Players of the Week, Lehigh vs. Bucknell

The fantastic work on offense in Lehigh's 35-16 win over Bucknell deserves plenty of "Player of the Week" nominees. Eight, in fact.

Offensive Hawks of the Week: Junior OL William Rackley, sophomore OL Troy McKenna, sophomore OL Jim Liebler, junior OL Ricky Clerge, and senior OL Frank Giacalone (0 sacks, 461 yards of offense) and junior QB J.B. Clark (24 for 37 passing, 327 yardsm 2 TDs, 1 INT).

Defensive Hawk of the Week: Junior DB/RS Jon "Prez" Kennedy (65 return yards on 2 kickoff returns, 3 tackles, 1 INT)

Special Teams Hawk of the Week: Freshman TE Jamel Haggins (grabbing a blocked XP and returning it for the 2-point conversion)

Congratulations to all the winners - and here's hoping that the momentum from this win will carry all the way north to Hamilton..

The third ECAC Lambert Poll was released this week, and it's no secret which team remains at No. 1: that's right, the team that also happens to have been the No. 1 team in the land since Week Two this year. Only a reshuffling of the Top Ten this week:

1. (1) Richmond
2. (2) Villanova
3. (3) William & Mary
4. (4) New Hampshire
T5. (7) Delaware
T5. (8) Holy Cross
7. (6) Massachusetts
T8. (5) Colgate
T8. (9) Lafayette
10. (10) Penn

Dropping Out: None

My own Lambert Power Rankings, or LPR, paints a different picture:

1. (1) Richmond (98 points)
2. (2) Villanova (72 points)
3. (T3) New Hampshire (71 points)
4. (T5) Albany (66.5 points)
5. (T54) William & Mary (62 points)
6. (T3) Colgate (57.5 points)
7. (T10) Holy Cross (56.5 points)
8. (T5) UMass (53 points)
9. (T10) Lafayette (52 points)
10. (8) Hofstra (49.5 points)

Clearly Albany, using my weighted system to weigh strength of schedule, is ranked too high, but at 6-2, I think they're clearly worth a Top 10 Lambert Trophy vote - and I've been voting them in for the past two weeks.

Other wackiness; Delaware falling out of the Top 10 (only because they had a bye week, certainly), and Holy Cross beating Colgate, but still failing to pass them. I'll have to think about revising my formula when I get a chance. Rest assured, though, if Delaware keeps winning they won't only be in the LPR Top 10, they'll certainly rise up quickly.

Oh yeah - and the Phillies didn't even need Mr. Lidge in Game One of the World Series last night. I know, though, the Phils will need him to save one, maybe two, games this Series, and I know he'll come through. I believe.

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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