PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - The college football season in Philadelphia kicks off tonight at Lincoln Financial Field, as Temple and Villanova battle for the Mayor’s Cup.

The game will represent Steve Addazio’s debut as Temple head coach after taking over in the offseason for Al Golden, who left for Miami.  He says this is going to a great, tough matchup.

“The team that is the toughest, and the last one standing is going to win that game,” Addazio tells KYW Newsradio.   “That’s the mindset here: we’re going the full rounds in this fight right now.  Because we are playing a great football team.”

Villanova head coach Andy Talley says his squad will have its work cut out for it against the Owls.

“You know it’s an uphill climb when you play a 1-A football team — they expose your flaws immediately.  So we will know right off the bat what our problems are, and I suspect that they are going to be quite physical and probably try and run the ball at us,” Talley says.

Addazio says his team will be focused:

“For a three-hour block of time we’ve got to go as hard as we can go.  Play as physical and as tough as we can play, and as clean as we can play in terms of penalties and mistakes and errors, etc.  And that’s all that matters.”

As for keys for the Wildcats, Talley says they know what they have to do:

“We have to be able to match up with their speed right off the bat.  And we have to try and stay in the game with them.  The longer we stay in the game, the better chance we have, but we are going to have to adjust.  We need to make some big plays and, you know, in every football game it’s going to come down to turnovers and we really can’t afford to turn the ball over.”

This is the third Mayor’s Cup matchup.  Villanova won the inaugural game in 2009.  Temple bounced back to capture it last year.

Reported by Matt Leon, KYW Newsradio 1060

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