Lehigh Football Nation

Last time Lehigh took the field at Murray Goodman stadium, the Mountain Hawks lit up the Princeton Tigers for 35 points. Of the 5,000 or so die hard football fans who came to enjoy a picture-perfect day football and tailgating, I'd venture to say all of them were hoping to see another offensive day of 35 points or more. The fans didn't get an offensive explosion, but they ended their day happy anyway. Their hard-fought 21-17 close victory was no less sweet - and probably made the burgers, still going strong after the game, taste just a little bit better, too. (more)

For those who are interested - below the flip are my selection of picks today's Patriot League football games being played. (Last-minute time, I realize.) For my picks of the rest of the week, click here to visit the College Sporting News and read: " Inherently Obvious ", where I pick the Sports Network Top 25. The lead-in will look familiar - it's part of my blog posting about Montana and the WAC I posted earlier this week. Last weekend was a bit of a lackluster Patriot League weekend. I went 2-2, missing the Bucknell/Cornell game, and the Fordham/Holy Cross game (and if you thought last week that Holy Cross would score 36 points, I have a bridge to sell you) I did pick Harvard to beat Lafayette - if a bit less soundly than they did - and Colgate to handle Georgetown. That puts my record at 17-10. (more) Colgate at Princeton. t's been a strange series between these Patriot and Ivy League foes, but folks are starting to catch on to Princeton head co...

(Photo Credit: Time) Spike Lee , probably the most famous New York area sports fan, seems to will willing to hang out with a graduate of Fordham, even if it is Denzel Washington , probably the most famous graduate of Rose Hill since the Seven Blocks of Granite. But unless you're one of my five readers from New York City - or have some sort of linkage back there - doesn't this picture make you want to heave? Two showbiz guys, battling over their wish to root for two of the richest sports franchises in sports history? To pretend to be regular people? It couldn't be any more phony if it were Ben Affleck and Jimmy Fallon doing the ribbing at a Celtics game. (Well, OK. Maybe that is a bit worse then Spike and Denzel.) But it's scenes like this, though, that make me hate the Big Apple. And all their sports teams. (Yes, including the New York Liberty.) How do I hate them? Let me count the ways. (more)

(Photo Credit: The Ram) Momentum. You hear a lot about it during the football season, especially when it comes to bye weeks. Teams with the momentum - and the bye - sometimes lose the focus, and come out flat after a strong start. Interestingly, for Lehigh, bye weeks for the last six years have been all about working out issues - working out kinks after a loss. Counting the 2007 season, where Lehigh had a bye week on Week 1, for the last seven years Lehigh has had a loss entering the bye week. After a game in New Hampshire where starter junior QB Chris Lum was unable to start with a leg injury and multiple defensive stars left the field on crutches, Lehigh's bye week also was huge in another way this time around, too: it's allowed the Mountain Hawks to get healthy after a very challenging September. (more)

Yesterday, I attempted to expose one myth: about the supposed guaranteed riches and benefits that await a school like Montana should receive if they go to FBS and a WAC that's currently on life support.  If they want to roll the dice and go ahead, that's fine with me: but do it for the right reasons, and don't intimate that the FCS playoffs system is dying and blame it for all your financial woes. Today I'm going against the other threat to Football Championship Subdivision: the schools that pick up their ball, their tradition, their scholarships for a bunch of kids who just want to get an education - and pull the plug on the entire program. That's exactly what happened at Northeastern University and Hofstra University this past offseason, and was recently applauded by a reporter at the Boston Globe . Whenever the subject matter in the larger world of college football turns to TV contracts, larger and larger athletics programs and out-of-control spending, ...

(Photo Credit: Kurt Wilson of the Missoulian) You can get plenty of hits on Google if you combine the two words "WAC" and "trouble". But probably not as many as there would have been even just a few weeks ago. That's because the WAC - who has two teams currently ranked in the Top 25 in Boise State and Nevada - has announced in the next 30 to 60 days that it will be offering bids to four, and perhaps five, potential members . If you came back from Mars and read these statements, you'd probably think that the future for the WAC is rosy.  Unfortunately for the WAC, however, Boise State and Nevada will be bolting for the Mountain West conference starting in 2011 - and while the WAC might attempt to reload with a combination of basketball-only schools and FCS football-playing schools, make no mistake about it: the WAC is still in a real struggle for its survival. It's in this atmosphere that Montana athletic director Jim O'Day sent an email to a...

It was a tough call as to what this weekend's "Sunday Word" would be. With Colgate's emphatic win over Georgetown and Holy Cross' thrilling win over Fordham, the word "order" was a strong candidate. With Harvard slamming Lafayette and Cornell defeating Bucknell, perhaps "Ivy" would have been appropriate. But at this moment of time - when it seems like there are earthquakes or aftershocks rocking the college football world every couple of weeks - it's not a weekend to simply discuss the issues that face the Patriot League. It seems like the entire reality of college football is "fragile". It's been an unwritten rule in years' past that talk of conference realignments, schools moving up from Division II to Division I or from FCS to FBS, or even puff pieces about not having football wouldn't see the light of day during the regular season - mostly because the emphasis of coverage was (and should be) on the exploit...