Lehigh Football Nation

(Photo courtesy Marcia White, The Easton Express-Times ) The plan was to write a nice summary about Lehigh preseason camp today, but sometimes a news story close to home causes everything to get upended - and the Michael Vick story does just that . Word spread through the preseason broadcast of the first Eagles preseason game last night, and rapidly found its way onto ESPN, the NFL network and everyone's front page today: Michael Vick, the talented QB fresh out of jail for torturing dogs and sponsoring dogfighting , was signed by the Eagles yesterday evening. Despite an early radio campaign to drum up support (I actually heard a radio ad several weeks ago talking about Eagles fans dreaming of Michael Vick as an Eagle), almost to a person fans, commentators and observers think this is a horrible idea. Fans are not "excited" - as the radio ad would have you believe - they're sad. (And, no, not just the Eagle fans who happen to be dogs, like the one pictured.) I have ...

I'm away on summer vacation, but I couldn't resist getting in a few tidbits of information about Lehigh before I left. (I wrote this post earlier.) While I'm enjoying the seaside, junior RB Jaren Walker was volunteering at the Sports Camp at Lehigh . The Johnson-McCormick family tried to blog about the experience without me knowing, but - let's just say I have ways to find out things. This past week Kyle and Owen were in Sports Camp at Lehigh . They had their most fun week yet of the entire summer! They LOVED LOVED LOVED it. They just soaked it all up and could not have been happier with it. Last week, fall practice started. In the official release , coach Coen makes one very interesting note: “ Freshman RB Zach Barket and freshman RB Tony Kablan have a great opportunity in front of them; the running backs always see a lot of action and get a high number of reps during camp so each one of those guys will have a chance to show what he’s capable of.” I haven't ...

Even though I'm on vacation, I did want to post a quick "Sunday Word" on a subject that may not seem to affect Lehigh - but it does. Recently, Delaware state's government rolled the dice about allowing sports gambling in the state. In an effort to plug the massive hole in the state budget, they instituted a plan to take advantage of a federal loophole to re-institute a form of sports gambling that they had dropped in 1976. Whatever the motivations of Delaware governor Jack Markell, he had to know that the NCAA doesn't take kindly to sports gambling - they've largely upheld a ban of sanctioned NCAA postseason events, for example, and none of the big-money events - so he must have known that the NCAA would be likely to bring the hammer down on Delaware schools if sports gambling were legalized. And this Friday, the NCAA delivered what was expected: a ban on NCAA postseason competition for schools in the First State. For those Patriot League fans scoring at ho...