Huddling with the Owls: A peek inside as Temple’s football staff builds a new culture

When you step into K.C. Keeler’s office in Edberg-Olson Hall, you immediately notice that it’s the biggest in the entire building on Temple’s campus.

It has a flat-screen television and windows that look right out at the practice field. He even has a huge dual-screen computer at his desk, but Keeler hasn’t even turned that computer on because he barely spends time in his office.

“I’m bouncing around from room to room, from meeting to meeting,” Keeler said. “I’m that constant presence in the building. I see myself as a mentor. I like to sit in on different meetings where guys are teaching and I’ll say, ‘Hey, that was a great job.’ Or I’ll say, ‘I think when you’re presenting this, I think it’d be effective if you tried that.’ Then I’ll leave and let them to their own devices and digest what I said.”

As Keeler and his staff work to turn around a Temple football program that has won no more than three games in a season in the last four years, The Inquirer followed Keeler, general manager Clayton Barnes, and offensive coordinator Tyler Walker for a day of spring practice to see what the day-to-day operation is like under the new regime.

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Temple’s new head coach has a full slate of balancing everything that comes with a college football program. One of his many meetings occurs in what they call the “War Room.”

In the meeting, Keeler, whom Temple hired on Dec. 1, sat in with Barnes and associate general managers Khalil Amhad and Kyle Pollock and watched film of recruits who were coming to visit practice that day.

Keeler does this to refresh his memory on what they offer and what advice he can give. However, the coach isn’t just watching film during the meeting. He’s also texting the recruits who visited practice over the weekend to thank them for coming.

“It’s just how you make people feel,” said Keeler, 65, who had been the head coach at Sam Houston State, and before that at Rowan and Delaware.

“If they come to practice, we say, ‘Hey, how you doing?’ Then if we never talk to them again, Temple won’t be at the top of the list. But if they liked what they saw at practice, the position coach is making a relationship with you, then we have the coordinators and then the head coach all reaching out, all the sudden you feel a lot of love.”

After the war room meeting, Keeler met with Andy Talley in his office. The former Villanova football coach is the founder of the Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation and came to discuss the importance of giving back.

After Keeler and Talley spoke with the players, they were given a presentation about opting in to the National Marrow Donor Portal, which puts them into a system to see whether they are a match to donate blood or bone marrow to someone in need.

Keeler and Talley walked around the facility discussing football, their careers, and everything in between. After Talley left, it was lunchtime in Barnes’ office.

After lunch, Keeler prepared to speak to the recruits who came to watch practice that day, discussing his career, what he’s looking for in players, and what Temple has to offer. Then it was off to practice.

Building a culture is extremely important for Keeler, and he believes that it starts with listening to the players. Keeler sat down with every player on the roster one-on-one once he arrived at Temple.

“There’s so many little things that you do when you build a culture,” Keeler said. “The first thing I did was sit with every player individually. When they were done, they felt like they were heard. That’s because collectively, some of the things we heard, we took care of. That was really important.”

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Since those conversations, Keeler has reworked Temple’s nutrition plan to feed the players dinner after practice, and the school will be building a new locker room for the practice facility by next spring.

Walker, the team’s new offensive lead, is working alongside new defensive coordinator Brian Smith on building Temple back up on both sides of the ball.

Walker’s day-to-day operations are a little bit different from those of Keeler and Barnes. His focus is evaluating the players to see what parts of the offensive scheme he brought from Montana State will work on North Broad.

“We’re trying to figure out what’s here,” said Walker, 36, who was offensive coordinator for the Bobcats. “We’re still trying to figure that out, but we have an idea of the direction that we need to go. From an offensive standpoint, we’re installing every day, making corrections every day, and watching film every day.”

While he is evaluating that, he is also having meetings to walk through the practice script for that day. The first meeting is with the entire offensive coaching staff. As the coaches trickle into his office, with whiteboard walls on both sides, Walker turns on a YouTube playlist titled “Best George Strait songs” for them to listen to while running through the script.

Walker will stand up and draw what some of the plays look like as his staff asks questions during the run-through. If he’s not drawing on the wall, he pulls up film from Montana State last season to show what he wants.

Walker also meets with the quarterbacks later in the day before practice to go over what they will be running and working on.

Quarterback Evan Simon decided to stay this offseason and see what Keeler and Walker had to offer instead of entering the transfer portal. The decision was difficult for him.

Simon has already noticed differences in Keeler and Walker’s game plan in the short time he has worked with them. He believes this is an offense that he can thrive in.

“They’re all fantastic people,” Simon said. “They’re easy to talk to, and they seem like geniuses. I think the best way to put it is [these practices] have been the hardest thing we’ve done in our lives, which is fantastic.”

Compared with everyone else, Barnes is in a unique situation. His role as general manager is a new one in the program. While it’s one that he held with Keeler at Sam Houston State, he has more resources at his disposal at Temple.

Instead of being hands-on with everything, Barnes serves as a delegator with a focus on big-picture items.

“Now we’re actually getting a chance to build it the way it was meant to be,” Barnes said. “It’s a good chance to oversee the full picture of the program. Then we have the ability to go hire people and put them in place to do a variety of different things.”

Barnes has film sessions and meetings throughout the day, with the intended goal of strong recruitment and building a team for this season and beyond.

The wrinkles in his work are the same for any NCAA high-level college program. Name, image, and likeness deals for athletes are one aspect. Temple opted in to revenue sharing with athletes, which adds an extra element.

“It changes everything,” Barnes said. “When we got to Temple, it wasn’t something that was a huge point of emphasis before. Competitively, as a university, we haven’t been on the same level as our competition or peers. But with revenue sharing, it’s going to set some standards. Coach Keeler has told guys, ‘We’re not going to get you rich here. But we’re going to make your life more comfortable.‘”

On the high school recruiting side, Barnes is focused on getting Temple back to its roots and recruiting more in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Virginia. Barnes knows the Owls won’t be able to compete with some of the top Power Four schools, but their target is to go for recruits who would have eyed Atlantic Coast Conference programs — and wrestle some of them away.

Keeler and Barnes, with chief of staff Nico Piraino, have focused on bringing back elements from Temple’s successful years under Al Golden and Matt Rhule.

They’ve done this in many ways, one of which is bringing back the College GameDay set, a replica of the set from 2015 when ESPN’s pregame show came to Independence Mall for the Owls’ game against Notre Dame. It now sits at the entrance of the facility.

Keeler, Barnes, and Piraino have also brought back the “10th and Diamond” guys, which is what the team used to call its players. In addition, the staff decided to run highlight reels of Temple’s best moments on all the televisions throughout the facility.

“There was greatness here at one time,” Keeler said. “We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. Why don’t we do what those guys [who] had greatness here did? They really focused on the footprint, and they focused on those kids that would fit well with Temple.”

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