Lehigh Football Nation

This weekend's Lehigh/Cornell game, if you're not able to make it to Ithaca, will be available to be viewed online, but it will require a subscription and a fee to do it. It's available to on the Ivy League Digital Network , and you can buy it on a school day-pass basis. I forget the price of Cornell's day pass, but if you went for the monthly subscription to ILDN back when we played Yale, then you're good for this weekend's game at Cornell. The game is Lehigh's latest start of the season, at 3:30 PM up in Ithaca. My plan is to can listen to the game for free on www.espnlv.com (or on the radio at AM 1230 and 1320 of the Lehigh Valley).  The reassuring voices of Matt Kerr and Matt Markus will be on the call. 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 the Cornell game after the flip. The Cornell Big Red are led by the youngest head football coach in all of Division I, David Archer . His resume sounds like a college football player's dream; starter on the offensive line at Cornell, invited to remain on the coaching staff after a year as an assistant at Franklin and Marshall, and then, after five years and a surprise departure from then-head coach Kent Austin , being promoted from within to become the head coach at your Alma Mater. What may not be a dream is Cornell's record ever since he took over.  While not entirely his fault, Archer has gone only 3-11 as head Big Red.  Still, it's more victories (and more losses) than I've enjoyed as a Division I head football coach, and he's not even 35.  (To both of you who are wondering: My Division I coaching record is a perfect 0-0-0.) Cornell is a typical Ivy League school in that NFL prospects have been known to compete up in Ithaca, and this ...

You hate to put it this way, but this weekend's tilt between Lehigh and Cornell could be the anemic force versus the extremely movable object. Lehigh's defense would be the movable object, ranking dead last in FCS in total defense, but the Not So Big Red's offense, ranked 121 out of 123 FCS teams, hasn't exactly impressed either. It sets up two teams extremely hungry for victory this Saturday, eager to get something positive going before the rest of the regular-season schedule gets back underway. In May, this might have seemed like a speed-bump up in Ithaca.  Now, it seems like a game that must somehow be a victory to get the bus out of the ditch.

The latest disco music was available right off campus at "Records and Things".  A young Phillies pitcher named Steve Carlton wins his second Cy Young Award.   Debbie Boone 's "You Light Up My Life" topped the charts, spending 10 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard .  Rocky was still in theaters.   Billy Joel would tour Bethlehem and the valley, perhaps setting the stage for his later hit Allentown. In local news in 1977, Lehigh was also in the running for an invitation to the football postseason. Coming into the 113th meeting between the Leopards and Engineers, as they were commonly known at the time, never before had been so much on the line for Lehigh.  In front of an expected sellout crowd of 18,000 people, a win would in all probablility give them the Lambert Cup, given to the best team in the East, and an invitation to the Division II playoffs. But a loss to the team that beat them last year would see all of Lehigh's opportunities fade away, the chanc...

As you may have heard, our family has been blessed with a new puppy.  As you probably have not heard, puppies require 7AM walks to do their business, and puppies don't care if you're tired, upset, frustrated, or angry. At 7AM on Sunday, I exited the house with the dog, and promptly ran into another entirely too happy dog owner walking his dog. My inner Clark Kent -ish personality jumped to the front, somehow pasting an easygoing smile on my face, packing away all the frustration of Saturday's game as I made smalltalk about being a dog owner, the same smalltalk that dog owners have probably been making about dogs since dogs showed up in our caves thousands of years ago. It wasn't a bad conversation - I didn't regret having it, even though it was unmemorable.  I was glad to share some goodwill with the neighbors.  But it did demonstrate to me what sports fans have to do in this age when our teams are struggling.  You have to be able to put your fan alter...

Fifteen minutes before the game was about to start, ESPN Radio announcer Matt Kerr told the radio-listening public that 4-1 Bucknell would not only be missing their starter quarterback, QB R.J. Nitti , but would also be without the services of their star running back, RB C.J. Williams . You might be forgiven if that made you think that Lehigh's chances of getting their first win, and avenging last season's loss to Bucknell in Lewisburg, would be much greater. It didn't turn out that way, however, as backup QB Trey Lauletta stepped right up into the void and had the game of a lifetime against Lehigh's beleaguered defense. After Lehigh scored the game's first touchdown, Lauletta and the Bucknell offense helped create the the next 31 points for the Bison, and when Lehigh finally settled down and cut the deficit to one score, Lauletta would find WR Will Carter for a back-breaking touchdown to win the game for the Bison. "Embarassing" is what Lehig...