Temple

The best version of this program lived between 2015 and 2016, when Matt Rhule built back-to-back ten-win seasons, knocked off Penn State for the first time since 1941, and won the AAC championship. That version of Temple was a live argument: a North Philadelphia commuter school in an NFL stadium, playing physical football with overlooked players and producing a winning program in a city that belonged to the Eagles and the Phillies. Then Rhule left for Baylor, and the program bled out — two- and three-win seasons that erased almost everything he built.

K.C. Keeler's pitch is the clearest possible counter-argument: a 275-game career winner, a coach who built Sam Houston into an FCS power and won at the FBS level, a man who announced when he took the Temple job that he had no interest in being realistic. The 5-7 first season is a platform, not a ceiling, and his roster held together — no starters lost through the portal, a Penn State QB transfer in Jaxon Smolik added to the room. That retention alone is a data point; programs in the middle of the American don't usually hold their full roster through a losing year.

The 2026 question is how fast the architecture becomes results. The American Athletic is a league where a healthy roster and a competent staff can build to eight or nine wins in year two. Temple has done it before. The question is whether Keeler's version of 'Temple Made' can get there before the patience of a fanbase that remembers the Rhule years runs out.