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....

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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