A former Philadelphia Eagles head coach, Temple University head football coach and St. Joe's Prep star will walk into Mercedes-Benz Stadium tonight with the College Football Playoff National Championship on the line.
Ohio State and Notre Dame are both hours west of Philadelphia, but the teams each have plenty of ties to the area, and they'll be on full display in the biggest game of the college football season Monday night in Atlanta.
Jack Branka still remembers the days inside his Mayfair home near Roosevelt Boulevard and Cottman Avenue at the end of each football season.
Before the team's final game, the former St. Joseph's Prep head football coach would host the team's seniors for dinner with his late wife Mary Ellen's home cooking on the menu.
"It could be spaghetti, meatballs, it could be roast beef, it could be both," Branka, 86, said. "It could be on the grill outside, out there cooking hamburgers on the grill, just whatever."
In 1982, Jim Knowles, Rich Gannon and Clayton Carlin were all seniors on Branka's team that lost in the Philadelphia Catholic League Southern Division Championship to Archbishop Carroll.
Forty-three years later, Knowles, the defensive coordinator at Ohio State, is in another title game, but the stakes are much higher.
Knowles, a Philadelphia native from the city's Lawndale section, will be tasked with slowing down a Notre Dame offense led by quarterback Riley Leonard and running back Jeremiyah Love in the CFP National Championship.
"Notre Dame is going to be tough, they're a tough team," Branka said.
While Notre Dame's toughness will be something that Knowles' defense will have to match, Branka said that's exactly the type of player he was at The Prep.
Knowles earned All-City and All-Catholic honors as a linebacker and ran The Prep's defense. He also played center and was a team captain in his senior season.
Branka recalls one game against Monsignor Bonner at Roxborough High School in 1982. In that game, Knowles delivered a devastating hit to future Penn State player Ed Monaghan, who was crossing over the middle of the field to catch a pass. The pass was incomplete, and Bonner's coach wasn't happy about the hit.
"I had to have the head officials up to my house the next week to look at the film to make sure it was an OK hit," Branka said. "He said, 'Yeah, it was fine. Nothing dirty about it.'"
Knowles had other coaching stops at Western Michigan, Ole Miss, Duke and Oklahoma State before he got the job at Ohio State in 2022. He got his start at Cornell in 1989, where he played defensive end in college. He returned to Cornell as a head coach from 2004-09.
Knowles had the chance to have another career besides football.
Branka said Knowles graduated as one of the top students in his class at The Prep and got a finance job in Boston after graduating from Cornell, but he really wanted to coach football.
"He's just a rowhouse guy, you know? A blue-collar guy, basically," Branka said.
Branka coached The Prep's varsity football team from 1980-87, but he first met Knowles in 1979 when he was coaching the freshman team.
While Branka coached varsity, Knowles' father, John, who worked as a Philadelphia police officer, was a coach on the freshman team.
The relationship between Branka, Knowles, Gannon and Carlin continued even after high school and successful football careers. Gannon played 18 seasons in the NFL, won an MVP, and made multiple Pro Bowls and two All-Pro teams. Carlin is currently a defensive analyst at the University of Louisiana Lafayette and has been a coach at multiple college programs since the '90s.
Branka still gets together with Knowles, Gannon and Carlin every year to play a round of golf. Last year, they went to The Union League Golf Club at Torresdale on Grant Avenue.
"The three of them are best of friends," Branka said. "They were all in each other's weddings, so they all stick together. It's like they're back in high school again, all they do is cut each other up. It's so funny to see them. And it means a lot to me as a coach because that's what it's all about."
Branka usually watches every single one of Knowles' games from home on the couch. And his wife would be praying in the other room that "Knowlesy," as she called him, would win.
"I would have to let her know what was going on," Branka said.
But this time, Branka is heading to Atlanta to see the game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. He's hoping they'll get a better result than they did in 1982.
"I still think about that game and here we are in 2025," Branka said.
Ohio State head coach Ryan Day and Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden will go head-to-head in the national championship Monday night. They used to share the same sideline.
In 2006, Day walked the halls of Edberg Olson Hall, Temple football's facility at 10th and Diamond streets in North Philly, as a wide receivers coach on Golden's coaching staff.
Golden and Day have each coached in various football jobs all over the country, but their careers each brought them to Temple when Golden took over the program as head coach in 2006.
