Week Three Football Predictions, 9/18/2010

For those who are interested - below the flip are my selection of picks tomorrow's Patriot League football games being played.

For my picks of the rest of the week, click here to visit the College Sporting News and read: "Speaking of Reasons...", where I pick the Sports Network Top 25.

Last weekend, I went an awful 2-4 in an awful week for the Patriot League in general. Fittingly, the two games I picked correctly - picking Lehigh to lose to Villanova, and Bucknell to lose to Marist - .were Patriot League losses. I couldn't even get the only Patriot League victory - a Fordham win over Rhode Island - correct. That puts my record on the year at 6-6.

You already know my Prnceton/Lehigh prediction: let's see the rest. (more)

Georgetown at Yale. Can the Hoyas do what seemed unthinkable in August - go 3-0 under coach Kevin Kelly and junior QB Scott Darby, and send a message to the rest of the League that they are not to be trifled with in the Patriot League title chase? They might do it against Yale - led by a brand-new quarterback in QB Patrick Witt, and a sour disposition after losing in heartbreaking fashion last year to end the season. Why not the Hoyas? Who not now?

Darby Dazzles DC 24, Witt Wit-out Wiz 17

Fordham at Columbia. The ninth annual "Liberty Cup" will pit those crosstown schools once again - in what has been a great, intense Borough rivalry. Fordham's rushing game, led by RB Xavier Martin, will be matching up against a Lion team that was particularly hard hit by graduation last year. But will Tom Masella's group have the consistency to put this in the win column? Despite their inconsistency, I like the Rams to keep up their positive momentum from the Rhode Island win and get their second in a row.

The X-Men 35, Baby Blue Men 16

Dartmouth at Bucknell. The Bison, unable to score more than a TD against Marist, will have their hands full against a Big Green team that is not all that bad. On CBS College Sports, watch for a big performance from Big Green WR Tim McManus - and a Dartmouth victory.

Green Is the New Green 27, Bison Burgers 6

Lafayette at Penn. It's going to be an emotional night at Franklin Field, as Penn pays tribute to their fallen teammate Owen Thomas. Lafayette QB Marc Quilling, himself a close friend of the Thomas family and surprise starter this week, will have a rough time, however, with the defending Ivy League champs' defense. The Leopards, already off kilter after their shock loss to Georgetown last weekend, won't got on track against QB Keiffer Garton and the Quakers.

Go-Go Gartons 15, Quizzical Quillings 11

Holy Cross at Harvard. How will QB Ryan Taggart, and the rest of the Holy Cross offense, react to their crushing 31-7 loss to UMass? “I think it’s going to be a rallying call for the rest of the season,” head coach Tom Gilmore said, “because as a coach I know none of our players want to be remembered by that performance. The flip side is it happened early in the season and in a non-league game and hopefully it gives us a teaching moment.” Their teaching moment had better be awfully good this by this weekend, as they face off against former LSU QB Andrew Hatch of the Crimson. They'll learn, but they won't turn it around at Harvard Stadium under the lights.

Escape Hatches 35, Grape Apes 21

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....

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...

#TheRivalry Flashback: November 21st, 1987: Lehigh 17, Lafayette 10

Since becoming an undergrad at Lehigh back in the late 1980s, I first heard about the historic nature of the football team and "The Rivalry" through the stories that fellow students would share. I did not attend the final meeting between Lehigh and Lafayette at Taylor Stadium, which was the final time a football game would be played there. Those that did attend said that was that it was cold. "I remember it being one of the coldest games ever," Mark Redmann recollected, "with strong Northwesterly winds and the temperature hovering around 20. By the end of the game, the stands were half empty because most of the fans just couldn't take the cold. "Fortunately, several of my fraternity brothers snuck in flasks to help fend off the chill."

Lehigh Football Nation

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