Lehigh Football Nation

(Photo Credit: WFUV) We break down the Fordham game - and we give our fearless prediction below the flip. Though this game doesn't officially count towards the Patriot League standings, make no mistake about how big this game is for both programs. Look no further than the ticket sales for this game. Fordham's Jack Coffey field is sold out, all 7,000 seats, and even on StubHub.com this game is a hot ticket, with no tickets available as of right now.  (Check back if you still need tickets!) A sold-out, 7,000 seat venue for a meaningful football game is what FCS football is all about, and whatever happens it's going to be a fantastic ambassador for Patriot League football broadcast across the country on CBS Sports Network.

(Photo Credit: Philly.com) "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!" I honestly don't know exactly why this quote from the cheese-fest-y move Clash of the Titans  was the first thing to leap to mind when thinking about this weekend's Lehigh/Fordham matchup. In the Patriot League, certainly, Lehigh and Fordham are the definition of Titans, both undefeated with the three best out-of-conference wins in the League this season.  Two are owned by Fordham - they beat FBS Temple and nationally-ranked Villanova - and the other by Lehigh - their win last week over New Hampshire. In the FCS, too, you could define them as Titans in the sense that the Mountain Hawks and Rams are two of only twelve undefeated teams in the entire subdivision.  Not all of these undefeated teams will be Titans at the end of the season, of course, but at least much of the national FCS community agrees for now that both are top teams: both are ranked in both major polls as two of the top 13 teams in the nation. ...

(Photo Credit:  Matt Smith / The Express-Times ) Below the flip, enjoy this week's "LFN Players of the Week" for the New Hampshire game.

When college football fans think of the word "shutdown", the word "corner" generally follows, followed by a debate on whether their particular members of the secondary could be considered "shutdown corners". Today, though, the word "shutdown" had a different meaning - a federal government shutdown, and one that ended up involving the two service academies of the Patriot League, Army and Navy. As the food fight raged between the House's attempt to defund, delay, or dissect Obamacare and the Senate's efforts to roll back these attempts, midnight passed on the Congressional deadline to fund the federal government, thus causing "non-essential" government workers to be furloughed. Though some might consider the athletic directors of the U.S. Military Academy ( Boo Corrigan ) and the U.S. Naval Academy ( Chet Gladchuk ) and their athletic department staffs "non-essential", the decision of the Pentagon to furlough the...

My vote for the FCS Top 25 for the week ending 9/23/2013 follows below the flip. But first, by all means, enjoy this great shot of a big Top 25 game last week, McNeese State at Northern Iowa.  (Photo Credit: Matthew Putney / The Waterloo Courier ) The picture tells the story of the game pretty well, as the Panthers in the UNI Dome took apart McNeese, 41-6.  In my poll last week, both were Top 10 teams.  Not this week, though I didn't drop the Cowboys too far.

It is very, very easy to "respect" New Hampshire's football program. Sure, they have earned "respect" nationally for their incredible, sustained success on the field. They're known as the original FBS killers, making it a habit of knocking off teams like Rutgers and Northwestern well before Appalachian State famously knocked off Michigan, James Madison upended Virginia Tech, or, most recently, North Dakota State took it to Kansas State. They're also known perennially as a team in the FCS Top 25, inhabiting the rankings in some way for an incredible 130 weeks.  In 2004, behind a third-string quarterback, QB Ricky Santos and his Wildcats beat Rutgers 35-24 and have been nationally-ranked ever since . FBS nightmares, all those Top 25 appearances, and nine consecutive playoff appearances to go along with that give UNH mad "respect" with the wider FCS community, and also make for a thrilling opponent when they come to to town. But they ...