"It just shows that there's two guys out there that have come from, I can say, the bottom, have made it through and fought through and competed and have found a way to get there and have done it at a high level for a number of years," said Adam DiMichele, who played quarterback on the 2006 Temple team under Golden and Day. "It's cool that Temple played a small part in that. A small part for Ryan. For Coach Golden, I think it's a large part obviously for his future and what he was able to do and still able to do to this day."
Golden, the defensive coordinator at the University of Virginia, took over a struggling Temple football program that desperately needed a shot in the arm. The Owls were 3-31 in the three seasons before Golden arrived, and the team had been thrown out of the Big East.
DiMichele, who's now at Nebraska as assistant secondary/safeties coach under Matt Rhule, another former Owls head coach, was there to see the rebuild.
Golden spent five years at Temple from 2006-10 and was inducted into the Temple Athletics Hall of Fame in 2020 for resurrecting the football program.
Golden's 27-34 record might not jump off the page, but he took Temple to a bowl game for the first time in 30 years in the 2009 Eagle Bank Bowl. That season, Golden's Owls went 9-4, won a school-record nine straight games and rewrote 18 school records, and Golden was named Mid-American Conference Coach of the Year.
"I think he knew he wasn't going to fail, but he wasn't even afraid to fail," DiMichele said. "Deep down, I think he was never going to allow himself to fail, so whatever he had to do, he was going to do it. I think that's important for where we were at Temple in the stage that we were in the process of that program."
Golden was a "program builder," DiMichele said. But Golden building Temple's football team back to a competitive level didn't happen overnight and it wasn't always pretty.
In Golden's first season in 2006 with Day on the staff, the Owls went 1-11 and lost their first eight games.
Day only spent one year with Temple as the wide receivers coach during DiMichele's college career.
Day, a Manchester, New Hampshire, native, returned to Temple for a year in 2012 as the offensive coordinator/wide receivers coach under Steve Addazio.
In 2006, DiMichele remembered Day as an energetic coach with high standards.
"He was only there for a year, but I just remember him being a demanding coach," DiMichele said. "A guy that was almost looking for perfection. For a team that struggled that first year like we did, and that staff was so good. They still coached us so hard and they still pushed us like we were 11-1 and not 1-11. I think they had a vision. I think they were all part of a small plan of what they thought Temple could be. I don't know if they thought it could get to where it got with Coach Golden and Coach Rhule."
Even though the Owls went 1-11 in 2006, Golden was up for the challenge.
In 2007, the Owls joined the MAC and improved slightly to 4-8 in Golden's second season. But DiMichele said that year was a turning point for the program, especially after the team's 24-20 win over Akron.
"Coach Golden's second season, I felt like, 'Oh wow,'" DiMichele said. "We were recruiting well. Guys did a good job bringing guys in. We had some weapons. We had a couple of guys here that were performing. We were able to run the ball well. We were in Florida a little bit, we were recruiting the Northeast well, and people were believing. We finally got into the MAC. All those things came together and just clicked for us."
The Owls steadily got better with Golden in charge of the program. They won five games in 2008, nine games in 2009 and eight games in 2010 in Golden's final year. His success at Temple led to him landing the head coaching job at Miami.
In 2009, in Golden's fourth season, his Owls became the first Temple team to win at least nine games since 1979 when Wayne Hardin's squad won 10 games.
"He wanted to make sure he was going to do right by Temple and get this place rolling," DiMichele said. "In his time in Virginia, I'm sure he was just waiting for his one opportunity to become a head coach and when it came, he was going to do whatever to make sure it was successful."
After all these years, DiMichele said he still talks to Golden about once a week.
After congratulating him on wins in the CFP, DiMichele said Golden sent him pictures of him celebrating on the field with his family. Maybe he'll send another if his Notre Dame is victorious against Ohio State.
"My life totally changed because of Temple University," DiMichele said.
Will Howard has battled adversity throughout his entire football career.
Whether it was stepping into the starting role at Downingtown West as a sophomore, being recruited over at Kansas State or facing criticism for Ohio State's early season loss to Oregon, Howard has continued to prove people wrong at every stop.
"He likes to play with a chip on his shoulder," Maureen Howard, Will's mom, said.
