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Sunday's Word: Marathon

It's officially less than six days until the beginning of the Lehigh football season. The twelve-week "marathon" begins next Saturday against Central Connecticut State at Murray Goodman stadium, and the excitement is similar to the beginning of a race like this: everyone starts out even at the start, with the anticipation that anyone can win it.

For me, football season is also becoming a "marathon" of a different sort. As you may or may not know, not only do I write content for this wonderful blog you're reading right now, I also do a lot of other projects as well (including - it may surprise some folks to learn - a day job).

I also write the CSN Way column at the College Sporting News during the college football regular season. In my latest article there, I talk about my 27 fearless predictions for the world of FCS in 2009. (And with Indiana State state losing in the first FCS game of the year, 26-20 to NAIA Quincy, my predictions are off to a humbling start.)

This offseason, I deployed a brand new web app called College Sports Source that attempts to be a portal to all the links anyone could ever need about Division I schools. (Here's Lehigh's team page on there). It's a work-in-progress, but the entire Patriot League is set up as is most of the schools of FCS. (The rest should be done sometime this week.)

In addition to team information, College Sports Source also provides a comprehensive list of all the Division I games on TV and online. For all the FCS and FBS games on TV or online for Week One, click here.

You may have noticed the blog widget which shows Lehigh's schedule on the left hand side. I've also been developing that - and you'll be seeing the schedule blog widget popping up on other blogs as well, which pull from the same source that College Sports Source pulls its information from. There are plans for other widgets as well, including one for standings and a current week game schedule.

But more than that, this year's "marathon" for the football players of the Patriot League seems like it's going to be a very special one indeed.

Two quarterbacks - Fordham senior QB John Skelton and Holy Cross senior QB Dominic Randolph - are NFL prospects, with Skelton most recently showing up in the New York Times as such. (And with a nickname, to boot: "Franchise".)

Nobody discounts Lehigh, Colgate or Lafayette's chances to take the Patriot League title either: the Sports Network' s Patriot League preview has them not very far behind the Rams and Crusaders, and some also a whispering that Bucknell might even be in the discussion as well. The College Sporting News also released their 2009 FCS Yearbook with an entire section on the Patriot League - with strikingly similar conclusions to the Sports Network.

All seven coaching staffs have been in place for the last four years - the only league without any head coaching turnover in the last four years. All seven teams also seem to be poised to have the same starting QBs from last year starting this year - another first. The experience on offense and on each coaching staff could mean that the quality of play in the Patriot League will be something special.

It's going to be a fun time to be a Patriot League fan this year. All this points to a very, very interesting regular-season "marathon" for the Patriot League next weekend.

And for myself, too.

Comments

Anonymous said…
The Lehigh schedule is overlapping the left side of your column. This makes it very hard to read the latest blog when you are missing the first 3 words from each line.

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