New Mexico Bowl: The Fifth Quarter

Steve Addazio either tells very funny jokes or heard one here.



Chuck Heater seems to be enjoying his time at Temple.

Sometimes during all of this talk about recruiting rankings, coaching changes, conference shifting and declaring early, we forget one thing.
Football is a game and it is supposed to be fun.
Thank you, Temple football team, for reminding us of that most important fact on Saturday afternoon.
I have to laugh when, after a big win, some reporter asks a head coach "what's next?" when the correct response would be, hey, how about enjoying this win a little bit first?
That's what I took away from Saturday.
Temple's 37-15 win over Wyoming was a tribute to the coaching staff and the players for all the hard work they put in pretty much over the last 365 days.
It was fun watching it unfurl for three hours on the field.
It was even more fun watching the fifth quarter, the celebration afterward.
Heck, the game was not in doubt so that quarter began a little early, with Rod Streater dunking head coach Steve Addazio with a gatoraid cooler filled with water.
"He's the realist coach there is, but I had to get him, though," Streater said.
Then came a dunking for another real good coach and overall great person, defensive coordinator Chuck Heater.


Morkeith Brown makes sure too many hands don't spoil the pot.

 Even assistant coach Matt Rhule got a water bottle full of cold shock. It wasn't a whole cooler, but Rhule isn't even a whole coordinator.
Addazio turned to Rhule and laughed.
This was all while the game was going on, but had been decided.
Afterward, it was even better.
Addazio said something only he and the team could hear and they roared laughing. I will use the next two weeks to find out what that was and, if it's clean (and I think it was), I will pass it along here.
There was 26-year-old Iraq war vet Morkeith Brown lifting the New Mexico Bowl Trophy, a Native American Clay Pot. Like the former tight end he was, the defensive end did not drop it.

Saturday's TV ratings in Philly market
Dallas/Tampa on NFL Net - 5.5 RTG 10 Share 8pm to 11pm
Temple/Wyoming on ESPN - 3.3 RTF 8 share 2pm - 530pm.
Flyers Hockey on Sportsnet - 1.8 RTG 5 share - 1pm to 330pm

Thank God.
It would have probably had to make the five-hour flight home in pieces.
There was no more appropriate guy to hoist the bowl trophy.
Brown was a leader from the day he walked into the Edberg-Olsen Football Complex and he was a leader until the day he walked off the field at the last time.
He will be missed, but the memories he and his teammates created will remain.
What's next is a question for another day and you can bet this staff is working on the answers right now.
I, for one, am not done basking in the glow of the fifth quarter.