will be on campus, other things are routinely planned on recruiting weekends that will just not go off — like trips to Lincoln Financial Field and Center City.

Those places were always major draws for recruits who want to experience four years of campus life in an exciting big city atmosphere and play their home games in an NFL stadium. It will have to be explained to them by Temple head coach Matt Rhule over a cup of hot chocolate in a campus cafeteria now, and that’s just not the same thing.

Meanwhile, one of the Owls’ top recruits, Dae’Lun Darien, chose this weekend to accept a recruiting trip to rival Penn State, where it almost always snows at a rate far more frequently than downstate Philadelphia. The forecast up there is for a coating to an inch. Chalk that up to Temple’s luck.