What, me worry?
That's what Alfred E. Neuman used to say in Mad Magazine.
My old high school football coach, John Quinn, noticed me reading Mad Magazine once before a practice and said:
"Mad Magazine? Gibbs, you're too smart to read that crap."
(He was the only person ever to call me Gibbs. Most called me Gibby or Mike.)
"Geez, thanks, coach," I said, "but it's funny. Err, sometimes."
I've been thinking a lot about Alfred E. Neuman the last couple of days.
What, me worry?
Well, yeah.
Why is this taking so long?
If Temple does not join the Big East, it will be Temple's call, not the Big East's.
Temple Board of Trustees Chairman Patrick J. O'Connor said as much in an interview on CSNPhilly.com posted on Tuesday.
So I'll be a lot more hissed off if this doesn't go through.
Temple would not be discussing all of this buyout stuff if the BE had not given them approval to do so. That said, if Temple backs out now because of a short-term large financial commitment, it will be the biggest athletic mistake the university ever made.
Maybe the biggest overall mistake the university ever made.
You can spend $150 million on a science lab, but that science lab won't bring the kind of return a $10 million investment on a Bowl Championship Series conference upgrade will.
The BCS train only stops once at Temple U. Station and a wise Owl better be there with the money in hand 10 minutes ahead of time.
The ACC and Big 10 run on other tracks and the Big East train made this diversion because it needed to pick up some immediate help. It will not come back next year or the year after.
No BCS conference will.
That's important because the BCS schools will eventually break off from the non-BCS schools, the MACs and CUSAs of the world, and they will be left behind playing something resembling the old Division IAA football.
And no one will care about those teams.
Temple, by joining the Big East, will always have a seat at the BCS table.
Right now, it's about finding the fare money before getting on the platform. There is one scheduled stop and it's going to come in hours and days, not weeks and years. That train is not coming back.
Heck, even if you have to borrow it, you know that train is going to take you to a job where you can pay back the benefactor tenfold.
If you miss it, you'll kick yourself until you are a dead person. A homeless dead person who no one cares about.
So, yes, I'm worried because, as a contributor on this site who goes by the name Temple Os noted so succinctly and perceptively, it should not take the Temple Board of Trustees any longer to facilitate this deal than to say two letters:
O and K.
OK?
OK.
