6th Round Draft Pick Don Carey: Almost a Mountain Hawk

Folks looking at whether Lehigh should offer athletic scholarship ought to look at the story of the 6th round draft pick of the Cleveland Browns, Norfolk State CB Don Carey. Why? According to this report, he almost was a Mountain Hawk:

“Coming out of high school I really wasn’t highly recruited as far as football. I had a lot of academic scholarships. I had financial aid to Yale, financial aid to Michigan, financial aid to Colgate, Lehigh, all kinds of schools, Patriot and Ivy League schools. I only had one football scholarship and that was Norfolk State. I really couldn’t afford to go to Yale. I’m honored that I received that acceptance letter and whatnot, but Norfolk State gave me the best chance to get a college education and still play football.”

Carey was a four-year starter for the Spartans and is planning to major in building construction technology (with a minor in architectural drafting) in May. He was Norfolk State's recipient of the Army Strong Award in 2007, given to the football player who best exemplifies community service and achievement on the field and in the classroom, and was a two-time (soon to be three-time) member of the Norfolk State and MEAC Commissioner’s All-Academic Teams.

Picture this: he doesn't get offered enough athletic aid to go to Yale, but Lehigh and Colgate instead come in and are able to offer him a full athletic scholarship. Might he have gone to Lehigh as an architectural student, provided NFL-caliber talent in our secondary while providing the Brown & White exactly the sort of scholar-athlete that the Patriot League strives to produce?

Might it have been for the want of a few scholarship dollars? Just the ability to put the name "scholarship" to the aid?

We'll never know now.

Comments

ngineer said…

I am sure there are alot of these stories. But I don't see anything changing in the near future.

12:23 AM

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. W

Made-Up Midseason Grades for Lehigh Football

We are now officially midway through the 2023 Lehigh football season. The Mountain Hawks sit at 1-5 overall, and 0-1 in the Patriot League. I thought I'd go ahead and make up some midseason grades, and set some "fan goals" for the second half. The 2023 Mountain Hawks were picked to finish fifth in the seven team Patriot League. In order to meet or exceed that expectation, they'll probably have to go at least 3-2 the rest of the way in conference play. Their remaining games are vs. Georgetown, at Bucknell, vs. Holy Cross, at Colgate, and vs. Lafayette in The Rivalry. Can they do it? Culture Changing: B+ . I was there in the Bronx last week after the tough 38-35 defeat to Fordham, and there wasn't a single player emerging from the locker room that looked like they didn't care. Every face was glum. They didn't even seem sad. More frustrated and angry. That may seem normal, considering the agonizing way the Mountain Hawks lost, but it was a marked chan

Fifteen Guys Who Might be Lehigh's Next Football Coach (and Five More)

If you've been following my Twitter account, you might have caught some "possibilities" as Lehigh's next head football coach like Lou Holtz, Brett Favre and Bo Pelini . The chance that any of those three guys actually are offered and accept the Lehigh head coaching position are somewhere between zero and zero. (The full list of my Twitter "possibilities" are all on this thread on the Lehigh Sports Forum .) However the actual Lehigh head football coaching search is well underway, with real names and real possibilities. I've come up with a list of fifteen possible names, some which I've heard whispered as candidates, others which might be good fits at Lehigh for a variety of reasons. UPDATE: I have found five more names of possible head coaches that I am adding to this list below. Who are the twenty people? Here they are, in alphabetical order.

Lehigh Football Nation

Search This Blog