Howard, who was a three-star quarterback after starring at Downingtown West as one of the top prospects in Pennsylvania in 2020, transferred to Ohio State last year after playing at Kansas State, and he's had the best season of his college career. As the team's quarterback, he's tossed 33 touchdowns to 10 interceptions and thrown for 3,779 yards with a 72.9% completion percentage.
The Downingtown kid is four quarters away from helping Ohio State win the program's first national championship since 2014.
"He deserves it," said Mike Milano, who coached Howard at Downingtown West. "It would be a fitting ending."
At the end of the 2023 season, Howard had a decision to make. Declare for the draft? Hit the transfer portal?
Staying at Kansas State, where Howard helped the program win a Big 12 Championship in 2022, wasn't an option. The program was heading in another direction with Avery Johnson, a five-star quarterback from Wichita, Kansas.
Howard had one year of eligibility left and wanted to improve his draft stock and compete for a national championship. He had options. He took official visits to Miami, USC and Ohio State, but ultimately the Buckeyes stood out because of Day's track record of developing quarterbacks.
Since becoming Ohio State's head coach in 2019, Day has helped two Buckeye quarterbacks -- Justin Fields and C.J. Stroud -- get selected in the first round pick of the NFL draft.
"[Day] is a quarterback head coach," Bob Howard, Will's dad, said. "He spent a lot of one-on-one time with Will training him and improving him and that was what Will wanted. He wanted someone that would work with him and improve his game and Ryan offered to do that and has done that."
After Howard committed to Ohio State, Day added Bill O'Brien, the longtime NFL and college coach, as the team's offensive coordinator.
But O'Brien wasn't on the staff long. After three weeks, he became the head coach of Boston College, which created a void on Ohio State's staff.
Enter Chip Kelly, the former Eagles head coach who took the NFL by storm in 2013. His time in Philly didn't end well. Kelly was fired at the end of the 2015 season, but he's been able to help Howard. Kelly left UCLA after six seasons as the team's head coach to become Ohio State's offensive coordinator last February.
Day and Kelly have a relationship going back to when Kelly coached Day in New Hampshire from 1998-01. Before linking back up at Ohio State, the two coached together at New Hampshire, the Eagles in 2015 and at the San Francisco 49ers in 2016.
"We know his time in Philadelphia wasn't the greatest for a lot of Philly fans, but he's been awesome," Bob Howard said. "Will has learned a ton from him, likes him a lot, so everything has been really great."
Milano has seen this story before.
Back in 2019, Howard was the senior quarterback for Downingtown West. He was coming off a junior season that ended early after he broke his arm in a game against Coatesville, the school's arch-rival.
The rivals met late in October in Howard's senior season, but Coatesville defeated the Whippets, 29-21, to give Downingtown West its first loss of the season.
Weeks later, Howard got his revenge.
In the biggest game of his high school career, Howard led Downingtown West to a 48-36 win over Coatesville at Kottmeyer Stadium to win the District 1 Class 6A title. It was the school's first district title since 1996.
"Here's where the parallels come in," Milano said.
Midway through his season at Ohio State, Howard and the Buckeyes had a massive Big 10 matchup against Oregon on the road.
The game was a shootout that came down to the wire.
Trailing 32-31, Howard and the Buckeyes were driving down the field with less than two minutes left in the game.
With six seconds left on the clock, Howard dropped back and took off for 12 yards to Oregon's 26-yard line but the officials ruled he was down as the clock-expired in a heartbreaking loss.
"They lose this crushing game and he's now the goat, like he's the scapegoat for this whole thing, he's being crucified for it," Milano said. "Here he is in his dream season and he's gotta kind of live that down. Well, he goes on like he always does and he battles and battles."
Howard and Ohio State suffered another crushing defeat against Michigan in the final game of the regular season, but weeks later he got his revenge over Oregon just like he did in Coatesville in high school.
In the Rose Bowl, Howard tossed three touchdowns as the Buckeyes dominated Oregon, the No. 1 team in the country, 41-21.
"They go on this magical run and it's been pretty cool to watch," Milano said. "I'm going to call it a redemption tour."
The "redemption tour" will continue in Atlanta, and Howard's parents will be there to witness it as his college career comes to an end.
"The journey is never easy and his hasn't been," Maureen Howard said. "There's been ups and downs, both at Kansas State and here at Ohio State. But, you know, they say if you can walk through the fire and come out the other end, you're that much stronger and he's a great example of that."