WASHINGTON—As a kid growing up on those rough and tumble streets here in The District, we dreamed about one day lining it up at RFK Stadium for some big university to play in the storied Eagle Bank Bowl. Then again, that dream probably wasn’t relegated to the kids from DC.
Name one kid who didn’t want to play in the Eagle Bank Bowl?
OK, no one likes a smart ass. That’s especially true when it comes to some hard-working kids doing something damn-near unprecedented. Besides, the Eagle Bank Bowl is only two years old and unless you’re talking about the Redskins, there really isn’t much history to RFK. Sure, John Riggins played here and so and throughout these pages on this little site, I have opined about Washington’s RFK Stadium and the time I spent there in my youth. Though we could never go to see the Redskins play in the ol’ ballpark (the waiting list for tickets was something like 155 years), I can recall in vivid detail of watching the Grateful Dead and the NASL’s Washington Diplomats.
And, of course, there were three years worth of Phillies games that I saw up close.
Oh yes, RFK Stadium and I go way back.
But it’s kind of odd to see a college bowl game in the old joint, particularly one involving Temple University, and I was pretty sure that I’d never step foot inside the place ever again. Sometimes a life writing sentences about sports takes you on some crazy trips.
So speaking of weird trips and bowl game dreams, it’s worth noting that Temple’s coach Al Golden was just 10 years old the last time Temple was in a bowl game. Golden grew up in Red Bank, N.J. so if he was any type of a sports fan, particularly a college sports fan, he probably knew all about Temple University.
The chances he had even heard of the Garden State Bowl of 1979 played between Temple and California is likely slim. I was one of those sports junkies (and not all that much younger than Golden), and I never knew what the Garden State Bowl was until I read the final result in some sports encyclopedia my mom bought me in a grocery store or something like that.
Hey, there was barely cable TV back then—forget about Wikipedia. We had to go to places like Peoples’ drug store or a grocery chain in order to get our sports reference guides.
Perhaps more than making fun of attending the Eagle Bank Bowl at RFK Stadium in disinterested Washington, D.C. was all the chatter about the parallels and odd coincidences for the Temple team. The last (and only) time a Temple team won 10 games was when they beat California in the Garden State Bowl to finish the 1979 season, 10-2.
Golden’s Owls can finish the 2009 season 10-3 if they beat UCLA.
Yes, it takes going to a Bowl game for Temple to get double-digits in wins for a season—just like it takes the second year of a bowl game for Temple to get an invitation to a post-season game. Temple appeared in the second Garden State Bowl just as they are in the second ever Eagle Bank Bowl.
That fact doesn’t bode well for the organizers (or sponsors) of the Eagle Bank Bowl since after Temple showed up there were only two more Garden State Bowls before it vanished.
Yes, Temple football is the proverbial “mush.”
Of course there is not a heavy sample size from which to draw upon, either. Temple went to the very first Sugar Bowl in 1935 against Tulane as the No. 3 ranked team in the country and got upset. Needless to say it’s pretty much been downhill from that point.
It’s not unreasonable to pinpont the 1935 Sugar Bowl as the high-water point for the Temple football program. After all, since then the program has just 18 winning seasons in 74 years.
Worse, since that 1979 Garden State Bowl, Temple has had exactly two winning seasons. One of them was the 0-11 season that was actually a decent year until it was learned that star running back Paul Palmer had an agent, but that isn’t explained on the Wikipedia entry or in the grocery store reference guide. There it’s just an 0-11 mixed in with a bunch of one-win seasons.
In fact, since the 1979 bowl game, Temple has had nine zero or one-win seasons. Even Al Golden has one of them on his ledger. But at this stage of the program, those typical seasons could disappear for a little while. Better yet, if Temple shows up at the Eagle Bank Bowl at RFK in 2010, they might be a little ticked off.
A return to the Sugar Bowl on the 75th year anniversary of the first game would be more like it.