Lehigh's Recruiting Christmas List

First of all, let me be the first to wish all my readers a merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, and joyous Holiday season.

And if you're a Lehigh fan, you're probably also wondering what new Mountain Hawk recruits might be needed to continue Lehigh's dominance over "that school in Easton" and also continue their run of Patriot League championships and playoff appearances.

Below the flip, see what recruiting needs would make my Lehigh Valley Christmas even happier. (Santa, are you listening?)

1. Looking over Lehigh's roster, a whopping six linebackers are seniors: senior LB Mike Groome, senior LB Colin Newton, senior LB Fred Mihal, senior LB Tanner Rivas, senior LB Devin Greene, and senior LB Shane Ryan.

All six made major contributions and started games for the Mountain Hawks. I can't think of a departing linebacking class for Lehigh that had as much impact as these guys.

Junior LB Billy Boyko will be a strong candidate next year to step into the large shoes of these seniors, but replenishing this group seems to me like priority one.

Dear Santa: Another Mike Groome and Colin Newton, please.

2. Eight trench guys - four on offense, and four on defense, are seniors, including five all-league players (senior OL Troy McKenna, senior DE Andrew Knapp, senior OL Keith Schauder, senior DE Ben Flizack, and senior OL Jim Liebler).

3/5ths of the "O" line that allowed senior QB Chris Lum to be a Patriot League finalist, and a host of blitzing "D" linemen that were big disruptive forces on the other side of the ball leave this offseason.

Again, while the cupboard is not bare with junior NG Sajjad Chagani and sophomore OL Matt Lippincott returning next year, Lehigh will need more numbers in the trench this recruiting season.

Dear Santa: Did you find room in your sack for four all-League linemen?

3. You don't just replace a Payton Award-winning quarterback, but crucially, many of the targets that Lum depended on last year are also leaving the program as well.

Senior WR Jake Drwal, the "yin" to junior WR Ryan Spadola's "yang" on the other side of the field, graduates, as does senior WR Jimmy Jefferson, senior RB/WR Matt Fitz and senior WR De'Vaughn Gordon.

Are there other great athletes ready to step in? Absolutely, starting with sophomore WR Lee Kurfis, sophomore WR Sergio Fernandes-Soto, and freshman WR Josh Parris. But while it seems like a given that another strong quarterback will get signed by Lehigh - it seems like they do so every year - more important, in my mind, is signing another strong crop of receivers to reload from the massive numbers that leave this year.

Dear Santa: Another tough Jake Drwal-like receiver would be a great stocking-stuffer.

Hope Santa gets you everything you want for Christmas.

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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