Lehigh Football Nation

On this icy Wednesday, Division I athletes across the country were signing their National Letters of intent. Below the flip, find a montage of different National Signing Day pictures from WR Sasha Kelsey, OL Tim O'Hara, LB Cal Coffman, DE Justin Gille, WR Troy Pelletier, OL Kadeem Smith, DL Harrison Johnson, DB Quentin Jones , and - my favorite snapshot of all, to my left - strutting LB Hobson McCain . (I'll keep adding more signing day pictures to the post as I find them!)

The forecast in Eastern Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley tonight may call for snow and ice, but that's unlikely to keep a lot of happy families heading to high school libraries and gyms in this area. That's because tomorrow is National Signing Day, the college football equivalent of Christmas. Across the country, in some of those high school libraries and gyms, some of those students will be posing with a Lehigh hat next to them, or on their heads, to indicate that they've chosen Lehigh as the place they will be attending college.  (Like rising junior WR Derek Knott , above, a few years ago at his signing day.) Anticipating an announcement tomorrow, we look back.  What do we know?  How are we doing?  Is the next LB Nigel Muhammad, RB Keith Sherman, FS Tyler Ward or WR Lee Kurfis in this class? Everything we know thus far will be revealed below the flip.

Mike Baur QB/TE Wyoming Valley West HS, Plymouth, PA 6'4, 207 lbs (Photo Credit:   Eric Conover/ Hazleton Standard-Speaker )

Americans love college sports.  They love college sports the same way they love the NFL, Major League Baseball, English Premier League soccer, the Olympics, or any other type of sports that they can't live without. Like those professional leagues, however, if there's one other thing that is as certain as the sun rising in the East it's that Americans hate the people who are running college sports. There have been a multitude of criticisms lately criticizing the "guys" that are running college sports these days focusing on the definition of the term "student-athlete" and the amateur status that it implies. But like most criticisms, it ends up being a whole lot of chest-thumping on a brand new set of "ideals" that would do more to ruin youth athletics, not to mention collegiate athletics, than any possible action from the NCAA.