‘No interest’ in average

Ten minutes before K.C. Keeler sat down to detail his plan to change the tune of Temple’s football program, he went to observe the weight room, down two flights of stairs from his office inside Edberg-Olson Hall.

It was three weeks before the start of spring practice. Players rotated between sets as winter workouts continued for Keeler’s new program. He greeted each player and got a report of the day’s lifts from Kevin Schadt, the strength and conditioning coach who followed Keeler from Sam Houston State.

This has been Keeler’s new normal since he was introduced Dec. 3 as the program’s 18th football coach. He wakes up at 4:30 a.m. and goes to sleep at midnight most days, Keeler said. He left behind his home along a lake seven miles from the Sam Houston State campus in Huntsville, Texas. He fished almost every day. He built a winning program, largely without the “phenomenal” resources he said he has at Temple.

Keeler, 65, has won everywhere he has coached.

In his first job as a head coach, at Rowan from 1993 to 2001, he won 80% of his games and made seven Division III semifinal appearances — but went 0-5 in the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl, the D-III title game.

At Delaware, he followed the legendary Tubby Raymond, for whom he played linebacker from 1978 to 1980 and won a Division II title in 1979. Keeler led Delaware to a Division I-AA national title in 2003, his second year as the program’s head coach. (Division I-AA was renamed FCS in 2006.)

He earned what he later described as a “lifetime contract” after taking over as head coach at Sam Houston State and bringing the program its first FCS championship during the 2020 season (which was moved to the spring of 2021 because of the pandemic). Keeler also led the university to a successful transition into the FBS and finished with a 97-39 record in 11 seasons.

“Sustained success” and “program builder” are the buzzwords most associated with Keeler’s 31-year coaching career that includes 271 wins, second among active college coaches. As he prepared for a run with Temple, in what he said will be his final coaching stop, he called another coach who previously took over a Temple program seeking direction and consistency.

“I was talking to Al Golden a couple days ago, and I said, ‘I’m stealing from you and Matt [Rhule],’” Keeler said in February from the couch across from his desk, which overlooked a snow-covered practice field.

“There [have] been periods of Temple football that have been just at a really high level, and I know we can get that back again. I always say to everybody, ‘There’s no reason we can’t be a Memphis. There’s no reason we can’t be a Tulane,’ and that’s where we’re trying to take this. I was very blunt with the players when I took over — it’s not OK to be just OK. I have no interest in being average. I came here with the vision that we’re going to win championships.

“It’s the Power Four [conferences], and then the AAC is right next in line. And a lot of times, if you win this conference, you’re in the big tournament. And that’s the mindset that we need to have here. We’re not shooting small. We’re shooting big. ... I’ve always coached that way because I want these players to understand that we’re not settling.”

When Golden took over at Temple in 2006, the Owls had endured 15 consecutive losing seasons. While Temple’s current drought hasn’t been quite as severe, it has been six seasons since the Owls were bowl-eligible. Since 2020, Temple is 13-42 and has finished with three wins or fewer each season.

Keeler is acutely aware of the program’s lack of success and knows “you have to win.” He added that he “wouldn’t have taken this job if I didn’t think we could have a lot of success.”

One former quarterback who played under Keeler and has enjoyed a long NFL career echoed that sentiment.

“One of his strengths is getting people excited about being [there], so, in this case, about being at Temple,” said Joe Flacco, a quarterback at Delaware under Keeler and a 17-year NFL veteran. “I think he’ll do a great job of talking Temple up and making it feel like a big-time program to people.

“I think that he immerses himself in a situation and truly believes that wherever he goes, and he’s able to convey that well to all his recruits.”

Keeler studied Temple’s success under Golden, Rhule, Steve Addazio, and Geoff Collins. There was one constant: Their rosters were “heavy Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Washington, D.C., Connecticut [recruits].”

Recruiting those states and being a player in Ohio, New York, and even Southern states like Florida and Georgia — to a much smaller degree — remains among his priorities. Keeler’s confidence in his approach can be explained by how he focuses his recruiting efforts, which began with the returning players. To forge early connections, he met one-on-one with each player who hadn’t entered the transfer portal.

My belief is, you can’t live in the transfer portal 100%. Then you have a locker room of ...‘mercenaries.’

“My belief in recruiting, [is that] it starts with you recruiting your players first,” Keeler said. “So we were really strong in trying to recruit the locker room, those guys that we want to stay, and boy, we recruit those kids hard. Then it’s the high school kids because that’s the foundation, that’s your fabric. Those are the guys who are here for four years, hopefully, or five years, and then it’s your transfer portal guys.

“My belief is, you can’t live in the transfer portal 100%. Then you have a locker room that I call them all mercenaries. Guys were just here for a year or two, and there’s no fabric, there’s just no continuity.”

Among the first things Keeler established among the returning players were leadership and advisory board councils. A player from each position group is represented on the advisory board and they’re tasked with approaching Keeler with the most pressing issues from the players. Among the first things brought up was the lack of nutritional options. Keeler said he and his staff quickly improved the food options to show players that “they have a say” in some of the program’s decision-making.

When discussing what team culture looks like to him, Keeler pointed to a 22-point first-quarter deficit Sam Houston State faced last September against rival Texas State. It was first time in 12 years that the teams had met and their first meeting in the FBS. His Bearkats battled back and won on a field goal that capped a six-minute drive.

“A lot of [team-building] is just subtly developing these relationships,” said Keeler, who now encourages his coaches to eat off-campus with the players in their position group. “As you suddenly develop these relationships, all of a sudden, it’s a strong unit, and you can survive those blows where you’re down 22 points; you can survive those blows where you need to drive the ball down and win a national championship.

