Wrong Team

Irresponsible. Incredibly stupid. A real shame.

A few choice words from the Department of Athletics in response to our comments about the football program on the front page of our “Welcome Back” edition.

We don’t know if we’d go that far, but we think that those comments were well within our editorial right to question a football program that has been largely unsuccessful season after season, but continues to receive substantial financial backing from the university.

Some members of the Department of Athletics felt that the comments were not only negative, but demoralizing to student-athletes and coaching staffs, and viewed it irresponsible of us to not cheerlead for our football team.

“Are we on the same team?” an e-mail asked.

In a word: No.

We are on the Temple community’s team, of which we’ve been for 85 years.

The media’s role in the communities they cover is not to promote specific entities within those communities.

As an independent, student-run publication, it is not our job to serve as a public relations machine for the university or any of its departments.

We are not partners with any department on campus. Athletics is no exception.

We are to inform students and faculty of news that is beneficial to them and will contribute to their experiences while at the university.

We do realize how hard student-athletes, coaches and staff work toward bettering Temple Athletics, and we applaud them.
We acknowledge the efforts of the Department of Athletics to market the football program and other sports.

For example, they have invested in running advertisements on Comcast SportsNet, on billboards around the region and in this paper.

Yet, the success or failure of any athletic team at this university has not and will not depend on what appears on these pages weekly. Those odds are up to players, coaches and assistants,
not us.

We might add that the list of 10 things that appeared on the front page of last Tuesday’s issue encompassed many aspects of campus life and athletics was just one.

If those comments were seen as a jab at the football program and ruffled a few feathers, then it’s up to the program to make us eat our words. Prove to the university how off-base those comments were.

In the end, our primary responsibility isn’t to actively root for our athletic teams.

It’s to allow our readers to make their own judgments, with the information we provide