Posted on 11/18/2012 8:00:21 AM PST by curth
Temple running back Montel Harris left Boston College as one of the ACC career leaders in rushing, without a chance to chase the top spot in his final year of eligibility. But Harris has etched his name in Temple history forever, rushing for a school-record 351 yards and seven touchdowns in the Owls' 63-32 win at Army on Saturday.
Harris has broken the 100-yard mark four times this season, with his previous high being a 30-carry, 142-yard performance against Connecticut in an overtime win. On Saturday, Steve Addazio and the coaching staff let Harris loose for a career day that nearly shattered the NCAA single-game rushing record (406 yards) set by former TCU running back LaDainian Tomlinson against UTEP in 1999.
Harris' big day also contributed to some new school records for team performance. Temple has not scored 63 points in a game since a 1973 contest against Holy Cross, and the 534 team rushing yards break the previous high -- 477, set in 1977 against Drake.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbssports.com ...
Congrats to Montel. It was a great performance to watch and it brought some fun to an otherwise disappointing season for the Owls.
It’s bad enough that the cadets on dfense will have to spend the next three years of their life jumping whenever someone says to “Hey LT!”, now they’ll also cringe in case it’s followed up with “how does it feel to have someone from Temple run for over three hundred yards on you?”
And his academic performance? Does he belong in college? Perhaps the land used by the athletic department could be more profitably used by a casino and a brothel. Heck, there is a market for crack and speed in that neighborhood — Temple could make a mint selling drugs.
Temple? Isn’t that where Bill Cosby played volleyball or basketball?
He wasn't really college material, though, just a dumb jock...
It was wrong to admit him to the university and he's been a discredit to his school and to the game ever since. /s
(See how easy it is?)
BTW, no further comment in the article regarding the seven rushing touchdowns in a game for a player. My intuitive guess is that it might at least tie the all-time major college record, but maybe not. What is the record and who holds it?
I think Air Force could take ‘em. :)
I think it’s safe to say that Navy will keep the streak alive this year.
The service academies are underperforming other division 1 football teams because of two things: service requirements after college (though Navy had figured some ways around those issues) and the size differential. It is very difficult to weigh 300 pounds and meet the body fat standards of the military. There are very few college linemen, much less pro-caliber ones, that won’t bust tape for the military. As the game is currently played, you need strong O and D lines to be competitive, meaning some big heavy fat men are assets.
If the service academies were serious about demonstrating their value as incubators of tactical prowess and strategic innovation, they’d come up with offensive and defensive formations to offset or negate the size advantages of other teams.
How’s Army’s run defense?
I agree with you that service requirements after graduation hurt the chances of the academies recruiting players who thank of themselves as future professionals. Obviously, if a kid's goal is to play pro football (or basketball or baseball or hockey or any other pro sport where there is the possibility of earning big bucks), he wouldn't likely be interested in delaying the start of his pro sports career until four years after graduation.
I don't think that the body size requirements for the service academies are as much a factor as they once were, although that probably hurts the Air Force more than Army or Navy, because the military aircraft probably can't accommodate the height and weight of the oversized football linemen or the height of many basketball prospects.
Another factor is that academic standards are not eased for the athletes at the academies compared to other Division IA schools. There are no easy majors, and they all essentially are engineering students academically.
Yet West Point seems to have been well behind Navy and even further behind Air Force in football especially for decades. The latter two in general have been been far more more respectable and generally play tougher opponents. Kind of hard to believe that Army has lost something like ten in a row to Navy, when both have comparable problems in recruiting and academic standards.
He’s a grad student, smart ass.
Temple upgraded its football program to Division IA (now Div. I (BCS)) maybe twenty years ago (just a guess), long after Cosby left. Obviously, they're better now in absolute terms than they were back then, but I don't ever recall them winning a conference championship nor going to anything more than a very occasional minor bowl game.
“They beat us 900 to nothing...in their street clothes.”
Thank you.
Just scanned West Point’s and Temple’s rosters. There was one 290 lb and one 280 lb guy on West point’s team, everyone else was smaller. Temple had more than a dozen men over 300, probably at least another dozen over 275. If you are playing a base option or veer offense with those stats facing you, you are guaranteed to lose three of every four games at best.
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