Temple-Eastern Michigan: No Such Thing as a Trap Game for Owls Football

Message boards are a beautiful thing.

You can catch the pulse of a sports fan, or a sports community, by sitting down with a cup of coffee and paging down a list of threads.

Occasionally something will catch your eye, so you will click on it.

So it was with me on the day after Temple's biggest football victory in years, a 37-13 win over defending MAC champion Buffalo.

The thread said something about Temple's game at Eastern Michigan this Saturday being a "trap game."

The coffee spit out of my lips and all over the screen.

After I got the Windex out to clean everything off, I had to laugh.

"Trap game?" I thought, with all of the incredulity Jim Mora Sr. once voiced when someone asked him about playoffs.

It's still a classic response that lives on in a Coors Light commercial.

"Playoffs? Playoffs? Playoffs?" Mora said in three different tones of voice. "We'd be lucky to win a game."

"Trap game?" I thought.

Trap game? This is Temple, a team dying for every shred of respect it can get. Every time Temple steps onto the field, it should treat it like a crusade, not a game.

I still think that.

I always thought the great thing about college football, at least on the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level, was that there were only 12 games, 13 if you are lucky.

Call it the lucky 13th in this case.

Trap games and letdowns should be for some other sport.

Here we are in college football, where you work 365 days a year, lift weights, run, and practice to play in 12 regular season games a year.

You practice and game plan for six days a week just to play that game the seventh.

Letdowns and trap games should not be part of the lexicon. Playing like a mad dog frothing at the mouth should be the norm, not the exception, no matter who is lining up on the other side of the ball.

Especially if you are Temple, a school that the day before it faced Buffalo was ranked in ESPN's Bottom 10.

Those days are supposedly over now. They were supposed to be over prior to the season.

That's why it bodes the Owls well if they pretend they are not headed to the Little House to play Eastern Michigan but instead headed to the Big House down the road to play the real Michigan.

It's that important to Temple and its fanbase to keep that momentum going this week and beat an opponent it is favored to beat.

There's a great photo accompanying this story of Temple's fans watching Steve Manieri catch a pass in traffic against Buffalo, courtesy of Ryan Porter.

It reminds folks how hard it is to win in big-time college football and how hard it is to sustain the winning. That's why the focus should be on Eastern Michigan now.

The Buffalo win was just one game, one of many the Owls have to win from here on out to accomplish their goals.

If they have to pretend they are playing the Wolverines, so be it.

Trap game?

Ha.