Undefeated Temple embraces the moment of facing football royalty Notre Dame

Oct. 30, 2015 5 PM PT

Notre Dame at Temple, a game to be played in Philadelphia of all the perfect places, offers a “tale of the tape” almost more ridiculous than the one fed to us in “Rocky.”

Notre Dame is college football royalty, one the greatest programs in history. Temple has been one of the worst.

Notre Dame has won 11 national titles, produced seven Heisman Trophy winners and had 12 undefeated seasons. Temple has eight seasons in which it did not record a victory, the last in 2005. The 1909 Temple team did not score a point.

Notre Dame time and again has been offered the chance to join a conference but has staunchly opted to maintain its football independence. A decade ago, Temple was so bad it was kicked out of the Big East.

Saturday night’s game marks the 212th time a ranked Notre Dame team has played against a ranked opponent. It’s the first ranked-vs-ranked matchup for Temple.

Notre Dame is 15-0 in Halloween games. Temple is 1-45 against teams in the top 10.

So which team is undefeated this season? Temple, at 7-0. Notre Dame is 6-1.

“It truly makes things fun,” Notre Dame quarterback DeShone Kizer said this week. “This is the reason we come to Notre Dame. To play in big games like this. You look at the schedule before the season this year and you don’t necessarily circle Temple.”

Temple, after years of foundering, has finally found its place. After getting booted from the Big East, it languished for a while as an independent until finally stumbling into the newly formed American Athletic Conference.

It also stumbled into a coach, Matt Rhule, who has brought discipline, defense and focus to a program that had little. Temple’s defensive coordinator is Phil Snow, who led Arizona State, with linebacker Pat Tillman, to a few feet from the national title in 1996.

Rhule, 40, has emerged as the kind of coaching prospect USC might consider. He played at Penn State and has NFL experience, most recently coaching the offensive line for the New York Giants in 2012.

He is a coach who has big-city experience and stage presence.

This week, in advance of the biggest game in Temple history, Rhule did not recede into a paranoia shell. “Embrace the moment,” he said. “We don’t pretend it’s not here.”

Rhule, a former Temple assistant, was named head coach in December of 2012 after Steve Addazio left to coach Boston College. Rhule was Temple’s coach for its only other meeting against Notre Dame, a 28-6 loss at South Bend in 2013.

Notre Dame, despite having a loss this year, is still the higher ranked team entering Saturday’s game. The Irish are also double-digit favorites.

But Temple is the story.

A win over Notre Dame would have the Owls flirting with top-10 status, which would have seemed unfathomable only weeks ago. Temple was ranked this year in the Associated Press media poll for the first time since 1979. The Owls have only been ranked 10 weeks since the AP poll began in 1936.

Notre Dame has been ranked 760 weeks.

Rhule is thrilled Temple has earned enough respect to warrant a prime-time game — 5 p.m. PDT — against the most hallowed program in the sport.

“If people across the country can see a three-hour commercial for our university, then I think it’s outstanding,” Rhule said.

Everyone knows the fight song for the other school: “Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame.”

Saturday night, the nation might be singing a different Temple tune: “Fight, fight for the Cherry and the White.”

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