The Steve Addazio Era (or Error)

If Steve Addazio puts a 55-3 (or even 35-14) beatdown on Villanova, he becomes my new favorite head coach in a hurry.

This has never been a site that says everything we do is just peachy and let's get behind the coach because he's our guy, like a lot of college football blogs.

I've told it like it was since Day One five years ago.
Or at least the way I saw it was.
Five years ago, I thought Al Golden's hiring was a good thing for the program and I wrote about it here.
I never said Al was perfect, but I did predict he would turn things around at Temple.
I trusted him with my team.
That was a bold prediction at the time when many people said this was an impossible job, but I went ahead and did it because everything I had read and heard about Al Golden until that point was positive. I have read a lot of about Steve Addazio in the last three days and I would say about 99 percent of it has been negative and this piece by a great writer named Dave Jones is just a small sample.
That doesn't mean Al Golden was immune from criticism in this forum along the way.
I've criticized Al Golden a few times (the Navy fumble comes to mind).
I've criticized Al Golden's grasp of quarterback recruiting.
Overall, though, I maintained that Al was the right guy to lead the only team I really go crazy over.
As much as I'd like to say the same thing about Steve Addazio,  I can't because it comes with all of the red flags associated with bad Temple football hirings in the past.
With the talent in place to win now, this was a time Temple should have hired a head coach and not take a chance with an assistant coach. The best predictor of future success is past success and there is really no way to predict how Addazio will do as a head coach because his record as such is 0-0.
That would not have been the case if Temple went after a proven winning head coach, like former USF head coach Jim Leavitt (to use just one example) who was 94-37 in his prior job.
I don't have children, so Temple football is like a child to me.
Coaches come and go, players come and go, players' parents come and go, but Temple football and me and fans like me are always here _ and I'll always love it because it's my kid.
If you see your kid playing on the train tracks and there's a locomotive coming, you don't say, "Geez, I hope everything turns out OK for my kid."
You yell for the kid to get off the tracks if you can't get there and carry him/her off yourself.
I'm in yelling mode today.
Well, there's a locomotive coming.

Coaches come and go, players come and go, players' parents come and go, but Temple football and me and fans like me are always here

It might not be the Jerry Berndt Express or the Ron Dickerson Express or the Bobby Wallace Express, but it looks like it's got the same kind bad brakes (or breaks) ahead.
Quite frankly, I'm stunned and appalled with this hiring.
I will go on record right here and now as saying I hope Steve Addazio takes Temple to the MAC championship in 2011 and wins it.
When you have 14 starters returning from a team that won eight games, have an improved quarterback situation ahead and a guy with Heisman Trophy talent (if not durability) running the ball, then that's really the only standard he should be judged on right now.
Fall short of that and he's an abject failure.
I hope I have to write a post eating crow after a bowl win in 12 months.
I don't think I will, though.
I will also go on record right here and now and say this hiring is a step backward.
I've researched everything I could about Steve Addazio over the last few hours and I did not find one (1) positive news or feature story about Steve Addazio, although I found 22 negative ones.
That's telling.
The fans who know Steve Addazio and are more familiar with his play-calling than I am are pretty anti-Steve.
That's alarming.

I will go on record right here and now as saying I hope Steve Addazio takes Temple to the MAC championship in 2011 and wins it

There's a great blog that covers the Ball State football program called Over the Pylon. A few weeks ago, the name Addazio was connected with the Ball State job.
This post thanks God that he didn't get it.
When Ball State fans are happy the coach you hired didn't get their job, that tells you all you need to know.
Five years ago I was excited to write about Al Golden.
Forgive me if I'm a little underwhelmed writing about Steve Addazio now.
If he starts bringing Gator recruits with him up north, like Al Golden stole an Owl recruit last week, I might change my mind.
It will take something that dramatic in the short term to get my attention.
He's married to my kid right now and, as Robert DeNiro says to Ben Stiller in Little Fockers:
I'm watching you.