Skip to main content

PL Interviews: Dick Biddle

You may have heard some of my audio interviews on Patriot League Media Day on I-AA Waves the past two weeks, including the opening statements by executive director Carolyn Femovich, some Patriot League players, and some truncated interviews. I had many more but the quality of the audio was not good enough for broadcast. (Colgate QB Mike Saraceno's and DB Geoff Bean's interviews, for example, were unsalvageable.)

I'm going through them again and will be posting transcripted highlights here. Even though this *is* Lehigh Football Nation, I figure that Lehigh fans would be quite happy to read about the goings-on with other teams in our league. The first transcript will be Dick Biddle, Colgate's head coach from the past eleven years. I thought this peek into his views on his team, his coaching style and Colgate were a nice peek into a program that maybe doesn't get the proper respect from the traditional media - but should.

Tonight I'll be talking about Patriot League Media Day more in-depth on I-AA waves, so be sure to tune in at 9PM EDT tonight. (No word if I'm going to talk about this nearly 10-year old picture of coach Biddle shown above.) And for the next few weeks, stop by for more Lehigh news, and more exclusive Patriot League content!

Here's my interview:

CB: Tell us a little bit about Colgate University.

DB: Colgate is a very good academic school located in central New York in the town of Hamilton.. it's a very pretty school, very prestigious academically, one of the top twenty liberal arts schools in the country. It's a school of about 2800 students, probably one of the smallest schools in the country to play I-AA football. We've also been very successful in this division. It's the type of school that gives you a great education at the same time as a great football experience.

CB: This will be your eleventh season as Colgate head coach. What should a student-athlete get out of a four-year experience as a Colgate football player?

DB: First, they get a great education that will put them in good stead for whatever they want to do in life. Graduates of Colgate go on to work in business school, medical school, the best grad schools in the country, and some of the best careers. Our athlete graduation rate is one of the best in the country, close to 90%. We're always in the top 10% APR nationally. I think what distinguishes Colgate is you get that type of education, but you're also going to play at a very competitive, very traditional, and very successful football program. We try to stretch students both athletically and academically. Some schools can give you the academics; some schools can slack off on the academics and give you the football experience; I think that Colgate gives you the best of both worlds. You can take football to the highest level of our division, but you also get the education. We've played for a national championship, which is the equivalent of our "Super Bowl" - we've taken it as far as you can go.

CB: What is your coaching style?

DB: I've got very good assistants, a defensive coordinator that's been with me a long time. I let the coaches coach. I think I'm hands-on in a lot of areas and hands-off in others. My job is to get the personnel in the right place, deal with those types of problems, and I also do some assistant coaching of defense a little bit. Basically, my job and what I try to do is to be as best prepared as possible to games. I don't know if I'm a players' coach, but I want to win. There are certain things that I'm demanding about, and other things I'm less demading on, but I want to win very badly. The difference is I think I do understand some of the things that kids will experience at Colgate. You need good players to win - don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. I think that's one thing I've realized.

CB: What games do you circle on the calendar?

DB: I think they're all key games, but I think our first opening game versus UMass is a key game. They're a very good team, and they're in a great football league (the A-10). This is the fourth year in a row that we've played them and we've got a good rivalry going. Last year we were fortunate to upset them at our place, and I'm sure they're pointing to us. I try to focus on our "next game" as being our most important game since every game counts whether it's a league game or a game which you may need to win (if you don't win your league) to get into the playoffs. I try to break the season into our opening game is a big game for us, a week off, and then we get into our regular season of 10 straight games.

CB: What do you think are the strengths of your offense and defense this year?

DB: I think the strength of our offense will be a couple of players in our skill areas... and I think we're in pretty good upfront, so I think we'll be in good shape offensively. Defensively, we're very good in the secondary, but our front seven needs to be rebuilt. We've been pretty good on defense but we've lost a lot to graduation, so we're going to have to start some young guys -- that's a big concern of mine. I think we'll be OK offensively, but we'll have to get our defense up to speed. I think maybe we'll be a team that may struggle early in the year, but will get better as the year goes on.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Ok time to put the real coach back in the limelight. Send Biddle to the hamilton blog

Popular posts from this blog

How The Ivy League Is Able To Break the NCAA's Scholarship Limits and Still Consider Themselves FCS

By now you've seen the results.  In 2018, the Ivy League has taken the FCS by storm. Perhaps it was Penn's 30-10 defeat of Lehigh a couple of weeks ago .  Or maybe it was Princeton's 50-9 drubbing of another team that made the FCS Playoffs last year, Monmouth.  Or maybe it was Yale's shockingly dominant 35-14 win over nationally-ranked Maine last weekend. The Ivy League has gone an astounding 12-4 so far in out-of-conference play, many of those wins coming against the Patriot League. But it's not just against the Patriot League where the Ivy League has excelled.  Every Ivy League school has at least one out-of-conference victory, which is remarkable since it is only three games into their football season.  The four losses - Rhode Island over Harvard, Holy Cross over Yale, Delaware over Cornell, and Cal Poly over Brown - were either close losses that could have gone either way or expected blowouts of teams picked to be at the bottom of the Ivy League. W

Made-Up Midseason Grades for Lehigh Football

 We are now officially midway through the 2023 Lehigh football season.  The Mountain Hawks sit at 1-5 overall, and 0-1 in the Patriot League. I thought I'd go ahead and make up some midseason grades, and set some "fan goals" for the second half. The 2023 Mountain Hawks were picked to finish fifth in the seven team Patriot League.  In order to meet or exceed that expectation, they'll probably have to go at least 3-2 the rest of the way in conference play.  Their remaining games are vs. Georgetown, at Bucknell, vs. Holy Cross, at Colgate, and vs. Lafayette in The Rivalry. Can they do it? Culture Changing: B+ .  I was there in the Bronx last week after the tough 38-35 defeat to Fordham, and there wasn't a single player emerging from the locker room that looked like they didn't care.  Every face was glum.  They didn't even seem sad.  More frustrated and angry. That may seem normal, considering the agonizing way the Mountain Hawks lost, but it was a marked chan

Fifteen Guys Who Might be Lehigh's Next Football Coach (and Five More)

If you've been following my Twitter account, you might have caught some "possibilities" as Lehigh's next head football coach like Lou Holtz, Brett Favre and Bo Pelini .  The chance that any of those three guys actually are offered and accept the Lehigh head coaching position are somewhere between zero and zero.  (The full list of my Twitter "possibilities" are all on this thread on the Lehigh Sports Forum .) However the actual Lehigh head football coaching search is well underway, with real names and real possibilities. I've come up with a list of fifteen possible names, some which I've heard whispered as candidates, others which might be good fits at Lehigh for a variety of reasons. UPDATE: I have found five more names of possible head coaches that I am adding to this list below. Who are the twenty people?  Here they are, in alphabetical order.