Indeed you can, but you have to override it in the view, not the controller. You're looking for the templateName
property that will allow you to override the default template. You might also want to look at the layoutName
property, since it's closely related. (You can read about the difference here.)
App.ApplicationView = Ember.View.extend({
templateName: 'something_other_than_application'
});
Or if you're using Ember CLI:
// app/views/application.js
export default Ember.View.extend({
templateName: 'something_other_than_application'
});