Not this time.
Now the inaugural Sugar Bowl (20-14 loss to Tulane in 1935) and the 1979 Garden State Bowl (28-17 win over California) has company on Temple's postseason lineage.
The Owls will play in the first EagleBank Bowl on Dec. 29 at RFK Stadium in Washington. Their opponent will be Army (5-6) if the Black Knights can beat Navy (8-4) this Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field, the Owls' home field. Army has lost seven straight to Navy, its longest streak in the series. Army hasn't been to a bowl since 1996. And the Knights lost to Temple in South Philly on Oct. 17 by 14, a game that was tied midway through the fourth quarter before the Owls stopped Army on a fourth-and-1 deep in Army territory.
If the Cadets can't get it done, Temple will face UCLA (6-6), which had won three in a row for second-year coach Rick Neuheisel before losing its regular-season finale on Nov. 28 to Southern Cal, 28-7. The Bruins have never played Temple. In fact, they haven't played in the Eastern time zone since a trip to Ohio State (42-20 loss) in 1999. They haven't played a team, home or away, from the Northeast since flying to Pittsburgh in 1972 (38-28 win).
"I think it's the best place for us to go this year, I really believe that," said fourth-year coach Al Golden, who watched with his players and fans in the lobby of the Liacouras Center as the pairings were officially announced on ESPN. "We have to learn how to do this. When you can go close to home, it eliminates a lot of excuses. Either way, it's great. We have a national opponent.
"It just means we're checking off [more] boxes. I remember when we had a one-game winning steak [in 2006], and it was the longest in 2 years. Now here we are. The next step is to become a program, and you do this every year. That's our goal.
