Somewhere between Syracuse’s 38-35 win over Louisville being anointed the ‘biggest upset in Big East history’ and the positive aura going through the halls of the Orange football facility, Bobby Wallace came to mind.

Wallace was Temple’s head coach from 1998-2005. He came to mind as both an example and a lesson. The example is that in the short-term, an upset can bear great rewards and warm feelings. The lesson is that it could eventually become inconsequential if it’s not built upon.

Wallace was an iconic Division II head coach who won three consecutive national championships at North Alabama from 1993-95, winning coach of the year all three seasons. When he was an assistant at Auburn in the 1980s, he recruited and signed Bo Jackson. Wallace was hired by Temple to make something out of a moribund program.

All he could muster was 19 wins in eight seasons – no doubt a dubious record – but one of those 19 wins sticks out.

It’s not either of his upsets over Syracuse, nor a win over West Virginia.

The most memorable victory was beating No. 14 Virginia Tech, 28-24, in 1998 in Blacksburg, Va. Despite Syracuse being 36.5-point underdogs to Louisville on Saturday and Temple getting 35 points from the Hokies in 1998, the Temple win was arguably the bigger upset.

The program was far below anything Syracuse is experiencing. Take away the fact that they’ve only reached two bowl games in school history, or that they didn’t have a stadium to themselves. But they had seven straight losing seasons at the time and lost their first six games – including a Homecoming Day defeat to Division I-AA William and Mary.

Then the Owls went into Blacksburg on the Hokies’ Homecoming and shocked anyone who had even heard of college football. This was Temple. Their most storied player – Bill Cosby – didn’t win a Heisman. He won an Emmy.

‘That upset, to me, was bigger,’ Wallace said by phone from Livingston, Ala., where he is now the head coach of West Alabama. ‘When I heard Syracuse winning Saturday, it wasn’t a shock. … I think you gotta remember, Temple hadn’t won a road Big East game. Syracuse definitely has a whole lot of more tradition, better facilities and better results.’

But that argument is for talk-show fodder or barroom conversation. What’s important is what resulted – and what never resulted – from Temple upsetting Virginia Tech. At the time, faith was restored in a situation that appeared hopeless. Yet with the benefit of hindsight, the upset remains nothing more than a glimmer for an otherwise gloomy program. They’re no longer in the Big East, still fighting for that elusive winning season, and they remain a punch line.

After the win, it didn’t seem like that would be the case.

Temple was the story of the week. Like Syracuse, the national media all wanted a story. A few weeks after the upset, the Temple administration approved a new football facility. Wallace couldn’t prove the two were connected, but he didn’t find it coincidental.

‘I don’t think there’s any question,’ Wallace said. ‘It was a belief that maybe something good happened here.’

The players were able to walk around campus with at least some sense of achievement. In professional football, players on struggling teams can isolate themselves from the public. In college football, that’s not the case.

When football players walk through the Quad or eat lunch at Shaw or take notes in geology, students who double as fans know they’re football players.

‘Some guys are being nicer, that’s for sure,’ Syracuse quarterback Andrew Robinson said. ‘Guys coming up to you saying, ‘Good game,’ or things like that.’

Coaches usually insist they don’t want their players to listen to the hype or the criticism. It’s the old coaching adage Wallace repeated: Teams are never as good as they’re said to be after a big win and never as bad as they’re said to be after a devastating loss.

But after the Virginia Tech upset, Wallace didn’t mind his players hearing the praise.

‘You feel good to get recognition,’ Wallace said. ‘You didn’t want it to get to be distraction, but every bit of that publicity is good. They’ve been put down for so long, players go to class and hear the negative talk – any little thing can boost their image and confidence.’

The Owls were even able to capitalize on the momentum two weeks later by going on the road and upsetting Pittsburgh. (For anyone who believes in karma, Syracuse plays No. 5 West Virginia in two weeks.) Like Syracuse, they were a young team – Temple played 17 true freshmen that season. Syracuse has already fielded nine.

Yet looking back, the win only did so much. Part of that was out of Wallace’s control. ‘We had other issues that kept us from building on it anymore,’ he said.

Years later, hindsight exposed the lesson of the upset.

Through time, an upset will only leave fans upset unless it’s followed by continued improvement. That is not something that can be judged this week or next week. But there will eventually be a time when the proof will be in the performance, and it will be clear whether the Louisville win was an anomaly or a foundation.

Zach Berman is the sports columnist at The Daily Orange, where his columns appear every Wednesday and other select days throughout the semester. He can be reached at zberman@syr.edu.

Published on September 25, 2007 at 12:00 pm