Game Preview: Fordham at Lehigh, 10/9/2010

(Photo Credit: The Ram)

Momentum. You hear a lot about it during the football season, especially when it comes to bye weeks. Teams with the momentum - and the bye - sometimes lose the focus, and come out flat after a strong start.

Interestingly, for Lehigh, bye weeks for the last six years have been all about working out issues - working out kinks after a loss. Counting the 2007 season, where Lehigh had a bye week on Week 1, for the last seven years Lehigh has had a loss entering the bye week.

After a game in New Hampshire where starter junior QB Chris Lum was unable to start with a leg injury and multiple defensive stars left the field on crutches, Lehigh's bye week also was huge in another way this time around, too: it's allowed the Mountain Hawks to get healthy after a very challenging September. (more)

"Fragile" College Football: Life After Football - Terrible, Or Just Not So Great?

Yesterday, I attempted to expose one myth: about the supposed guaranteed riches and benefits that await a school like Montana should receive if they go to FBS and a WAC that's currently on life support.  If they want to roll the dice and go ahead, that's fine with me: but do it for the right reasons, and don't intimate that the FCS playoffs system is dying and blame it for all your financial woes.

Today I'm going against the other threat to Football Championship Subdivision: the schools that pick up their ball, their tradition, their scholarships for a bunch of kids who just want to get an education - and pull the plug on the entire program. That's exactly what happened at Northeastern University and Hofstra University this past offseason, and was recently applauded by a reporter at the Boston Globe.

Whenever the subject matter in the larger world of college football turns to TV contracts, larger and larger athletics programs and out-of-control spending, the reaction of some college presidents is to wish to pull the plug on the entire program.

Starting with the actions of one audacious, outspoken college president - John Silber, formerly of Boston University - too many college presidents have followed his lead and pulled the plug on their programs. Not huge college football programs that are the real cause for the issues that plague FBS today, mind you. Pulling the plug on modest sized FCS programs that do a whole lot more educating than creating NFL prospects. (more)

"Fragile" College Football: Montana and the WAC

(Photo Credit: Kurt Wilson of the Missoulian)

You can get plenty of hits on Google if you combine the two words "WAC" and "trouble". But probably not as many as there would have been even just a few weeks ago.

That's because the WAC - who has two teams currently ranked in the Top 25 in Boise State and Nevada - has announced in the next 30 to 60 days that it will be offering bids to four, and perhaps five, potential members.

If you came back from Mars and read these statements, you'd probably think that the future for the WAC is rosy.  Unfortunately for the WAC, however, Boise State and Nevada will be bolting for the Mountain West conference starting in 2011 - and while the WAC might attempt to reload with a combination of basketball-only schools and FCS football-playing schools, make no mistake about it: the WAC is still in a real struggle for its survival.

It's in this atmosphere that Montana athletic director Jim O'Day sent an email to a supporter that rocked the Big Sky, the FCS football community, and even the NCAA.  (more)

Sunday's Word: Fragile

It was a tough call as to what this weekend's "Sunday Word" would be. With Colgate's emphatic win over Georgetown and Holy Cross' thrilling win over Fordham, the word "order" was a strong candidate. With Harvard slamming Lafayette and Cornell defeating Bucknell, perhaps "Ivy" would have been appropriate.

But at this moment of time - when it seems like there are earthquakes or aftershocks rocking the college football world every couple of weeks - it's not a weekend to simply discuss the issues that face the Patriot League. It seems like the entire reality of college football is "fragile".

It's been an unwritten rule in years' past that talk of conference realignments, schools moving up from Division II to Division I or from FCS to FBS, or even puff pieces about not having football wouldn't see the light of day during the regular season - mostly because the emphasis of coverage was (and should be) on the exploits of the kids playing the games.

But it's different out there right now, this year. It's "fragile". And as a result, the lies, the fictions, and the polarization is out in full force. (more)

Week Five Football Predictions, 10/02/2010

For those who are interested - below the flip are my selection of picks tomorrow's Patriot League football games being played.

For my picks of the rest of the week, click here to visit the College Sporting News and read: "Rising Redhawks, Sinking Salukis", where I pick the Sports Network Top 25.

Last weekend - to quote a trashy one, oops, I did it again. Again I had a great week, going 4-1, and only missing the Lafayette/Princeton game that went into overtime and could have gone either way. Picking Assumption to beat Fordham - a pick I'm particularly proud of - as well as picking Georgetown to beat Holy Cross, Colgate to fall to Syracuse, and Lehigh to fall to New Hampshire, it was another good week in Chuckland. That puts my record on the year at 15-8. (more)