My Christmas Wishes

First of all, merry Christmas, dear Readers. Like every one of you, I have wishes for Christmas as well, and I'd like to share them with you.

* As a Lehigh fan, I'd like a better offense for the 2010 season. Sure, there were flashes of what was possible in 2009, but I really don't want to sit through another home shutout anytime soon if that's OK with everybody.

* Maybe part of that wish above might involve Lehigh hiring a quarterbacks coach, Santa, to help the quarterbacks with mechanics and the like. I know university athletic departments aren't exactly teeming with money right now, but what about inviting a local guy that cares about the program, like former QB Phil Stambaugh, to work with them sometime? This isn't just for next year, either: this would pay off for the next generation of Lehigh quarterback, too.

* While I'm wishing, Santa, I could use some Saints playoff tickets. And some round-trip tickets and accomodations to New Orleans for me and my family, too, while we're at it.

* I wish for the players at Northeastern and Hofstra to land on their feet and get the opportunity to play and coach again if they desire. It was not fair what happened to those kids, and there were some good coaches that lost their job through no fault of their own.

* I wish college presidents at the FCS level stop the dangerous fiction that FCS football is a for-profit enterprise that balances the books for the rest of athletics. That certainly isn't true in the Patriot League, and in no college in the Northeast. Admit that there is value to having a football team on your campus. It may not make sense, and it may not be fair, but it's the way it is.

* Is this the part of the blog posting where I wish Satnta for world peace, completely renewable energy for all, and for the ability to forgive? It must be.

* I wish the Patriot League presidents would sit down and take a look at their football programs, and see in their hearts that the ability to offer football scholarships - even in just a limited way, by, say, twenty full scholarships and the rest need-limited aid - would allow the Patriot League to compete in the marketplace of scholar-athletes in a new way. Keep the academic index and the strong academic requirements for Patriot League football players - but just having some scholarships available would make such a massive difference in recruiting and allow Patriot League schools to get more scholar-athletes.

* And finally, Santa, are there any other extra tickets for the 2010 World Cup in your sack? The USA vs. England match, the "Tea Party" game, perhaps?

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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