Sunday's Word: Blessed

This will probably be the shortest "Sunday Word" ever.

It will not deal with the playoff field, or much about the game Lehigh lost last weekend.

There are a lot of disappointed fans, players, and people around the football program. The Patriot League championship this year is Colgate's. They earned it.

But the season is not over.

And it's time, instead, for Lehigh to count their "blessings".

Playoffs will happen, or they won't. 10-1 will happen, or it won't. But this team is so "blessed".

Lehigh is "blessed", every year, to play an important game the weekend before Thanksgiving every year.

So many kids, at so many schools, do not have the opportunity to play in such an historic Rivalry game - only a select few. Just like at Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Auburn, Army, Navy, Notre Dame, and USC, Lehigh and Lafayette kids play in something special.

No matter what the record, the game is important. So many do not get to do that, to play in front of a sellout crowd, to play with so much crazy on the line.

Lehigh is "blessed", this year, to be 9-1.

Only three other FCS teams are 9-1 in the entire subdivision - Old Dominion, North Dakota State, and Montana State. Think about that a second - no other FCS teams can say that. 121 schools, 4 can say they are 9-1. And only only five schools have 9 wins, if you include Stony Brook.

That is a huge achievement, even if casual observers don't really understand exactly how difficult that is.

Lehigh is "blessed" to have a winning record three years in a row.

Lehigh is "blessed" to have gone down to a hostile environment, Liberty, played in front of 20,000 crazy fans, and found a way to win. Liberty, a team still alive for the FCS playoffs. Not many football programs get to do that. I went there; that may as well have been Lehigh's FBS game this year.

Lehigh is "blessed" to sweep the Ivy League this year. Admittedly, Columbia is down and rebuilding at 3-6, but Princeton was a hard-fought battle, and is no slouch. If Penn stumbles against Cornell and they get past Dartmouth, Princeton will be co-champions in the Ivy League.

Few really understand that these are great achievements, but they are. Nobody can take this away from this team, even if the season ended today. Winning seasons; big-time environments; these are "blessings". And this team, even though it might not have felt like it, this weekend, is very fortunate.

Coach Coen in the post-game press conference talked about his time as an assistant coach at Penn - how hard it was, sometimes, to get the kids to play in the final weekend of the year against Cornell. Penn/Cornell is an historic rivalry, for sure, but it's not The Rivalry, with sellout crowds, craziness, a bowl game to enjoy every year.

There should be one goal this week for this group of seniors - and that's to be a perfect 4-0 against Lafayette. There are no playoffs. There is no title. Just one bowl game, and one win. Just remember how "blessed" you are to play this game, and that you can play in this Rivalry, and do this thing, and any other "blessings", that hopefully happen, will happen.

There is one "blessing" you can control. Get it done.

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. W

Made-Up Midseason Grades for Lehigh Football

We are now officially midway through the 2023 Lehigh football season. The Mountain Hawks sit at 1-5 overall, and 0-1 in the Patriot League. I thought I'd go ahead and make up some midseason grades, and set some "fan goals" for the second half. The 2023 Mountain Hawks were picked to finish fifth in the seven team Patriot League. In order to meet or exceed that expectation, they'll probably have to go at least 3-2 the rest of the way in conference play. Their remaining games are vs. Georgetown, at Bucknell, vs. Holy Cross, at Colgate, and vs. Lafayette in The Rivalry. Can they do it? Culture Changing: B+ . I was there in the Bronx last week after the tough 38-35 defeat to Fordham, and there wasn't a single player emerging from the locker room that looked like they didn't care. Every face was glum. They didn't even seem sad. More frustrated and angry. That may seem normal, considering the agonizing way the Mountain Hawks lost, but it was a marked chan

Fifteen Guys Who Might be Lehigh's Next Football Coach (and Five More)

If you've been following my Twitter account, you might have caught some "possibilities" as Lehigh's next head football coach like Lou Holtz, Brett Favre and Bo Pelini . The chance that any of those three guys actually are offered and accept the Lehigh head coaching position are somewhere between zero and zero. (The full list of my Twitter "possibilities" are all on this thread on the Lehigh Sports Forum .) However the actual Lehigh head football coaching search is well underway, with real names and real possibilities. I've come up with a list of fifteen possible names, some which I've heard whispered as candidates, others which might be good fits at Lehigh for a variety of reasons. UPDATE: I have found five more names of possible head coaches that I am adding to this list below. Who are the twenty people? Here they are, in alphabetical order.

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