Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
On the day before New Year’s Eve, athletic directors all over the country are probably taking out the yellow legal pad and making some resolutions. One has to stick out like a sore thumb for Temple University athletic director Pat Kraft and that has to be getting Stony Brook off the 2016 football schedule.
There is no reason Temple should be playing Stony Brook in football, now or ever. It doesn’t make sense from a number of standpoints for the Owls, and the first is that the American Athletic Conference (of which Temple is a member) strongly discourages its institutions from scheduling FCS teams. Stony Brook is not only a FCS team, but a bottom-feeding member of the Colonial Athletic Conference. Playing Stony Brook, almost a certain win for the Owls, brings down the entire league. It has nothing to do with the Owls being “too good” or “looking down their noses” at the Seawolves, and more to do raising the profile of the entire conference.
The second reason is that Temple has seven home games and that’s one more than almost all of its fellow AAC teams. Temple needs to trade that seventh home game for a sixth road game against a FBS school and, if Kraft has any skills as an AD, he will be able to devise a workable solution by helping Stony Brook find another opponent for Sept. 10.
One solution would be to get on the phone with Hawaii, which hosts Tennessee-Martin on the same date. If Kraft can convince the Rainbow Warriors to back out of their deal with that school, he can arrange a Stony Brook at Tennessee-Martin game. Kraft could then make a return call to Hawaii and volunteer the Owls to fill the open Sept. 10 date.
That’s why athletic directors get paid the big money, to fix problems such as these, and that is the one task Kraft should put at the top of his New Year’s to-do list.
Mike Gibson is a featured writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @papreps , “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.