“That’s kind of what I specialize in. It’s putting together a team and developing a culture. I know every place I’ve been, there has been a lot of ‘I love yous.’ There’s a lot of hugs. That’s how I coach.”

When he led the Bearkats to the 2020 title, they had to beat teams in the FCS playoffs that they often struggled against: North Dakota State, James Madison, and South Dakota State, all within a 15-day stretch.

Tristin McCollum, now a reserve safety for the Eagles, was on that title team in 2020 with his twin brother, Zyon, who’s now with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Tristin McCollum, who played at Sam Houston State from 2017 to 2021, said Keeler often emphasized the motto “control the controllables.”

“You got a bunch of outside attention; you got a bunch of factors. You want to play good, you want to play immediately, you want to make all these big plays,” McCollum said. “But you can’t make those big plays by focusing on the big plays. You got to make those big plays by focusing on the little things that get you to those big plays.

“[Keeler] would harp that on us all the time. That, and the relentless effort thing. Swarm, swarm, swarm. If you turn on the Sam Houston film, one thing you’re going to see is 11 guys flying around. That stays consistent.”

About 47 miles southwest of North Broad is where Ryan Carty, the offensive coordinator for Sam Houston State’s 2020 national title team, now coaches. As Keeler did in 2022 with Sam Houston State, Carty is leading Delaware into its first season in the FBS as it joins Conference USA this fall. Carty played quarterback for Keeler’s Delaware squads from 2002 to 2006, and although he was a backup throughout his career, he’s always appreciated Keeler’s approach to being more of a “CEO” coach.

“I really felt privileged to have coached for him. He really lets his coaches coach, he really lets his coordinators coordinate, and he holds you accountable to those things,” Carty said. “He certainly does allow you flexibility and freedom to be who you are. … He has concepts that he wants and has more of a conceptual feeling of what he wants his offense and defense and special teams to be like and feel like. And he’s not always in the nitty-gritty of position meetings and stuff like that.”

Keeler’s hands-off approach to coaching started at Delaware, when he hired Kirk Ciarrocca, who then was the receivers coach at Penn, to run his no-huddle offense. Keeler was an early adopter of the spread, no-huddle offense in 2002, transitioning Delaware away from the wing-T.

After spending the first week with Ciarrocca, now offensive coordinator at Rutgers, Keeler was constantly pulled away from meetings and realized that he was at his best overseeing the program as a whole rather than engrossing himself in every meeting.

He brought that approach to filling out his staff at Temple, too. Before hiring offensive coordinator Tyler Walker away from Montana State and defensive coordinator Brian Smith away from Rice, Keeler asked each, “Who are your untouchables? Who do you have to have with you?”

I’ve always believed you put your resources into your coordinators, and so you go find the best coordinator you can, then you kind of figure out the staff from there.

While Keeler added position coaches with whom he was familiar, Walker brought offensive line coach Al Johnson and offensive analyst Kevin Sheehan with him to North Broad. Defensive line coach Cedric Calhoun and outside linebackers coach Chris Raitano followed Smith.

“I’ve always believed you put your resources into your coordinators, and so you go find the best coordinator you can, then you kind of figure out the staff from there,” Keeler said. “Coordinators have a lot of power, because I think most head coaches realize getting great coordinators is a premium.”

Added Flacco: “When you’ve had as much success as he has had, and you have a little bit of an ego yourself, you can tend to kind of meddle in everything and want to do everything your way. I think he’s been very good over the years at listening to new ways of doing things and giving guys free rein to do those things. Not only does he give his players the confidence, but I think his coaches have that confidence to be able to get the most out of themselves.”

At Sam Houston State, Keeler’s offensive philosophy evolved over the years. Early in his tenure, the Bearkats had an air-raid, up-tempo style of offense that put up a lot of points and yards and included a Walter Payton Award winner — the FCS equivalent of the Heisman — in quarterback Jeremiah Briscoe in 2016 and 2017. But in their championship years and transition to the FBS, the Bearkats emphasized the running game, including a dual-threat talent at quarterback.

Keeler expects his offense at Temple to resemble that, considering that Walker had dual-threat Montana State quarterback Tommy Mellott as the 2024 Payton Award winner.

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“There’s a mentality. It’s Temple tough,” Keeler said. “There definitely is a brand. You’re not going to see us on fourth-and-a-half-yard put five wide receivers on the field. That’s not who we can be. So when I was looking for an offensive coordinator, I was really looking for someone who understood how to run the football. And that’s where Tyler Walker comes in.

“They know how to run the football. If you look at the quarterback play, [Mellott] went from a 50% passer to a 72% passer. In fact, he’s one of the highest, if not the highest-rated Pro Football Focus quarterbacks in the country, just statistically. What Tyler’s done is a great job of making you defend the run and then open up the passing game. And that’s the mentality we’re going to have here.”

The pressure is on for Keeler, as Temple’s spring practices kicked off this week. There still are plenty of questions surrounding the Owls, from the starting quarterback to which players will be team leaders.

Keeler’s impact won’t be known until the fall, and possibly the years that follow. The three-hour conversation he had in November with athletic director Arthur Johnson before taking the job, when they discussed the vision and future of Temple football as Johnson passionately watched and reacted to an Eagles game, may have changed the program, for better or worse. But despite the outside noise surrounding the program, Keeler has one goal in mind.

“We’re going to make this a winner, and everything’s here,” Keeler said. “It’s not like no one’s ever done this before. If you think about it, when I was at Delaware, no one ever won a national championship in the FCS level. I was able to do it there with, obviously, great players and great staff. Go to Sam Houston, no one’s ever won a national championship there, was able to do it there again with great players and great staff. They’ve done it here. It’s been done here in the past. I just need to recreate that.

“I’m convinced that this location is a prime location that we can make great football.”

Staff writer Jeff Neiburg contributed to this article.