Massaging his Temple
Al Golden has had to be one part strategist, one part motivator for his rising Owls this season.
But when they've stepped up their competition - such as in their 31-6 loss to Penn State in Week 2 - Golden has also had to massage some egos.
Now as Temple prepares for UCLA, which faced seven bowl teams and six top-25 squads, he is reminding his players about the tough task ahead.
"For us, it's going to be about feeling confident and competing every snap," Golden said. "When we've stepped up into this level, we never really felt like we were comfortable. When we stepped up our level of play to a BCS program with this kind of tradition ... for us, it's going to be, 'Hey, make sure you feel confident, like you belong. Make sure you're ready for this from the get-go.' When you play teams like this, if you're not ready from the get-go, it can be over by the half. When you play in this game, you have to feel like you belong."
Jon, please get your facts straight, UCLA has played six bowl teams and all 6 were top 25 squads: SUC, Oregon, Oregon St., Arizona, Standford, and Cal.
Actually, only SC, Arizona and Oregon were ranked when UCLA played them. Those 3 along with Stanford and OSU are ranked now. Just because Cal was ranked at some point doesn't mean that they are considered a "ranked team" on UCLA's schedule. If that was true then UW would also be considered ranked, as they were ranked #24 one week.
SUC is not ranked in any of the polls currently.
They're #24 in the BCS
Actually, we played seven bowl teams this season: Oregon, Oregon State, Cal, Stanford, USC, Arizona, Tennessee.
Post #1, think before you speak next time you want to crucify jon. it appears you needed to do some fact checking of your own