Since the electronic and print media age blossomed in the 20th century, we tend to look at decades or eras, give them a moniker and put a bow on them based on the pop culture fazes of the time.
Sports are no exception. Temple played its final football game of the first decade of the 21st century Friday night. The Wildcats ended on a high note with a 44-32 victory at Killeen Shoemaker, but my guess is they would have traded it in for a season-ending loss a few weeks down the road in the state playoffs.
The end of any season brings with it a natural evaluation of what happened and where you go from there. From a historical standpoint, the end of a decade affords an opportunity to look through the years at what has been accomplished.
Wildcat football, which now has 103 seasons in the bank, has ridden a wave of success in the grand scheme of things. Any program that has won two-thirds of its contests over a span of time that broad can stake its place among the pillars of Texas high school football.
The Wildcats are 687-313-52 in the 1,052 games they've played since that first makeshift match against Belton in 1907. With five former head coaches inducted into the Texas High School Sports Hall of Fame, the track record is enviable.
So how does the last decade stack up against the rest for Temple? Not favorably. Closing eight of the 10 seasons with sub-.500 records won't get there. The Wildcats were 36-68 from 2000-09, with only one playoff win in three trips.
No program is immune from a swoon from time to time - even an extended time. There can be any number of rationales for it.
Numbers are numbers. They don't lie. The measurement of success is often defined by that bottom line.
Numbers are also cold. They are what they are. They don't, however, measure the kind of success that may be going on in the confines of a fieldhouse. There is no equation for whether a young man's life was altered for the better because he was part of a team and had a coach or teammate who impacted him. Those are the kinds of things that go on all the time in locker rooms all over the country regardless of the final sum total.
With that in mind, here's hoping that the bar graph takes an upward turn for the Wildcats of 2010-19.
twaits@temple-telegram.com
