Carey gets another bowl shot as Temple accepts Military bid
Rod Carey is no stranger to bowl games. Northern Illinois made six bowl appearances in the seven seasons he served as head coach of the Huskies before taking the job at Temple this year.
Carey, though, is still looking for his first bowl victory.
He hopes to rectify that when the Owls take on North Carolina in the Military Bowl Dec. 27 at the Navy-Marine Corps Stadium in Annapolis, Md. Kickoff is at noon.
“We’re going to wipe the slate clean and try something else this year,” Carey said during a conference call for the game Sunday night. “The good thing is, the guys on this team have won a bowl game, so I’m going to follow their lead a lot.”
This is Temple’s fifth straight trip to a bowl game and third to the Military Bowl. The Owls fell to Wake Forest, 34-28, in the 2016 Military Bowl and dropped a 30-21 decision to UCLA in 2009 when it was known as the EagleBank Bowl.
As Carey said, this senior class does have a bowl victory under its belt. The Owls defeated Florida International,
28-3, in 2017 Gasparilla Bowl.
“I think we’re in pretty good hands here,” Carey said.
The Owls earned a bid by going 8-4 overall and 5-3 in the American Athletic Conference. Temple went 3-1 in November. The only loss was a 15-13 decision to Cincinnati that kept the Owls from winning the AAC East and playing for the conference title.
Temple was the only team to beat AAC champ Memphis (12-1), which finished 17th in the final College Football Playoff rankings and will play No. 10 Penn State in the Cotton Bowl. the
“We’re playing a really good opponent that’s already won eight games this year,” North Carolina coach Mack Brown said. “They’ve had a tremendous season. I was lucky enough to watch Rod coach at Northern Illinois and I called a lot of the Temple games when I was with ESPN and ABC on the Friday night games. Those guys are tough. They know how to play.”
This is North Carolina’s
34th trip to a bowl game and first since falling to Stanford in the 2016 Sun Bowl. The Tar Heels (6-6,
4-4 ACC) are 14-19 in bowl games. Brown led the Tar Heels to bowl games five times during his first stint in Chapel Hill from 198897. Overall, Brown is 13-8 in bowl games and won a national championship at Texas in 2005 when the Longhorns defeated USC,
41-38, in the Rose Bowl. This is the first meeting between the Owls and the Tar Heels. The teams have one common opponent. Both defeated Georgia Tech, on back-to-back weekends no less. Temple knocked off the Yellow Jackets, 24-2, on Sept. 28 at Lincoln Financial Field. The Tar Heels won in Atlanta a week later, 38-22.
“It’s going to be a great challenge,” Carey said. “We’ve played a Big Ten team (Maryland) and we played Georgia Tech out of the ACC. So this will be our second ACC team this year and we know what that entails. That’s going to be a heck of a challenge for us.”
The proceeds from the game benefit Patriot Point, the Military Bowl’s 290acre retreat for recovering service members, their families and caregivers on Maryland’s eastern shore, and to the USO of Metropolitan Washington-Baltimore. In each of the last nine years the game has given over $100,000 to the USO, according to Military Bowl president and executive director Steve Beck, and should go over the $1 million mark this year.