Disappearing act?

It's been more than 13 months since Fran Dunphy was named Temple's acting athletic director after Pat Kraft left for Boston College but it seems like things are finally kicking off in the search for Kraft's permanent replacement. OwlScoop.com can confirm, as first reported by CollegeAD.com, that Temple has selected Korn Ferry as the search firm to find the next AD. This bucks the trend of using TurnKey, which Kraft frequently used to find new head coaches.

Beyond what CollegeAD has reported, OwlScoop.com can also report that Korn Ferry has started the process and will conduct interviews with current Temple employees this week. The purpose of these internal interviews is less about finding an internal candidate and more about getting a better idea of the type of candidate that would work at Temple.

Furthermore, a panel has been convened by the Board of Trustees to solicit input from both external and internal stakeholders in regards to their interactions with the athletic department and which traits they see as important for the next AD. This panel was aided by Kenneth Shopshire, who previously served as the Director of the Wharton Sports Business Initiative at Penn and is currently a Professor of Global Sport at Arizona State University.

While a new hire is not imminent, it does seem like the process is finally in motion.

We are destroyed by F‘in Rutgers , lose our QB and our league is falling apart at the seams . We weren’t ready for the ” $$$ to players “, have a coach way over his head at this level and recruiting that is at the bottom third in the league . Oh I forgot we can’t build our own stadium and we haven‘t had a working Athletic director for a long time .

Wonderful times to be an Owl football fan !!!!

Kansas to big ten announcement in two week if not sooner.

Can anyone confirm that we are actually on BTN this afternoon? I am out of state, and my guide is saying Fordham v Nebraska for noon.....

And cut the rest of this crew loose. Now!

Any update

Go to owlsports. Where is the football preview? It’s buried on the site. It’s not even one of the 5-6 rotating news stories on main page. ITS GAMEDAY!!!!

Who is running this freaking place?

In case you missed it, here are links to @Dante Collinelli's preview and the latest edition of The Scoop, our OwlScoop.com podcast.

The Btn game I'm getting is Nebraska. I'm going to have to listen online.

I really do not know what to expect from our Owls this season. This game should give us an idea. I hope I am wrong.

31 - 17 Rutgers

Harry Mayes and Barrett Brooks invited me to join their Jakib Media YouTube show, The Middle. We talked about the Temple-Rutgers game, and Barrett, a former Eagles offensive lineman and NFL veteran, talked about his connection to Preston Brown and the Woodrow Wilson High School program.

You can check it out here.

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@John Di Carlo @Kyle Gauss @NorthBroad does this game get played?

Temple running backs coach Gabe Infante added the title of Recruiting Coordinator on Tuesday, the university announced. Temple also announced the promotion of Zhanee Anderson to Director of Recruiting Content and the hiring of Averie Oetjen to the role of Director of Recruiting Operations.

Does Temple have anything in the works like these?

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. . . I smell a Vanderbilt-level @ss-whooping! Look at the similarities: A Thursday night season opener on the road. An opponent that historically hasn't done jack s#it in football, but has an arrogant-@ss delusional fan base that thinks we're supposed to be intimidated by their conference logo. We're coming off a substandard season the year before, so the "pundits" peg us as a big underdog. And now to top it off . . . torrential rains preceding the game. I'd say the stars are aligning perfectly.

We didn't know when we recorded last night that the game would ultimately be postponed until Saturday, but we have you covered nonetheless with a preview of Temple's season opener at Rutgers on this week's episode of The Scoop.

The Fanatic's Pat Egan interviewed me this morning for a preview of Temple's season opener. You can listen to it here.

Hey guys! Rich Schnyderite here, publisher of The Knight Report aka the Rutgers dedicated site on Rivals. Just wanted to drop by and post our video from Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano's press conference earlier this week.

There isn't a ton of Temple questions / answers, but Schiano does comment a lot about how he knows Mathis pretty well from his OSU days and more.

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The season opener is finally here and we'll have you covered on this week's episode of The Scoop, OwlScoop.com's podcast.

