Game 11 Billboard Slogan of the Week: BYOJ

GAME 11 BILLBOARD SLOGAN OF THE WEEK: BYOJ

BY TIM SCANDURRO

A whole lot of people across this country will tell you that Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia is home to the most inhospitable, vile football fans in America.

On Sundays in autumn they annually burnish that reputation, one built on a legacy of booing Santa Claus and pelting him with snowballs, rioting after Super Bowl wins, and general hooliganism. A book published some years back described their reputation for “hostile taunting, fighting, and public urination.”  I don’t even want to think about how often that last one has to happen to earn it a spot on the reputational Top Three List.

Fortunately those are Philadelphia Eagles fans, and we play Temple at The Linc on Saturday. Temple isn’t the first name that comes to mind when you think about college football, but good coaches tend to win there.  The Temple coaching tree includes Pop Warner (who we beat in the inaugural Sugar Bowl in 1934), Super Bowl winning coach Bruce Arians, and former NFL and current Nebraska coach Matt Rhule.

Coach Rhule won 10 games and a conference title in his last two years at Temple.  Two of those wins were suffocating defeats of Tulane in which his physical Owls held us to a total of 17 points in eight quarters of play.  In the 2015 game in Philly, we mustered only 110 yards of offense and eight first downs en route to a 49-10 loss.  We’ve never won in Philadelphia.    

Things slipped a bit when Rhule left, but K.C. Keeler, the Owls’ first year coach with the Willie Fritz-like resume’, has immediately improved Temple’s quality of play and team discipline.  Temple went 3-9 last year.  They are 5-5 this year and could easily be 7-3 after two excruciating losses to the service academies.  By comparison, Matt Rhule went 2-10 his first year.  This is a legit coach who has been successful pretty much everywhere he’s gone, and his team believes in what they are doing.

Temple is also coming off a bye week and will be playing for bowl eligibility and a signature win. Temple averages only about 13,000 fans (announced) for their games at The Linc.  There may be a few more who come out this weekend to watch the current CFP favorite Green Wave, but it still figures to be a “BYOJ” game, in the words of our head coach.  That’s our Billboard Slogan of the Week: Bring Your Own Juice.  Considering what we have to play for, every man on the team should be bringing plenty of juice with him.  Win this one, beat a woeful Charlotte team the following week, and we will be playing in our fourth straight conference championship game and third at home.

After that, well I won’t say it out loud but we are all dreaming it.

None of it matters without this one.  I have seen this game described as “tricky,” which translates to ‘why can’t we be playing UAB or Rice this week.’

And it is tricky, not just for the team but for us.  Because all of us know what happened to the last two CFP-ranked teams from our league.  All of us are also Tulane fans, and those of us who have worn that mantle long enough are anxious.  We were anxious this past Tuesday before the rankings came out, and once we were vindicated there we got anxious again about this game Saturday. Partly because Tulane fans with long enough memories (you know who you are) still have PTSD problems in this spot.  It takes more than one hand to count the number of blown opportunities, missed chances, and bed-sh$+ing performances of years past.  So I get that some of it is hard-wired. 

That was then though, and this is now.  This isn’t Matt Rhule’s Temple, and this sure as heck isn’t Curtis Johnson’s Tulane.  “I’m going to speak this into existence:  we’re going to make the College Football Playoff,” Jon Sumrall said from the podium less than two years ago.  He believed, when there was little tangible evidence to do so.  Do you, now that there is?

For one Saturday, let’s banish the old anxieties.  Let’s instead embrace this opportunity in front of us and look forward to grabbing it.  Don’t bother hoping for a comfortable win, because this football team is probably going to give you something tight and close as darkness descends in the northeast on Saturday.  You know it and I know it.  But on whatever couch or barstool you plant yourself on Saturday, don’t forget to bring your own juice.

Come on, you’re Tulane fans.  You KNOW it’s not going to be easy. They’re hungry and desperate and rested.  We’re banged up, on the road and have way more pressure on us.

But we haven’t lost a tight game all year.  Not one.  So I’m making the choice to believe this week.  I’m going to sit around and wait for something GOOD to happen Saturday in the fourth quarter.  We’ve spent more time across the years than any of us would like wandering in the desert.  But this recent run we’ve been on has led us here.  This is our time, at long last, and this is our opportunity.  We can see the promised land from here.  Let’s cross the river and enter into it, with hope in our hearts.

And don’t worry--if you have to mix a little something with that juice Saturday afternoon to steel your nerves, you won’t be alone.  Roll Wave.