Lehigh Football Nation

Yes, that's where I'm going. In my column this week for the CSN Way , I talk about the new proposal to have the championship game played the day before the BCS Championship game in January. Bottom line: I like it. And here are my quick picks this week in the Patriot League (home team in caps): COLGATE 35, No. 21 Lafayette 31 HOLY CROSS 45, Bucknell 3 FORDHAM 27, Marist 14 If I wish upon a star, I wish for a Lehigh victory, of course, but I also wish for a cure for ALS , too. Have a great weekend.

How to look at this game if you're Lehigh? If you look at history, Lehigh has dominated this series. Since the Hoyas joined the Patriot League in 2001, the Mountain Hawks have put 40 points up on Georgetown six out of the last seven years, while only having given up a field goal to the Hoyas in the last two meetings. But it's also hard to escape the fact that it's a 2-5 team traveling to a 1-6 team in the first week in November. For Georgetown, this is the sort of game that could start them on the road to competitiveness. They've never beaten Lehigh in the modern era, and a win would prove to them they have truly arrived. For Lehigh, even at 2-5, it's a win they expect, and need, to have. It's one game at a time. Win each week, see what happens. This week, a Mountain Hawk run at the championship starts, or ends, now. Game Notes Not much change in the game notes this week. Senior DL Paul Bode is officially off the depth chart this week (probably due to inj...

Every day, I get many news alerts in my inbox. I like to think that I'm up on all the latest news about Patriot League football - I feel like I need to be ultra-informed about the goings-on all over the Patriot League, not just Lehigh, in order to do this Lehigh Football Nation blog thing right. Today, I get my normal news alerts, and I see a new AP story about Colgate RB Jordan Scott, courtesy of the International Herald Tribune . If you're a follower of the Patriot League and specifically of Colgate, you already know most of the story: in the offseason, he was arrested for burglary in an on-campus incident. He spent time in jail, served his suspension from the team (for one game), and as far as I was concerned, that was the end of it. Until I read this: Maybe Scott simply wanted to prove something because of that off-the-field mistake. He's had to deal with some of the content on the Lehigh Football Nation blog, where various entries said Scott was a stalker, that peo...

"Philly really, really deserves it." That's what my wife, the Phillies fan, said to me after Brad Lidge stuck out the last batter, got on his knees and pointed up at the sky - and after Ryan Howard and the rest of the Phillies gang-tackled him at the mound. First pitch, 8:37 PM on October 27th. Last pitch, a little after 10:00 PM on October 29th. In between, a weather pattern that seemed to imply that a second Phillies World Series was having a rough time fitting in with the cosmos. Pouring rain, which caused the first (and only one, to this point) World Series game suspension. The next day: rain, sleet - and snow, for the first time in this area in 30 years. Even earlier today it wasn't at all clear that the game would go on with more sleet and snow. Much was made about Philadelphia's drought with pro sports franchises in the past 25 years, the curse of William Penn, and the like. The attempt of folks to shroud it in some sort of "curse", it must ...

Despite senior QB Quadir Carter winning Patriot League Player of the Week honors, this weeks Reader's Choice Player of the Week award goes to the tough running of senior RB Matt McGowan . Out of 375 total offensive yards for the Mountain Hawks, the Hazelton Area product was responsible for 244 of those all-purpose yards: 178 on the ground, and 66 off of screen passes. One of those passes found McGowan zigging and zagging for yards, shedding tacklers before getting into the end zone; his rushing touch came frrom him bursting through a person-sized hole on the line of scrimmage and again zigging his way through the secondary for the score. After his tough performance, he certainly is well deserving of the "Reader's Choice" honors this week. Game Balls will be going to: Reader's Choice: Senior RB Matt McGowan Defense: Senior DB Quadir Carter (13 total tackles including 9 solo stops, 2 interceptions in red zone) Defense: Junior LB Heath Brickner (10 total tackle...

I don't know if Villanova fans follow this blog, or my Lambert Power Rankings, but I can say with certainty that they won't be happy with what the rankings tell us this week. 'Nova fans probably aren't that upset with the Sports Network 's Top 25 this week , which has them maintaining their No. 7 ranking this week after falling on a last-second hail-mary play to James Madison this week. (Full disclosure: James Madison was still my No. 1 pick, and I dropped Villanova a couple points in my poll.) Lafayette continued to climb the rankings too (No. 21, up 3 spots), as did Harvard (No. 23, up 2 spots). Likewise, in the official ECAC Lambert Cup Poll this week, James Madison and Villanova remain squarely at No. 1 and No. 2. As a matter of fact, the only change from this week to last week's poll is that Albany dropped out at No. 10 and was replaced by Maine. (Go figure; they both won last week.) But in my Lambert Power Rankings, margin of victory does not matter. ...

The official release is out from last weekend's loss at Holy Cross. WORCESTER, Mass. – Holy Cross quarterback Dominic Randolph threw for 330 yards and three touchdowns as the Crusaders rallied past visiting Lehigh by a 35-21 score at Fitton Field on Saturday afternoon. Trailing 21-nothing, Lehigh (2-5 overall, 1-1 Patriot League) battled back to tie the score in the third quarter, before the Crusaders put together the game’s final two scores. Senior captain Matt McGowan had a career day for the Mountain Hawks, rushing for 178 yards and one touchdown to go along with two receptions for 66 yards and another score. His 178 rush yards were the most by a Mountain Hawk since 2003. “I’m disappointed obviously,” Lehigh head coach Andy Coen said after the game. “I thought we came in with a good game plan and in that first quarter we didn’t execute very well, particularly on defense. We had missed tackles and a few other missed assignments. I was happy with how we came back after bein...

After watching the wet slop at Game 5 at the Linc today - and the incredible game suspension in Game 5 in the middle of the 6th inning 2-2 in a game that never should have even been started given the weather forecast, all I can keep thinking about is: what the Philadelphia fan needs is a creed, like the unofficial one at the Post office. Instead of " Neither snow, nor rain nor heat stays these couriers from their appointed rounds ", it ought to go something like this: We are Philadelphia fans. We love each other like brothers, but will roll others out of the upper decks like nutters. We are cheesesteak-eating, soft pretzel-munching Rocky's, Pat Croce's, Bernie Parent's. We go about our day with memories of bitterly falling short in key situations, near-complete ineptitude in the front office, strange blot clots taking out top goalscorers one series before the Stanley Cup, Allen Iverson, mysterious stomach viruses affecting our starting quarterbacks, and - wors...

It was a huge sports weekend for the Philadelphia (and, by extension, Lehigh Valley) area. Of course, last year if someone said that this sort of Philadelphia area sports weekend were possible, they'd have said that you were "delusional". With two World Series wins at home, the improbable Phillies are on the brink of their first world title sine 1980, and all of a sudden you can see more Phillies shirts and hats (seemingly, with the tags still on them) on people in this area than ever before. That's not all. Penn State further extended their stranglehold on the Big 10 title with a hard-fought 13-6 win over one of their big-time stumbling blocks, Ohio State. The Flyers are winning. Even the Eagles - who have given their fans more frustration than smiles this year - took advantage of a horrible call by the officials (the ball bounced straight up, zebras!) and put away the "Dirty Birds" of Atlanta 27-14. In Lehigh's neck of college football, the Footbal...