If you have mailbag questions, please drop them in here and we'll answer them on the show. We'll take questions up until 3:30 p.m. tomorrow and look forward to answering them!

Ok, so I'll start it off.....

Isaiah Wright was released by the WFT.

Who else?

Just talked to Sammis Reyes and his Palm Beach State coach, Martin McCann, this afternoon. I'll have our story up within the next day, but I just wanted to pass along a few details and my general impressions. He's got a really interesting story, and I think he's an intriguing possibility for Temple at this point.

I'll have the exact quote in my story, but Reyes said he likes Temple a lot and is looking forward to his visit, and I get the general impression that if his visit goes well and the staff feels like it's a fit, he could commit. Reyes said he's hoping Temple is his last visit. He just returned from his official visit to Tulane.

Reyes' story is one I'm sure some of you have been able to piece together just by Googling him. And the connections that could lead him to Temple are kind of uncanny.

Reyes left Chile when he was 14 to pursue his dream of playing basketball in the states. Both of his parents - Rosanna Martel and Daniel Reyes - played in Chile, and Reyes last saw them about a month ago while playing and practicing with the Chilean national team in Brazil. He qualified late out of high school, mainly due to the normal NCAA Clearinghouse stuff that hits international students. He ended up at Hawaii, the coach who recruited him got fired, then he hurt his toe and his hand and he returned to Florida with the hope of getting re-recruited. Then while working out and playing outside last January, he suffered a full knee tear - ACL, MCL and meniscus - and began rehabbing. Along the way, he was looking for an additional trainer (he now works out 2-3 times a day), was scrolling through Instagram and found former Temple wideout C.J. Hammond and began training with him in Florida. Hammond has his own gym or facility in Florida now.

Reyes averaged 7.6 points and 5.9 rebounds per game this past season for a pretty good JUCO team that's sending, I believe, five or six kids on to Division I programs next year. He started playing without a knee brace in January and continued to gain his strength back from there. Reyes said he battled injuries the entire season. Had tendinitis in both knees at one point and shin splints on and off.

"I didn't do a preseason before the season started," Reyes said. "I started playing six months after surgery and I kind of just jumped into the season. The beginning was extremely rough. After every game, I would sit in the cold tub to try to manage the pain in my knees."

So Temple got involved about two weeks ago because Reyes moved up to Virginia with his girlfriend, Nicole. While working out there, he got connected to Paul Easton, who coached Obi Enechionyia at Saint James before resigning. He now trains players down in Virginia and tipped off Dwayne Killings to Reyes. Killings reached out and now Reyes is coming to Temple to visit June 1.

After talking to Reyes, his coach and watching what's available of him online, I can see why they're intrigued and why they might like him. It looks like he has his explosiveness back, and he takes pride in being a good passer and facilitator in addition to getting out on the break. He talked a lot about defense, toughness, refusing to be outworked, working out 2-3 times a day. With Jaylen Bond graduating and moving on to the professional ranks - be it an NBA tryout (he's in Sacramento today) - or overseas, Temple needs that. He was qualified out of high school and has better than a 3.0 GPA now and sounds like a pretty smart kid who really understands the game.

And if Enechionyia's former coach is endorsing him, maybe he's not such a bad addition at this stage of the game. We'll see how things go, but it sounds like they're in pretty good position to land him, and he sounds like he could potentially be more than just last-minute depth.

Just curious what the travel logistics are for the team if anyone has any idea. Are they heading up today and staying overnight as they would if they were heading to Florida or Texas for a game? Or travelling up tomorrow since it's a relatively short bus trip? I'm assuming weather may play into the travel plans.

They are not going to expand. Could be bad news for the aac. The big 12 will most likely take Cincinnati ucf memphis and boise st. May houston but they had a problem with them before.

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Immediate takeaways:

Justin Lynch listed as the No. 2 QB.
Trey Blair listed as the No. 2 RB.
Kentucky transfer Jerquavion Mahone listed as the starting NT.
De'von Fox as the starting KOR.