Lehigh Football Nation

I'll admit it: I was hoping to make the trip to the Bronx this weekend to record this game for posterity, since it's one of two games this year that Lehigh plays that is not televised. After coming back from the game and thinking about it, perhaps the game was better off remaining unrecorded in any way, if you're a Lehigh fan. First of all, though, congratulations to Fordham and head coach Tom Masella, who played a great game and never made me feel comfortable that Lehigh was going to pull out the game at any point. Although their offense did stall a little bit in the second half, they stayed away from making mistakes. Their trenches got great push against our lines, and that defensive front seven is for real - they got to our quarterback, got a bunch of tackles for loss, and played a whale of a game. And the sophomore QB John Skelton is a very good quarterback for the Rams, who was very effective passing the ball - and with no interceptions that have plagued him in oth

In a way, we're really spoiled as Lehigh fans, a fact which I was reminded of when researching the Fordham game this weekend. Not only do you, the Lehigh fan, have this blog to keep you informed about Lehigh, but you also have *two* local papers covering Lehigh, the occasional blog comment from Keith Groller and columnist rants at the Express-Times. Fordham? Their own school paper can't even stay updated on their own team, with the latest story on the Liberty Cup three weeks ago! And the daily newspapers are hopeless: a check of the New York Times showed that after the Liberty Cup, Fordham may as well not even exist as a football school. Same with the New York Post , and the Daily News is simply hopeless on all college football news, while New York Newsday covers the Long Island teams of Hofstra and Stony Brook. Four major newspapers, and not a peep about Lehigh coming to town! On the bright side, it means that my job is extremely easy in doing the mash-up. Patriot Pr

League games are always more important than non-league games, but the team Lehigh is facing this year couldn't be more different than the one they faced last year. Last year, Fordham lost to Lehigh 45-14 the week before Lehigh/Lafayette on "Senior Day", and the Mountain Hawks played what was probably their best game of the year. All phases of the game were clicking. Over 400 yards of offense, senior CB Brannan Thomas had a couple of interceptions, and RB Marques Thompson had 3 TDs. Fordham started with some fight, but ultimately fell in a blowout. But this year, despite coach Tom Masella's downplaying of his troops a little bit in the pregame press conference, this one will be a huge benchmark for the Rams and a dangerous game for the Mountain hawks. A win here could propel Fordham at 2-0 in league play, with two of their hardest games behind them, and establish the Rams as a team that could very well be talking Patriot League title and autobids. A loss by Lehig

In what was an incredibly tight vote, we have a winner for player of the week. In a bad day for the offense, offensive player of the week will be going to junior RB Josh Pastore . Despite a key fumble, he did get 80 all-purpose yards, including 42 rushing yards and 28 receiving yards. I thought seriously about not giving one out, but in the end Pastore did have a decent day (minus the fumble, of course.) So he does get it. Special teams will go to two players, one which was Special Teams Player of the Week, and the other who has been an unsung hero on this team Junior P/K Jason Leo averaged more than 44 yards per punt, keeping Lehigh ahead significantly in the field position battle. He got six punts inside the 20, and three punts inside the 6, and added 2/3 FGs and 2/2 XPs. But senior CB Brannan Thomas got the party started by squirting through the punt coverage and getting a big early 57 yard punt return for a touchdown. Just edging out Leo for player of the week is junior LB Ti

Poor Hoyas. The grim 45-7 loss to the Big Red of Cornell once again left awfully few positives for Georgetown as the Hoyas got pummeled on both lines. The season statistics don't tell the whole story, but it's pretty telling: in five games, they've only gotten into the red zone ten times, converting eight of those tries. Defensively, they've only gotten two sacks. Against Cornell, a sad, familiar script: 15 carries for 11 yards in the first quarter, en route to a 21-0 halftime lead. And traveling to Penn this weekend may not be much help: after an excruciating 21-13 loss to Dartmouth in Hanover, NH, you've got to believe that they are going to be looking to put a major hurt on somebody, and the Hoyas seem like that team. Holy Cross, who had been crowing about their offense that can score whenever it wants to, met their match in Yale as junior RB Mike McLeod ran over the Crusaders 38-17. McLeod, aside from getting College Sporting News Player of the Week hon

It's not a situation Lehigh fans are familiar with. A Lehigh team that is 3-1 in September, whose main engine is special teams and defense. The Lehigh defense is getting in the face of opposing quarterbacks, and getting things done. When has this ever been the case? Yet here we are, which you'll see in the mash-up. The win over Harvard impressed votes in the Sports Network Poll, too: jumping in front of Furman and just behind Georgia Southern in the "Others Receiving Votes" category. Five spots above "that school in Easton", Lehigh is 29th in the poll, and should we get a win over Fordham next week, we could possibly be poised to rejoin the Top 25 for the first time this year. And the first recipients for Patriot League players of the Week (aside from freshman RB Kwesi Kankam 's two "Rookie of the Week" awards) were on defense and special teams: junior LB Tim Diamond 's 22 tackles, forced fumble and fumble recovery, and junior P/K Ja

I really don't like using this word in terms of the Lehigh victory this weekend. Sure, it was some win. It sure seemed several times like Harvard was going to pull it out, and it was amazing how the defense won. But the word "miracle" feels, well, too strong. I'd prefer to use a word like "guts", "grit", or maybe even just "lucky". But my week, and the week in Philadelphia sports in general, just seems to tail into the word "Miracle". It starts, oddly enough, with an unknown Netflix movie my wife's mother lent my wife and I before it was to be sent back. We got the movie, and planned to watch it Thursday night, with the explanation that it had Kurt Russell in it, and it had something to do with (I swear this is true) "Angels". I racked my brain - what on Earth could it be? Big Trouble in Little China ? The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes ? It turned out - yes - that the movie was Miracle , the story of the 1980 US Men&