Lembo Leaving Lehigh

Today, Elon University in Elon, NC will be announcing that Lehigh head football coach Pete Lembo will be their new head coach.

They will be getting a head coach who has enjoyed great success at Lehigh. Coach Lembo inherited Kevin Higgins' team in the 2001 season and guided them to their first home game in the I-AA playoffs (in which Lehigh beat Hofstra, 24-21, in overtime). For his efforts that year, he not only won a Lambert Trophy for Lehigh (for the best I-AA football school in the East), but he also won the Eddie Robinson award for the best coach in I-AA as well.

Overall, the Lembo era had Lehigh in the playoff hunt every year, and had Lehigh in the national I-AA rankings almost every year. With a 44-14 overall record (incliding 2 playoff losses), you could almost always say "Lehigh is in the race for the Patriot League Title" and you'd have been right. Lembo is a very even-tempered, poised coach, who is a complete professional on and off the field. Elon will be getting a very good coach.

Lembo's fate may have been sealed by losing to Lafayette 23-19 this year, falling out of the Patriot League title and I-AA playoffs. Furthermore, Lembo had lost 3 of 5 to a resurgent Lafayette program. It's likely that Lembo would have had an incredible amount of heat on him from fans on South Mountain this year for that 2-3 record against Lafayette. It says an awful lot about how this program has progressed under coach Lembo that a 44-14 record with isn't considered job security. Yet, that's where we are. Wins against Lafayette, no matter how much they've improved under coach Frank "GQ" Tavani, are expected now.

I think you could make a case that Lembo was a victim of his own success. After having maintained Lehigh's status as a national I-AA power, delivering home playoff games and regular season sucess, all of a sudden the talk came of national championships -- and the Patriot League title was a given. But something happened. Colgate got just as good as Lehigh. And so did a program that five short years ago was in disarray - Lafayette.

Lafayette may paint themselves as "little Lafayette", but they now are as accomplished and talented as Lehigh, and seem set to remain so for the forseeable future. Losing to Lafayette when they were struggling as a program was unthinkable. Now, Lehigh and Lafayette are on even footing, yet fans still expect easy wins over the Leopards and easy Patriot League titles. This ain't your mother's Lafayette team. This team is great.

For better or worse, expectations on South Mountain couldn't be any higher. Whomever the next head coach will be, he will be guiding Lehigh through unparallelled expectations in a I-AA atmosphere in which it's harder and harder to compete. Early candidates for the new head-coaching vacancy would include:

* Harvard Offensive Coordinator Dave Cecchini (former Lehigh coach and Lehigh player)
* Stony Brook Defensive Coordinator Andrew Cohen
* Penn Offensive Coordinator Andy Coen (former Lehigh coach)
* Former Georgia Southern head coach Mike Sewak
* New Hampshire Offensive Coordinator Chip Kelley
* Delaware Offensive Coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca

Let the interviews begin. Personally, I wish nothing but luck to coach Lembo and his family in their new challenge. Elon is a team which has struggled mightily since joining the Southern Conference in 2001, so Lembo will be leading a complete rebulding effort. I'll be rooting for him to get Elon back to their winning ways.

Good luck, Pete.