Certain members of the Oklahoma football media aren’t going to be fighting for the Cherry and the White anytime soon.
As the Sooners prepare to travel to South Philadelphia to complete a home-and-home with Temple, some beat reporters were caught on a hot mic trashing the Owls. The reporters called Temple football “a high school game” and suggested there would be 25,000 Oklahoma fans in attendance, essentially treating Lincoln Financial Field like a neutral site.
“It’s gonna be like a weird bowl game,” one reporter can be heard saying.
Oklahoma reporters get caught on a hot mic calling @Temple_FB “a high school game” pic.twitter.com/Exf5flC65g
— Crossing Broad (@CrossingBroad) September 9, 2025
As a Temple grad and someone who spent four seasons covering the football team, nothing they said is inherently wrong. Temple has problems filling Lincoln Financial Stadium. For all intents and purposes, they shouldn’t be playing in an NFL stadium because they can’t consistently fill it.
But being right doesn’t make it less insulting.
The Owls have struggled with attendance for years, reportedly getting paid less than $1 million to play at the Linc in 2023. The university has acknowledged the problem, with President John Fry recently telling The Philadelphia Inquirer, “We know we need to work on improving attendance.”
Temple’s stadium situation remains complicated. The university scrapped plans for an on-campus stadium and is committed to playing at the Linc through 2029. Fry called the on-campus stadium idea “a dead issue” and cited the “great partnership” with the Eagles.
The Oklahoma reporters weren’t entirely wrong about the crowd composition either. Temple fans know they’ll be outnumbered Saturday. It’s happened before, and it’ll happen again.
What’s galling is the casual dismissal of an opponent before the game is even played. These reporters are covering a team that’s about to play Temple, and they’re treating it like a scrimmage against a high school. Even Oklahoma offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle showed more respect, saying Temple “had an impressive start to their season” and noting that “winning is really, really hard.”
Oklahoma OC Ben Arbuckle on Temple:
“They’ve had an impressive start to their season… It doesn’t matter what level you’re playing at or who you’re playing, winning is really, really hard and these guys have made it look really dang easy these first two weeks.”
— Kyle Gauss (@kylegauss) September 9, 2025
Temple is 2-0 and has scored 97 points in two games under new coach K.C. Keeler. They’re not world-beaters, but they’re not the pushovers those reporters made them sound like.
The hot mic comments revealed what visiting media really think when they come to Temple games. It’s the kind of casual disrespect that smaller programs deal with constantly from bigger conference schools.
Temple fans have every right to be annoyed. Nobody likes having their program trashed by outsiders, even when the criticism has merit. Saturday’s game just became a lot more interesting.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.