The Video Rivalry: Watching The 145th

If you can't be at the game (or you're only going to the tailgate), there are lots of places around the country to watch the game at telecast parties. Nationally and internationally, "The Rivalry" is broadcast everywhere for Lehigh alums to get together, share a cold one and also sing the old Lehigh alma mater with friends.

There's also, of course, your TV (FCS Central, and Channel 69) and computer as well though Yahoo! Broadcast if you want to host your own viewing party. (If you're technically savvy - and I've done this before - you can route your laptop through your TV and watch the Yahoo! Broadcastt on your regular TV.)

And that's only half the story, too.

One of the more underreported parts of "The Rivalry" involve the media surrounding both schools. It could be the only game in America where there are two full staffs of commentators, play-by-play and cameras covering the game at the same time.

Lehigh and Lafayette both sponsor TV broadcasts of almost all their games - something unusual in a landscape where conferences tend to own the rights and announcing. For example, when Michigan plays Ohio State, you get ESPN announcers, period. You don't have the Ohio State TV people and the Michigan people with their own perspectives.

That means that you can also get the game on the local stations that carry the Lafayette Sports Network - and ESPN360 Online, too, if your cable company provides it.

Two computer outlets, almost every local station in the Allentown/Bethlehem/Easton area (and beyond, in Berks County, upper Bucks and elsewhere), and nationally on FCS Central - and a bunch of individual stations on DirecTV for telecasts, too.

Think about that a minute. I don't think any other game in the country can rival that. Sure you get Army/Navy, but with one set of announcers on one station. Sure, you can get USC/UCLA, but there aren't two places to get distinct streams of the game with full announcing staff.

What drives it is - you guessed it - "The Rivalry". Both broadcasts are sponsored and produced by the schools themselves - with some sponsorship, but mostly paid for by the athletics departments themselves. Like everything else involved with Lehigh and Lafayette, there's competition involved. Lafayette holds LSN up to be the biggest coverage area; and Lehigh claims them to be the best quality broadcasts.

And the idea of leaving the big rival to give them a feed of the game so that they don't need to pay to produce it themselves? Please. We'll do it ourselves, thank you very much. After all, we wouldn't want that (Lehigh, Lafayette) bias to infect the coverage.

It's kind of like Fox and CNN covering the same Obama press conference. It happens all the time in the world of news, but almost never in the world of sports.

In many ways, Lehigh and Lafayette are poster children for free markets and capitalism. "The Rivalry" causes innovation, originality, and drives each other to increase the quality and quantity of coverage each year. For an FCS TV junkie like me, it's paradise.