Temple University and where they went wrong

I don’t have an entirely good reason to like Temple, but they are located in Philadelphia (where I was born) and that kind of started it. But I do love them for one more very specific reason: When I was just getting into college basketball, they had the sweetest home court flooring. Temple University’s mascot is the Owl and they took their Owldom to whole new levels with this, the most awesome basketball flooring of all-time: [...]

That’s freaking genius. The use of the whitespace throughout the key while filling in the zones between the three-point arch and the key just look magnificent. It’s intimidating, like you don’t want to step around there or a giant owl is going to fly down from the roof somewhere and peck you. (That’s what owls do, right? Peck?)

As you can probably already guess, given the first two paragraphs and the title of the post, they screwed it up. Not only did they screw it up, it became the most vanilla flooring of all-time. It’s a terrible travesty. Not only do you want to trounce around on the floor like it was trash, but you want to just smash Temple into the ground for even having such a boring court.

Yes, they went from this:

To this:

Gag me. I am pretty sure (though I’m not positive) that the change came when Temple went to a new identity system, the university wanting to emphasize the new “T” graphic you can see at center court, but then just stripped everything else away. Well you know what, Temple? You stripped away my childhood. Thanks a lot.