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Schools like Lafayette, Lehigh should offer football scholarships

Now here's the surprise I was talking about!

Click here to read the following op-ed piece from today's Morning Call.

It would be nice to know where the president of Lafayette, Mr. Weiss, and the president of Lehigh, Dr. Gast, stands on this issue. Ultimately, it's not one of competitiveness - it's really one of fairness.
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Anonymous said…
Lehigh and the other Patriot League schools have been very competitive (in the past) without the benefits of scholarships. The year we beat Buffalo and were ranked #2 in the country and Colgate's run to the FCS championship game come to mind. Having said that, being the small minority of schools that cannot offer scholarships is a huge handicap. I would love to see what all of the Patriot League schools (except for Easton Community College) can do by being on equal footing with other FCS schools.

I don't think it is far off. As Chuck has mentioned in the past, I think the impetus for this will be allowing an already scholarship school (such as VMI) into the League. I think the benefit would be great and I'd love to see a Lehigh national champion.

Go ENGINEERS!
10:45 AM
Anonymous said…
You know why I think they won't have football scholarships???? 4900 fans for Senior Day and 7800 Dow....

I don't think the money is there to beef up the program I'm afraid....

I think these factors will start to hit full scholarship programs to cut back on numbers....
3:06 PM
Anonymous said…
It's not the amount of money, but how the money can be spent. Lehigh and the rest of the PL have one arm tied behind their backs when recruiting. Not only must we narrow our focus and true scholar athletes, we can only offer money to players whose famlies meet some convoluted 'need' formula. This way we can compete better with the upper echelon Ivies who are giving full rides to any family making under $100K and the rising programs like Stony Brook and Albany.
9:08 PM
Anonymous said…
The "no scholarships because of poor attendance" argument is essentially flawed. With scholarships, we'll be able to pull better players, with better players, better schools will be more willing to play, drawing bigger crowds.

Also, we'll be able to draw some BCS schools. Without being a scholarship school, the game against us doesn't count towards BCS standings, so schools won't bother with us.

Since it is this week...
F*** Lafayette!
GO ENGINEERS!
11:20 AM
Anonymous said…
That is a good point about the schedule.... The reason teams like Wofford, Furman, Elon, Citadel can have payday games from big schools is the rules about game counting towards bowl eligible and BCS... Lehigh used to have games against FBS teams in the past but haven't in a number of years... They did loosen rules about whether games against lower division would count by using the scholarship idea...

Some of the other bloggers may be right.... I've always wondered what the difference was between the Pioneer League rules and Patriot League rules???? It seems to me that both levels of football have scholarship issues...
12:08 PM
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