Liacouras savors fruits of his vision for Temple

The dynamism that made him a visionary president of Temple University for 19 years remains for Peter Liacouras, though it is restricted by a stroke that has left him partially paralyzed and in a wheelchair.

Still, at 80 years of age, he is a passionate fan of Temple's football and basketball programs, getting to almost all of the games. No surprise there. Liacouras saw sports as a driving force in growing the university and attracting students who would reside on and near the campus.

The success of Liacouras' plan is particularly evident these days:

Temple has been transformed from largely a commuter school to a university with more than 11,000 students living on campus or in the immediate neighborhood.

The men's basketball team took off Wednesday for Nashville and another appearance in the NCAA basketball tournament.

And, stunningly, the Owls' football teams have become strong enough in recent years that the Big East Conference, which humiliated Temple in 2001 by ordering it out of the league for general incompetence, asked Temple to abandon the Mid-American Conference immediately and rejoin the conference for football in 2012 and all sports the following year.

Temple's acceptance into the Big East for all sports was the specific vision of Liacouras, Temple's president from 1982 to 2000. For years, the vision was mocked. Liacouras seemed to be on the wrong side of history as Temple football became a national punch line - money poured into a sinkhole. But Greg Liacouras said his father always saw sports as a vehicle.

"It was always his plan to get the kids on the campus," his son said in a conversation this week.

His father's larger vision, he said, was to make Temple an attractive place for suburban kids to enroll, to draw in that large demographic without changing the mission of the school as a place for first-generation college students to attend.

He wanted prospective students to not be afraid of North Broad Street. Sports always was part of that conversation, in tandem with changing the campus itself.

"He lit it up," his son said of the campus. "If you go by Temple at nighttime, you think it's daytime. My dad, he talked about that more than anything. He had a tough time making it bright."

Peter Liacouras suffered a stroke in November of 2010. It impaired his speech and paralyzed his right side.

"He can't talk, but he knows what's going on," said Greg Liacouras, a lawyer and Temple Law School graduate with a practice in Philadelphia. "He knows almost everything. If you talk real fast, you might lose him. But he followed the whole Big East thing, read everything.

"It's the strangest world he's in. The part that communicates is lost. He's tried devices. But he's the most motivated guy in the world. Even though he's paralyzed, he's still not sitting still. He does more activities than probably I do. He's at Temple Hospital right now, doing physical therapy."

With Liacouras in charge, Temple didn't always make the right moves in sports. Hiring John Chaney as basketball coach obviously was a grand slam, bringing publicity by the buckets, but Temple also struck out with a couple of football coaching hires. In reference to football, Liacouras told me once that even bad publicity was better than no publicity.

"He always said, if people were talking about how bad the football team was, they weren't talking about crime," his son said.

The goal of gaining entry to the Big East for all sports wasn't necessarily a specific goal. "It was to get all the sports in a conference that was a national conference," Greg Liacouras said.

"Football is an expensive sport," the younger Liacouras said. "He absolutely thought if you couldn't get all sports in a conference, then there's no way in the long term to sustain it, and you should drop football. But he absolutely thought there would be an opportunity to get back in, that this was going to happen."

As frustrating as it has to be for Liacouras not to be able to communicate his thoughts, his son said that those close to him are able to understand his thinking quite a bit.

"He knew all the Temple basketball games, he had a chart with the schedule," Greg Liacouras said. "He was ready to go out the door at 5:30 for a 7 o'clock game. That's communicating."

Before Temple played at St. Joseph's, Greg Liacouras said of his father, "he was getting in my face. I knew what he was saying . . . call the athletic director at St. Joe's and get us in."

At the Temple-Villanova game, played in the arena bearing his name, Liacouras sat in his wheelchair in the corner across from the Owls' bench, near the seats he always sat in at courtside. I said hello, and he nodded. Then his eyes widened and he grabbed my arm. He looked me in the eye and made some loud sounds. Watching, you might have assumed he was just greeting as best he could. I assumed he was making a point, maybe about the Big East. He always had a point to make.

He was a tough infighter - "Machiavellian," one Temple athletic director called him - and not always a popular figure with his own professors, who went on strike in 1990. But nobody ever doubted his intellect or his allegiance to Temple.

The greater Liacouras legacy was his belief that Temple stands for something that can't be replaced. Moving it all to Ambler may have made recruiting easier, as one former Owls athletic director once said to me, but then it wouldn't have been Temple. There already are campuses dotted all over the suburbs.

"My dad, he was basically a salesperson for Temple for 40 years," Greg Liacouras said. "He sold Temple, and every part of it. . . . He was just setting sights higher and higher."

So when Liacouras famously said early in his tenure that the football goal was the Sugar Bowl, everybody laughed but everybody remembered it.

It was frustrating to be in the Big East for just football. "We were the orphan, the redheaded stepchild," Greg Liacouras said. "Temple didn't get to go to policy meetings in the Big East; all the other schools did. Temple didn't get to vote on bylaw changes."

Peter Liacouras also knew that Villanova wasn't looking to share the conference for basketball.

In 2001, Temple's football program was told it had to leave the Big East Conference. Greg Liacouras didn't think it was a coincidence that it happened only after his father retired. Now Temple is back. Big East officials, including the presidents of all of the member universities, practically begged the Owls to rejoin, as powerful programs such as Pittsburgh, Syracuse, and West Virginia bailed out for better opportunities.

One key piece was getting Temple into Lincoln Financial Field. Although Liacouras was no longer president, he was involved in that effort, as current athletic director Bill Bradshaw and others said.

Whether this reconstituted Big East Conference stays together, and how great a benefit it turns out to be for Temple, are questions seeking answers. The Owls are no longer a punch line, but still haven't played in the Sugar Bowl, or the Final Four. But Peter Liacouras will be watching them try to get there this year, starting with Friday's first tournament game. Greg Liacouras said his father is fired up about that.

Greg Liacouras was asked if his father reacted to the Big East news. "He cheered - you kidding me? He was so happy," said his son.

"I walked in, he showed me the newspaper. He pointed to the article. He saw Temple people, he was high-fiving them."