Curtis Bray has spent most of the past two decades making a name for himself in Western Pennsylvania football.

As a linebacker at Gateway High School, he was named Gatorade National High School Football Player of the Year in 1987 and recorded 170 tackles for the University of Pittsburgh from 1988 to 1991.

As a defensive end and linebackers coach, he helped lead his alma mater to bowl games in his first five years on the job, including the 2005 Fiesta Bowl.

But after the Panthers posted an 11-12 record and failed to make a bowl the last two seasons, Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt fired Bray and assigned his linebackers coach position to defensive coordinator Paul Rhoads.

"I couldn't picture myself there for the rest of my career when I went there," Bray said. "I didn't picture myself being there for 20 years."

It took Bray a little less than two months to land somewhere else. Temple coach Al Golden hired Bray to guide the linebackers in Golden's second year of trying to reinvent a perennial Division I-A doormat.

Now, Bray has to transition from a program where a 6-6 season is viewed as unacceptable to a program with eight wins in the last five years.

It's a program that was jettisoned from the Big East after the 2004 season and played two seasons as a I-A Independent before joining the Mid-American Conference this year.

"Talking with coach Golden and hearing the excitement in his voice, the belief that he has after being here for only a year, really excited me to getting on board," Bray said. "It's a good challenge to really build something."

Golden played against Bray as a tight end at Penn State. He said Bray approaches coaching with the same energy and passion he showed as a player.

"It's hard for kids this age to fathom how respected Curtis was coming out of high school," he said.

Bray began his coaching career in 1993 at Duquesne, as a linebackers and special teams coach for the I-AA school.

He parlayed this experience into positions at two other I-AA schools with higher profiles -- as a defensive line coach at Western Kentucky and a defensive ends coach at Villanova -- before coming back to Pitt in 2000.

Bray said his three years coaching around Philadelphia will help him adjust more quickly to his new position.

"It helps my comfort level out, I know that," he said. "And it will help me with local recruiting a little bit. I already have a good relationship with some of the coaches out here."

With his Western Pennsylvania ties, a large part of Bray's job will be convincing players from Pittsburgh and surroundings to make the trek to the eastern part of the state for four years.

He said one of the team's goals is to recruit Pennsylvania more thoroughly.

"The real thing is getting kids to come see the campus," he said. "Once we get them out here, I think we'll continually be able to get kids who are only four to five hours away."

The Owls' linebacker corps is a microcosm of the team: young, inexperienced and rife with instability. Temple used six different starting linebacker combinations last year on a defense that gave up 452.4 yards and 41.3 points per game.

Bray said the squad's youth provides him with a unique opportunity to work with players with a relatively clean slate.

"That part of it is exciting because you get to mold them into how you want them to be," he said. "I'm not really trying to break them of any bad habits or make them learn a new coach, because they're basically all brand new."

While at Pitt, Bray coached three All-Big East defenders: defensive ends Claude Harriott and Bryan Knight and linebacker H.B. Blades.

Both Harriott and Knight went in the fifth round of the NFL Draft and Blades is expected to go in the early rounds this year.

"His record speaks for itself in terms of having the type of players who can play in the NFL," Golden said. "That garners a lot of respect from our players."

Bray said it was disappointing Pitt decided to let him go, but he also felt it was a good time for him to move on.

He said he hopes to be a defensive coordinator in the future and is even entertaining thoughts of becoming a head coach.

"But that's a whole bunch of new headaches right there," he said.