Changing the Culture

Bradshaw taking Temple into the Right Direction
December 4^th, 2006

There are some pretty big shoes to fill when a coach leaves a big school like Temple University. Bill Bradshaw has been responsible for filling several pairs of shoes and more to get Temple on track to success.

Bradshaw has been the Athletic Director at Temple for the last four years and has never had a challenge like the ones he has faced from 2005 and throughout 2006. He had several head coaching vacancies and an academic support problem stemming in the athletic compliance department.

Replacing the head coaches would be difficult on many levels because he was replacing hall of fame coaches while also trying to find the right person to help the programs become successful again. Bradshaw went out and recruited coaching talent for the baseball, basketball, football, lacrosse, tennis and softball.

“It’s really unheard of, all these changes in one year,” said Bradshaw. He also referred to the University’s President stepping down saying that “it made it all the more difficult” to make these important hires.

Bradshaw’s most recent big hire was bringing Fran Dunphy in from the University of Penn to replace hall of fame coach John Chaney for the men’s basketball team. Dunphy was attractive because of his background with the city, his basketball experience and his mutual interest in being apart of Temple basketball.

Bradshaw also brought in Al Golden, an up-and-coming young coach from the University of Virginia, to bring success to the football program. He described the search as needing “someone who was good enough and confident enough and had the guts to take the program forward.” In Bradshaw’s eyes, Golden meets those standards and has the energy and passion to get the job done.

Another task Bradshaw has faced besides hiring coaches and scheduling games for the Owls has been the academic support problem and the uphill battle the University has faced since the APR (Academic Progress Report) came out in early 2006. Temple was down at the bottom of the list for all school in the country and lost nine scholarships because of this. Bradshaw believes they weren’t in a position to be successful.

Temple University was “short-handed” the former La Salle graduate said, in comparison to the rest of the bigger school with such a large student body. Football has one of the worst APR scores in the country and Bradshaw said he was quoted in another publication calling the situation “crisis management.” Now Temple has brand new staff and good enough academics to add nearly a hundred points to their APR score and regain those lost scholarships.

“We have one of the best academic programs in the country with the right people in there,” Bradshaw said. “It’s too bad it took a crisis to get something done.”

Bradshaw sees the positives now with the new era of Basketball beginning under coach Dunphy and the academic support in the best shape it’s ever been in. He also looks forward to football in nine months and the rest of the success the University can expect to experience.

Notes: Temple also hired Rob Valli to replace Baseball hall of fame coach Skip Wilson…MAC stands for Mid-American Conference…Coach Golden has just finished his first season in North Broad with a 1-11 record…Bradshaw got his undergraduates degree at La Salle University, where he was an All-American baseball player, and his Master’s at Niagara University…

This has been a work of
Temple University Graduate Charles McLaughlin

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