By DAN GARTLAND

EXECUTIVE SPORTS EDITOR

In the long history of Fordham football, there may not be a win more unlikely than the one the Rams came away with in Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon, as Fordham outlasted Temple, 30-29.

Temple, an FBS program that plays in the American Athletic Conference (a conference with an automatic BCS bowl berth), actually paid Fordham to come play the game. The exact figure is not clear but FCS teams are usually paid around $300,000 to play such games. Of course, FBS teams are usually paying for the right to embarrass a lesser opponent. However, that was not the case on Saturday.

Michael Nebrich’s desperate 29-yard touchdown pass to Sam Ajala with four seconds left tied the game at 29 and Michael Marando converted the extra point to put Fordham ahead. It was the first time Fordham had beaten a major college football team since 1954.

“It’s a tremendous accomplishment for our kids and our coaches and our school,” Fordham head coach Joe Moorhead said. “We told them to expect success this week. They came out and fought.”

The Rams held a 13-7 lead at halftime. According to Moorhead, his team handled its success in stride.

“The thing about … halftime, when we went into the locker room, was that you would expect — or at least I was expecting — that the kids would be jumping around, all fired up, all excited, bouncing off the walls because we had a lead over a BCS team,” Moorhead said. “They were just very calm, very reserved. They sat down in their lockers. As a coaching staff, we made the corrections. We told them we were going to go out and do the same thing in the second half, and it was 30 minutes for the rest of our lives.”

Temple made a quarterback change to begin the second half, replacing Clinton “Juice” Granger with PJ Walker. Granger was ineffective, completing only six of 15 passes. He also threw an interception and coughed up a fumble on a strip sack by Fordham’s Brett Biestek.

Walker played only two series before being replaced by Connor Reilly, the usual starter, who was nursing a knee injury and was originally thought to only be available in case of an emergency. Reilly revealed after the game that he had a bone bruise in his knee in addition to a sprained ACL.

Reilly entered the game with his team trailing 20-7 and 6:21 left in the third quarter. His entrance turned the tide for Temple, leading the Owls on three touchdown-scoring drives.

“That Reilly kid’s a good quarterback,” Moorhead said. “You can see why he was named the starter. He throws the ball very well, operates the system, and he even ran the ball on some scrambles and a designed run [for a] touchdown.”

Reilly’s performance forced Fordham to come from behind in the final minutes. His touchdown pass with 4:31 left in the game put Temple ahead, 27-23. Granger then returned briefly to run the ball into the end zone for a two-point conversion that made it 29-23.

On their final drive, the Rams converted two fourth downs — both on runs by Nebrich, both by a matter of mere inches. Then, with time running dangerously low, Nebrich scrambled out of the pocket and found Sam Ajala on the right edge of the end zone. Ajala jumped and caught the ball high above his head. He fell to the ground and was by himself for a brief second, before being mobbed by his teammates.

“As I was rolling, I saw Sam chilling at the goal line, with [his defender] stacked on top of him,” Nebrich said. “Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see [Brian] Wetzel running the end line. So I said, ‘Hey, I’m going to throw this thing up and either Sam is going to make a great catch or Wetzel will be right behind him with it.’”

According to Moorhead, Nebrich was just doing what he has done all season long.

“The original play call was four verticals,” Moorhead said. “There was 13 seconds left and we needed to get something down near the end zone. Michael did kind of what he does. The play broke down, he scrambled around, and as he’s done throughout this season and particularly this game, he found a way to make a play.”

Nebrich continued his strong season, finishing the game with 320 passing yards while completing 23 of 36 passes. For the second time this year, he was named Patriot League Offensive Player of the Week.

Fordham swept the League’s Player of the Week honors, as junior linebacker Stephen Hodge earned the award on the defensive side, and junior kicker Michael Marando was honored on special teams.

While Fordham was riding high, the loss was a new low for Temple, which fell to 0-3 on the year.

Owls freshman running back Zaire Williams told reporters afterwards he felt “dead inside.”

Matt Rhule, Temple’s first-year head coach, told the media, “I’m sorry you had to watch that.”

Fordham had not beaten an FBS-level team since 1954, when the Rams defeated Rutgers. After the 1954 season, Fordham discontinued its football program, but it was reinstated in 1970 at the Division III level, where the Rams played before moving up to Division I-AA/FCS in 1989.

Fordham is off to its first 3-0 start since 1988, and after consecutive impressive victories, is ranked 21st in both the FCS coaches’ poll and The Sports Network media poll. But the team still has plenty of work left to do in order to qualify for the FCS playoffs.

“Two things: Last week doesn’t matter this week; and the season starts today. That’s what we’re going to tell the guys tomorrow,” Moorhead said after the game. “Whether you trip over the first hurdle or the last hurdle, you still don’t win the race. So we have to have singleness of purpose as we sit down to watch this film and come out and prepare to beat a Columbia team that took us to the fourth quarter last year.”