Lehigh Picked To Finish 2nd; Two Make 2014 Preseason All-Patriot Team

It was not a shock, at the Green Pond country club halfway between Bethlehem and Easton, that Fordham was picked to finish first in their first season back as a full card-carrying member of the Patriot League.

After all, they had two preseason Walter Payton award candidates on their roster, QB Michael Nebrich and WR Sam Ajala, as well as 10, count 'em, 10 other members on the Patriot League preseason All-League team. Scholarships, and the great coaching and recruiting ability of head coach Joe Moorhead, had Fordham as the runaway favorite.

It was a shock, however, to see who was picked to finish right behind the Rams.

Though Lehigh was coming off a 2013 season where they were ranked in the Top 25 most of the year, they only had two players on the preseason all-League team, senior OL Ned Daryoush and senior DL Tim Newton.

Nonetheless, the Mountain Hawks were picked second over the two teams that beat Lehigh last season, Lafayette and Bucknell, the two teams that kept Lehigh from a Patriot League championship and the FCS playoffs last season.

The vote was close - only three votes separated the Maroon and the Brown - and it showed how little separates the rest of the Patriot League in the eyes of the coaches and media.

There will be plenty more in the next few days about #Rivalry150, the state of college athletics and the role of the Patriot League within it, and the upcoming season with your favorite Lehigh players and coaches, of course. For now, though, the big news is that Lehigh is picked to be in the thick of the race in the 2014 season, perhaps neck in neck with the team that beat them at the end of last season in their 149th meeting, Lafayette.

2014 Patriot League Football Preseason Poll

1. Fordham, 72 points (12 first-place votes)

2. Lehigh, 54

3. Lafayette, 51 (2)

4. Bucknell, 43

5. Colgate, 33

6. Holy Cross, 29

7. Georgetown, 12

2014 Patriot League Football Preseason All-League Team

Preseason Offensive Player of the Year: Mike Nebrich, QB, Fordham (Sr.)

Preseason Defensive Player of the Year: Stephen Hodge, LB, Fordham (Sr.)

Offense

QB Mike Nebrich, Fordham (Sr.)

RB Ross Scheuerman, Lafayette (Sr.)

RB C.J. Williams, Bucknell (So.)

FB/HB Ed Pavalko, Colgate (Sr.)

WR Sam Ajala, Fordham (Sr.)

WR Tebucky Jones, Fordham (Sr.)

WR Brian Wetzel, Fordham (Sr.)

TE Dan Light, Fordham (Sr.)

OL Luke Chiarolanzio, Lafayette (Sr.)

OL Ned Daryoush, Lehigh (Sr.)

OL Julie'n Davenport, Bucknell (So.)

OL Mason Halter, Fordham (Sr.)

OL Lonnie Rawles, Bucknell (Sr.)

RS Kalif Raymond, Holy Cross (Jr.)

RS Matt Smalley, Lafayette (Jr.)

PK Michael Marando, Fordham (Sr.)

Defense

DL Demetrius Baldwin-Youngblood, Bucknell (Sr.)

DL Brett Biestek, Fordham (Gr.)

DL Tim Newton, Lehigh (Sr.)

DL DeAndre Slate, Fordham (Sr.)

LB Nick Alfieri, Georgetown (Sr.)

LB Evan Byers, Bucknell (Sr.)

LB Stephen Hodge, Fordham (Sr.)

LB Kris Kent, Colgate (Sr.)

DB Mike Armiento, Colgate (Sr.)

DB Matt Smalley, Lafayette (Jr.)

DB Matthew Steinbeck, Bucknell (Sr.)

DB Ian Williams, Fordham (Sr.)

P Joe Pavlik, Fordham (So.)

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....

Merrimack at Lehigh Game Breakdown and Fearless Prediction, 9/28/2019

It's what we do every week: copiously go over the opposing game notes and analyze the upcoming game matchup. I'm starting to call these the "football nerd" previews because it feels like the audience for these detailed team breakdowns are other football nerds like myself. For Lehigh fans, there is no greater need for a "football nerd"-level breakdown of an opponent than Merrimack. Few opponents have been as big as an unknown to Mountain Hawk fans as the school that formed right after World War II in North Andover, Massachusetts. Helping that sense of mystery is that the Merrimack Athletics' website offers no football game notes, and when you click on the link called "Weekly Two-Deep", you get a two-deep from 2018. Merrimack, until recently a member of the Northeast-10 conference in Division II, announced they are going to join the NEC as a full Division I member in time for the 2023-2024 season. “The College’s 2011 strategic ...

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.

Lehigh Football Nation

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