Lehigh Football Nation

You can read my writeup of the game on CSTV's website. Even though Lafayette kept this game close through the third quarter, for the third straight playoff trip Lafayette played a top team close for (nearly) three quarters, but being unable to pull things out in the end. Lafayette acquitted themselves well in my opinion. UMass head coach Don Brown praised Lafayette saying that their staff "is the smartest I've coached against this year". If you couldn't bring yourself to root for Lafayette, you got your with with the Leopard loss. But the Patriot League in a down year showed that they will still be heard from in years to come. All in all, not a bad deal for the Patriot League as 2006 has come to a close for everyone in the Patriot League. I think I went 7-1 in my playoff picks this week... not bad.

Are you watching this game? UMass had this game under control until about 3 minutes in the second quarter, and then got an interception, converted for a TD. Then the Leopards forced a fumble off the return, and then converted THAT for a TD, making this a game. It's on CN8. You really should be watching this.

Awaking from my turkey coma, it dawns on me that I forgot to do my promised blog posting on Lehigh and the All-Patriot League teams. It will have to wait probably until early next week. Why? The first round of the FCS playoffs is tomorrow, and you're simply going to have to do the unthinkable: root for Lafayette. Yes, dear reader, I know. It's difficult to bring yourself to look yourself in the mirror and root for the team that kicked our ass last Saturday. But trust me when I say it's worth it. Just to help you out, here are 10 reasons to root for Lafayette. 1. Revenge for 1998. If it wasn't for that bogus pass interference call, Lehigh would have beaten UMass and won the I-AA championship. 2. You just know that the players are looking at Lafayette's 6-5 record and are thinking to themselves at some level, "cupcake". 3. As ugly as they are, Lafayette is the only member of our league, the Patriot League, playing in the playoffs. 4. UMass whined...

It's a little hard to read, but to your left is the brackets for the I-AA (oops, I mean D-I Football Championship Subdivision) playoffs for 2006. As promised, I'm weighing in on my thoughts on the selections. Like the NCAA basketball tournament, the bracket is broken down in a series of "seeds". You could call each section of the bracket the equivalent of an NCAA "regional", though it's not necessarily geographic in nature. The four seeds: #1 Appalachian State, #2 Montana, #3 UMass and #4 Youngstown State are guaranteed a home game through their "regional". Let's break down the bracket. The Appalchian State Regional Coastal Carolina at #1 Appalachian State. "Congratulations Coastal, you've just gotten the first-ever invite to the playoffs. What are you going to do?" "We're going to Boone, NC!" was probably not the first thing they had in mind, but there we are. Hard to see the Mountaineers lose this game, but ke...

I guess I haven't totally gotten "grace" yet, but I can't stop thinking about the flow of the weekend, sports-wise, that couldn't be described in any other way than "train wreck". (Apropos for a blog talking about Lehigh Enigneer... I mean, Mountain Hawk football.) I wake up on Saturday, and it's a sunny day. Beautiful. And I couldn't have had a better feeling of karma driving up to Easton. It felt like the moon was in the seventh house, Jupiter aligned with Mars, and the sports world was aligned for me. Let's recap what happened after that, shall we? * The 142nd. Lehigh, of course, loses. * Later that evening, I watch my wife's alma mater, Rutgers, get humiliated by Cincinnati 30-11. Their outside shot at a national championship is gone; their shot at a BCS bowl requires them to run the table. * I wake up the next day greeted by the realization that the Flyers, unsurprisingly, got drilled 6-1 by the San Jose Sharks, cementing their ...

The long offseason of Lehigh's football team starts now, with the lingering image to my left being the lasting memory of the 2006 season. Next week, we learned, Lafayette will have to play mighty UMass up in Amherst, MA, as a reward for beating us. I'm not sure if the Leopards will be able to compete with the strong defense and powerful running game of the Minutemen. But there's plenty of time to talk about that, predict the playoffs, and honor the seniors who did their best yesterday. It's time to talk about "grace". We're in that difficult situation right now where we need to find some "grace". Something inside us that puts the loss behind us, and allows us all to cheer for Lafayette next week. But these losses hurt, and you can't go through that much emotion without feeling some lingering bad feelings. I have them too. The view of the (thankfully few) drunk Lafayette students swearing and cursing out the Lehigh players as they left t...