We have met the enemy and he is us

By Mike Gibson
One of my pet peeves is the negative hysterics of too many Temple fans.
For short, I will call the syndrome the Negative H Disease.
"Why would HE want to come here to coach? Why would HE want to come here to play?"
Perhaps our own worst enemy is our negative fans who remind me a lot of Don Casey.
When I was sports editor of the Temple News, I wrote a column asking why Temple never got the player of the year in either the Philadelphia Public or Catholic Leagues.
Don Casey called me into his office.
"Who's going to be the player of the year in Catholic League this year?" he asked me.
"Dallas Comegys of Roman," I said.
"Why in hell would Dallas Comegys want to come here?" Casey said.
"Did you ask him?" I said.
"No, it's just a waste of my time."
I sprinted back to the Temple News to write a column and included those quotes.
At the end of the column, I called for the firing of Don Casey and I asked my own question:
"Why not hire a guy with Philadelphia ties, who is respected in Philadelphia, who will go after the great Public and Catholic League players? Why not hire John Chaney?"
That was the end of my column.
Peter J. Liacouras saw me the next day and said it was a great column.
A few months later, John Chaney was the head coach at Temple University.
The next two Public League players of the year, Nate Blackwell (Southern) and Howie Evans (West Philadelphia) committed to Temple University.
We can get a great coach for football, too.
You can hyphenate that or put an exclamation point on it.
It's as true now for football as it was for basketball then.