Players of the Week, Georgetown vs. Lehigh

Some quick notes before we enter the preview of Yale vs. Lehigh. First of all, here are this week's LFN "Players of the Week":

Offensive Hawk (tie): Junior RB Jay Campbell (another career high this week with 20 carries and 111 yards rushing vs. Georgetown) and freshman QB Michael Colvin (Patriot League Freshman of the Week with 45 yards rushing, averaging 7.5 yards per carry)

Defensive Hawk: Senior LB Matt Cohen (Patriot League Player of the week on defense, 6 tackles, 4 tackles for loss including 3 sacks)

Special Teams Hawk: Junior DB/RS Jarard "Fearless" Cribbs (71 yards in punt returns including a 34 yard return)

You undoubtedly noticed the new nickname above for Jarard. May I propose that the Lehigh special teams unit get a new nickname: the "Fear Factor". With junior DB/RS John "Fear Itself" Kennedy, junior WR Craig "Braveheart" Zurn, there's a lot to fear in Lehigh's special teams units - so why not?

Finally, the ECAC Lambert Poll, ranking the top teams in the East for the Lambert Trophy, was released this week. They list as the top 10 schools:

1. Richmond
2. New Hampshire
3. Villanova
4. William & Mary
5. Colgate
6. Delaware
7. Holy Cross
8. Massachusetts
9. James Madison
T10. Lafayette
T10. Harvard

Every year I go through my own calculations and compute my own Lambert Power Rankings, or LPR, based on a simple formula. (I actually simplified it from last year, where I weighted games in region and overtime games differently - I found out that it wasn't worth dividing in that way.) Unsurprisingly, my LPR also has many CAA teams in it - but has a different breakdown:

1. Richmond (69 points)
2. Villanova (56.5 points)
3. New Hampshire (55.5 points)
4. William & Mary (52 points)
5. Colgate (51 points)
6. Hofstra (43 points)
7. Albany (42 points)
8. UMass (37.5 points)
T9. Delaware (36.5 points)
T9. Holy Cross (36.5 points)

Now this, admittedly, is just a formula (which is the only reason my New Hampshire would be below Villanova, who they beat, and Delaware would be below UMass, whom they beat). But interestingly, Albany, ranked at No. 7 by my system, is nowhere on the official ECAC poll, and neither is Hofstra at No. 6.

The official poll takes out Albany and Hofstra and replaces them with James Madison (9), Lafayette (T10) and Harvard (T10). In my ECAC Ballot, I had all three of these teams in there: but it's interesting to ponder why Albany isn't in there after beating Maine earlier in the year.

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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