Goings-on in the long, hot summer

I know the temptation is to spend the summer simply watching old movies, but hard as it is to believe there is some Patriot League football news that bears reporting. With all the parts of my Patriot League preview for the College Sporting News FCS Yearbook finally written, and my move coming up in a very short time, here's some of the interesting news trickling off the wires in the Patriot League these days.

First of all, can you believe that Patriot League Media day is just around the corner on July 31st?

Second of all, can you believe that the Dalai Lama will be teaching at Lehigh in a mere two weeks? (My family and I are all over this one: just a week or so after our move, four of us are going to see him in Stabler.) With Beijing hosting the 2008 Olympics, his presence at Lehigh couldn't be more timely.

Now, around the league in the world of football:

Lehigh alum Joe Alleva ('75) recently was interviewed by the media in Baton Rouge about his challenge in taking over the athletic director position at LSU. Not content with winning the championship in football, he says he wants to "win the championship in everything" - pretty big goals, Joe! The best part of the interview? The mention of "The Rivalry": Alleva "counts one of his fondest sports memories the touchdown passes he threw in his final game to lead Lehigh past archrival Lafayette in the most-played series in college football."
Fordham P Benjamin Dato unfortunately was cut by the Baltimore Ravens. That's a real shame, though I would bet that Mr. Dato should get a chance somewhere else with his tremendous leg. No word if new #1 Raven draft pick from Delaware Joe Flacco ran him out of town because Dato was his biggest competition in the "Ravens from FCS Teams' Punt, Pass and Kick competition".
On the plus side for the Rams, incoming OL Wes Perryman from Texas did play in the famous Texas/Oklahoma Oil Bowl All-Star game.
"That school in Easton" recently hosted a great even in "Lauren's First And Goal" camp, which raised over $100,000 for pediatric brain tumor research. For the complete inspiring story of Lafayette assistant coach John Loose and his daughter Lauren, click here.
Colgate players have been spotted all over the Pennsylvania and New Jersey all-star games: incoming RB/LB Nate Eachus in the "Big 33" game, incoming LB Andy Matz in the East-West game, and incoming QB Steve Rizzo in the Adam Talafieri All-Star Classic (NJ). As a Lehigh fan, I really hope this isn't a good sign for Colgate in the near future...
Holy Cross now is getting an FM Radio home. Apparently, the upgrade was warranted since the Crusaders' football and basketball games were getting pre-empted too often... by minor-league hockey.
Crusader LB Ryan Stewart was profiled in this article. He seems like a good bet to be one of the veteran leaders on defense for Holy Cross.
Finally, Georgetown rounded up one of their few seniors to detail the voluntary off-season workouts the Hoyas have been engaging in. It's interesting detail about the offseason workout programs that happen at all Patriot League schools, not just Georgetown.

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....

UMass 21, Lafayette 14, halftime

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.

Examining A Figure Skating Rivalry: Tonya and Nancy

It must be very hard for a millennial to understand the fuss around the Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding figure skating scandal in the run-up to the 1994 Olympics. If you're of a certain age, though - whether you're a figure skating fan or not, and I am decidedly no fan of figure skating - the Shakespearean story of Harding and Kerrigan still engages, and still grabs peoples' attention, twenty years later. Why, though? Why, twenty years later, in a sport I care little, does the story still grab me? Why did I spend time out of my life watching dueling NBC and ESPN documentaries on the subject, and Google multiple stories about Jeff Gilooly , idiot "bodyguards", and the whole sordid affair? I think it's because the story, even twenty years later, is like opium. The addictive story, even now, has everything. Everything. The woman that fought for everything, perhaps crossing over to the dark side to get her chance at Olypic Gold, vs. the woman who...

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