Lehigh Football Nation

This weekend's Bucknell/Lehigh game, if you're not able to make it to Bethlehem, will be available to be viewed online for free thanks to the Patriot League Digital Network.  If you're in the Lehigh Valley, you don't need a TV since the game will be televised on Service Electric 2, with Mike Zambelli and Mike Yadush on the call. You can listen to the game for free on www.espnlv.com (or on the radio at AM 1230 and 1320 of the Lehigh Valley), with Tom Fallon, Matt Kerr and Matt Markus on the broadcast team. Game time is 12:30 PM. And I will also say that if you follow my Twitter feed (@LFN), I'll do my best to keep up with the action.

We break down Bucknell after the flip. One thing that is worthy of mention about last year's game, and may have gotten lost in all the talk of "revenge", was the element of surprise. Head coach Joe Susan , facing off against a then-Top 25 team, had just re-introduced QB Brandon Wesley to the staring lineup the prior week, and also unveiled a brand-new offensive attack against Lehigh as well, meaning that the game film head coach Andy Coen saw from the prior week against Dartmouth was essentially worthless. Surprise doesn't excuse the outcome, from a Lehigh perspective - not at all - but it's worthy of mention that Bucknell's pistol formation and offense shouldn't be taking anyone by surprise this week.  It also means that nobody should be reading too much into Bucknell's loss at Bryant last week, either.

It didn't really need to be mentioned by head coach Andy Coen and the coaching staff, because everyone already knew. They all remembered last year's beatdown by Bucknell at Lewisburg, 48-10 . Many of them, even the sophomores, remember the pain of that day. 300 yards rushing by the Bison.   QB Brandon Bialkowski 's broken collarbone.  Five turnovers.  130 yards receiving for Bison sophomore WR Will Carter . They also remember the humiliating exclamation point: sophomore RB C.J. Williams ' hurdle over Lehigh's secondary, getting an emphatic touchdown to put the icing on the cake. Sometimes the pain of losses of games gone by can seem distant, unconnectable, by the playing members of a football team.  There is no way for these players to imagine how it felt in 1997 for the Mountain Hawks to lose to the Bison, for example, the last time a Lehigh team had lost to Bucknell in football before last season. But last year's loss was so raw, so emphatic,

Paul Dashiell “A silver cup has been offered by Mr. R. P. Linderman , Lehigh ‘84, as a trophy of the foot-ball championship of Pennsylvania,” the Lehigh Burr reported in 1889.  “Designs for the cup have not yet been prepared but it will be very handsome, of massive silver, while special care will be taken to secure a design thoroughly artistic and appropriate, and the cup will be fully equal to any college trophy of the kind ever offered.  The [articles and conditions drawn up for the Championship] is not intended to form a foot-ball league, such a thing being deemed unnecessary, but to provide such general regulations as will fairly determine the state championship.” The idea of Lehigh, Lafayette and Penn competing for the "state championship" has as its origins the student newspapers, who had started tallying the records of the games between each other in the hopes of crowning a mythical "champion of Pennsylvania". In 1888, Lehigh and Lafayette played eac