One was gray with cherry lettering that said: Temple Football.
I saw Matt Rhule jogging wearing that in the late spring and put in the back of my mind that I had to have one of those shirts.
Another cool shirt was cherry with white lettering that also said Temple football.
Couldn't buy either one, though.
I removed the last $20 bill I had in my wallet and was about to buy a couple until I was informed that they only had them in medium and small.Tons and tons of them in medium and small and none in large or extra large.
What were they thinking?
The guy digging into the boxes looking for a shirt was wearing a name tag that indicated he was Gavin White Jr. who, like his dad and grandfather, seems to be a very nice guy.
It's probably not his fault there were no large sizes, but you still have to wonder what went into the thought process when they loaded up the shirts on the Temple truck for the trip to McFadden's.
"This is going to be all kids, right?" I could see the guy loading the boxes asking.
In reality, these crowds are always mostly older alumni (who, admittedly have put on a few pounds) and they probably should have left all the smalls and mediums at home.
Until then I wasn't too concerned about some of the other news I heard about five minutes earlier that tickets to the inaugural Mayor's Cup game with Villanova with one month to go are selling like hot cakes.
Hot cakes in the middle of the afternoon, that is.
The ticket folks at Temple seemed concerned but, quite frankly, I'm more concerned about whether we're ready for a big walk-up crowd. We clearly were caught with our pants down in 2003, when up to 10,000 people went home after seeing long ticket lines at too few open booths.
From the standpoint of the game itself, it is the middle of the afternoon.
People aren't thinking about the game right now.
It's not in the news. There's no feature stories on the players involved in the papers.
My conventional wisdom is that if Temple can draw 21,000 for a Saturday afternoon Homecoming game in 2007 against Northern Illinois, it should put at least 30K in the seats for an attractive local opponent like Villanova on a coveted Thursday night date.
Nobody's really thinking about it, except hardcore fans from both teams.Wait until a couple of days before, when the Daily News and Inquirer write stories about it. Comcast is sure to run an obligatory story in its half-hour show after 27 minutes of covering its 30th straight Eagles' practice.
Until then people won't think about it.
My conventional wisdom is that if Temple can draw 21,000 for a Saturday afternoon Homecoming game in 2007 against Northern Illinois, it should put at least 30K in the seats for an attractive local opponent like Villanova on a coveted Thursday night date.
Fans now are thinking more about how to spend the last few weeks of summer.
Maybe one way to boost ticket sales for the Villanova game is to offer those cool Temple T-Shirts for free to fans who buy five or more ducats.
Maybe a large T-shirt to fans who purchase 10 or more.
"Would you like those tickets Supersized, sir?"
Then maybe the tickets would sell like hotcakes on a Sunday morning after church.
Whatever, I'm convinced this game is going to have a big walk-up crowd.
I just hope that the Temple staff is better prepared for the walk-up than they were for the shirt sale.
What if only one ticket window is open and 10,000 people are waiting in line Sept. 3? Just walk right by them with your ducats in hand if you click here:
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