Temple coach uses hot mic disrespect to fire up Owls but might fuel Sooners instead

Temple head coach K.C. Keeler has been paying close attention to every little thing said (or not said) about his team before the Owls host the Oklahoma Sooners on Saturday.

The No. 13 Sooners travel to Philadelphia to play Temple at 11 a.m. CT Saturday, and with the game sandwiched between matchups against Michigan and Auburn, it's getting overlooked by those in Norman looking for storylines.

As media waited for OU head coach Brent Venables to take the podium during his weekly press conference on Tuesday, a hot mic picked up a few reporters on the live stream discussing the Sooners’ odd road trip to face a Group of Five team. The reporters were heard referring to the environment at Lincoln Financial Field as being like a high school football game or a bowl game because of an expected sparse crowd inside an NFL stadium.

K.C. Keeler using hot mic and media disrespect as bulletin board material

Truth is, nothing those reporters said was really inaccurate. Temple had an average attendance of 13,919 last season inside a stadium with a capacity of 67,594. The crowd will certainly be larger with the Sooners in town, but still nowhere close to filling that stadium unless Sooner Nation travels extremely well.

Nonetheless, those few Temple fans overheard the conversation while listening in on Venables’ presser and took offense to it. And Keeler apparently also spent part of his Tuesday afternoon listening to what little Venables had to say about the Owls.

During a recent radio interview on 97.5 “The Fanatic” in Philadelphia, Keeler brought up the hot mic incident and the fact no reporters asked about Temple, and he even mentioned that he told his team about it, seemingly looking for bulletin board material.

“We always talk about don’t let the outside forces affect what’s going on in this building, and sometimes it’s just almost impossible, because you have a lot of people in your ear,” Keeler said. “Well, again, they have a hot mic there. I’m sure they’ve all heard about that. Again, their coach does a great job talking about Temple, but not a single media person asked about the game against Temple. And so, again, I just think there’ll be a different energy, especially they have Auburn next week, than we have going on in our building. And we’ll take all those things into consideration. Take all those things as a win for us.

“We obviously are gonna be playing a very talented team that’s made a huge investment in their program and a team that is a blue blood that aspires to win a national championship. There’s high expectations there. I think when people kind of went through their schedule and looking at the number of wins, I’m sure Temple was just a simple, ‘Yeah, check that one off.’ I don’t think we see it that way.”

The Owls are certainly better than when they were beat down 52-3 in last year’s season opener at OU. Maybe Keeler doesn’t know about 2024, though.

After 10 years at Sam Houston State, Keeler just took over Temple and has the Owls at 2-0 in his first season at the helm. However, those wins came against UMass and Howard. And no matter how much Temple improved, the Sooners got even better coming off a win against Michigan with a Heisman Trophy frontrunner at quarterback in John Mateer.

The media disrespect could have been bulletin board material for Temple, but now, Keeler’s comments returned the favor and handed extra motivation right back to the Sooners.

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