Perserverance and Perspective :: Senior Mike Holley has overcome the odds to play for the Owls this season

Oct. 10, 2006

PHILADELPHIA - By John Di Carlo

Mike Holley had dealt with some extremely difficult situations before. This one, just like the others, just didn't seem fair.

Just over two years ago, Holley and a close friend were hanging out at a club in his hometown of Washington, D.C., when shots rang out. Holley averted danger, but his friend did not.

"The next thing I know, he's lying on the ground," Holley said. "His eyes are open, and I'm looking at him, right in his eyes, telling him to get up. I'm begging for him to get up. Those were the last words I said to him."

Holley's eyes well up when he tells the story now. Unfortunately, at the age of 22, he's experienced more grief than most people endure in a lifetime. So much of it has little to do with the ups and downs he's experienced as a football player at Temple.

Holley lost his mother to multiple sclerosis when he was in the fifth grade. And no more than a month after Holley watched his friend die at his side, he lost his father to a heart attack.

It all seemed to be piling on and it was all out of Holley's control. But the stuff that was within Holley's control was slipping, too and it only added to the heartache.

A week before the start of the 2004 season, Holley was declared academically ineligible. A year later, he thought he had done enough to get eligible. Again, he learned that his grades were not good enough. Two years away from the game he loved, combined with a lifetime of adversity, had Holley thinking that it might be time to stop playing football.

Holley prayed and prayed some more. He also took matters into his own hands and found out that he'd have some help when Al Golden arrived last December as Temple's new head coach.

"My second year I was reported ineligible, I was thinking that my football career was over," Holley admitted. "And I started thinking about just living a family life and continuing to go to school. But then Coach Golden came in, and I sat down and had a conversation with Coach Golden, and he brought that fire back into me and my desire for football and my love for the game, and I was ready to play again."

Holley owned his mistakes when it came to academic missteps, but Golden was taken by Holley's determination to move forward.

"The thing I'll say about Mike is he didn't complain," Golden said. "For all that he went through, he didn't complain. He was very much into a problem-solving mode when I met him. He provided tremendous feedback for me in terms of what needed to be changed.

"Mike didn't try to buck the system. He didn't try to fight it. He didn't try to undermine it. He accepted it. He kind of relished the challenge, which is why he's had success before so many other guys. He's achieved so much more than so many other guys, simply for that reason...he bought in from day one, and his results are really a microcosm of what we want this team to look like."

The results are this: The 5-foot-9, 185-pound redshirt senior is eligible again and starting at wide receiver after a two-year layoff. To do it, he passed 29 credits between January and the end of Temple's second summer session.

He's also on target to graduate in May with a degree in communications. "I've always been a strong person," Holley said. "I've never quit on anything. I learned that from my family. I watch people and see what they do, and the one thing I've learned is you never quit. You keep fighting for your goals and what you want to accomplish, and at the end, it will pay off. And that's what I did. Despite the adversity that I went through, I just fought through it, and right now, it's paying off." Holley caught six passes for 46 yards through Temple's first four games as the Owls continued to experience growing pains with a young offensive line and two new quarterbacks in true freshman Vaughn Charlton and first-year sophomore Adam DiMichele.

Like everyone else, he wants to win, and win soon, but just running through the tunnel and onto the field at Buffalo in the season opener was a highlight in and of itself.

"I was ready to release two years of frustration on anybody in my way," Holley said.

What Holley is doing off the field as a leader may be just as important to what Golden and his new staff want to accomplish.

"If I see someone mess up or they don't do the right thing, I pull them to the side and say something to them," Holley said of his leadership style. "I wouldn't say, `Look at me, this is what I've done,' but I just try to encourage them and encourage them to make the right decisions. "There have been some times where players have come up to me to ask me about academics, ask me about how grades go, what should I do here and there, and I give them some coaching on that. On the field, as far as staying focused on plays and things of that nature, I try to coach them there, too. But I'm not going to say I'm the overall man. I've been through a lot of stuff, but I'm just trying to lead by example. I'm not trying to get anyone to be like me. I just try to lead by example, and hopefully people will catch onto it and lead their life the right way."

Golden has said repeatedly that he's trying to change the culture of the program and he's happy to have someone like Holley who can carry his message. Holley, on the other hand, knows that Golden owed him nothing when he took the job, and he's grateful that he was able to make good on the opportunity he was given.

"I showed him that I did want to be here, that I did want to be part of the program, that I wanted to help him out," Holley said. "So I just did what he said--went to class, talked to the teachers, made good grades and worked hard in the summer. And when it came to practice, I worked hard there. And just by doing those things there, I think I sent him the message that I was serious about getting back."

And now that he is back, Holley isn't going anywhere. He's only interested in learning from what he's endured and applying it to everything still to come in his life.

"I believed in what he said, did what he said, and I am who I am now," Holley said. "I'm happy that he looks at me like a model of what he's trying to get out of the program. For me, I'm just hoping that people are looking up to me like that, looking up to me as an example, and I'm just going to try to lead by example."