Temple University and the University of Memphis played a college football game in front of a truly awful crowd on Friday afternoon. The Tigers traveled north to Philadelphia to face the Owls at Lincoln Financial Field.
Typically home to the Eagles, the stadium holds a max capacity of 67,549. Official attendance for the AAC matchup was not announced, but there is a legitimate possibility that 67,000 seats were empty.
Nobody was there. Memphis took the field for warmups with less than 100 people in the stands.
Temple entered the weekend at 3-8. The team is terrible and the school was on Thanksgiving break, so the students were back home. Not like they show up to games anyway, which are played about 20 minutes from campus.
There is a much bigger emphasis on Owls basketball. Especially since Matt Rhule left in 2016.
That was abundantly clear as game time inched closer on Friday.
Things were not much better come kickoff… It was so empty that the broadcast chose to keep the camera tight while showing as little of the stadium as possible.
However, there were a few moments in which it was inevitable. Nobody was there.
Temple’s band made up the majority of support for the Owls and lower bowl was nowhere close to full. Not even on one side!
While the fan attendance bar is low for bad Group of Five programs, Temple has managed to take it to a new level. The folks in Philly are concerned with how their pro team plays on Sundays, not the Owls on Fridays.
It looked like when a small-town high school football team plays the state championship at an NFL stadium and the whole community comes out to support. It did not look like a college football game.
Maybe one day Temple will return to relevance. In the meantime, its crowd will continue to thin.