Lehigh Football Nation

This weekend's Fordham/Lehigh game, if you're not able to make it to Murray Goodman Stadium... wait, why aren't you able to head to Murray Goodman Stadium?  It's beautiful weather out there!  Homecoming!  Go! Oh, OK, so I finally accept that you can't attend the game.  In that case, if you're in the Lehigh Valley, you can catch the game in its regular place on Service Electric 2 Sports. with Mike Zambelli, Mike Yadush , and Al DiCarlo on the call, and on the radio on AM 1230/1320 on Lehigh Valley ESPN Radio, featuring Matt Kerr, Matt Markus, Tom Fallon and Lance Haynes . You can also get a live video stream of the game online on Campus Insiders from the link here .  Their broadcast team will be Ray Crawford, Doug Chapman and Rich Cirminiello. And I will also say that if you follow my Twitter feed (@LFN), I'll do my best to keep up with the action.

WR Brian Wetzel (AP Photo) We break down the Fordham game - and we give our fearless prediction below the flip. Fordham's incredible squad gives a tantalizing glimpse as to what Patriot League football teams might look like once four seasons of scholarship athletes come into the program. In their first year of eligibility for the Patriot League title since adopting conventional scholarships in football, Fordham has been drilling opponents, scoring more than 40 points per game in their six wins. They're doing so with scholarship athletes, of course - but with scholarship athletes that are seniors, too, including two very, very important transfers from UConn. Fordham's strategy has been a slow payoff, but a great one so far, giving the Rams a squad that is among the top offenses in all of FCS. That's what Lehigh is up against this weekend.

If the records and numbers determined the outcome, they probably wouldn't bother playing the football game. Lehigh, at 1-5, faces off against Fordham, the 12th-ranked team in the nation, who sits atop the Patriot League at 6-1. Fordham boasts one of the top offenses in the  nation - that part's pretty much known by everyone - but what few people realize is their defense, for the most part, has also been stellar. Three weeks ago, on Friday night TV against the defending Patriot League champions, Lafayette, you probably heard or saw the four-minute stretch where QB Michael Nebrich helped score three straight touchdowns to put the game, basically, out of reach.  What you didn't maybe stop to think about is that the Rams stopped the Leopards on three quick, straight drives, allowing that offense to bowl over the Lafayette defense. So don't play the game, the stats and highlights seem to say.  Fordham's too good.  Don't even bother. But you can guarantee...

What do you do when nobody believes in you? What if people keep telling you your dreams are impossible, that people you know and trust keep telling you over and over again to not even bother with your dreams, that these dreams aren't realistic, that what you want to do is against the natural order of things? I feel like though life, people are constantly telling you what you can't do.  Even when people say that you can do something, they don't really mean it - in their eyes, they feel like you can't . Everything good that's happened to me in my life came from holding my dreams close, not allowing other people to define for me what my dreams are, can, and can not be.

There have been times this season that Lehigh has been agonizingly close to winning games they have ended up losing. It's as if they've been stuck with bad karma; that they've been oh-so-close to winning, but some bad karmic event keeps them out of the victory column. Against the Big Red on homecoming this weekend, the Bad Karma seemed to be at Schoellkopf Field for Lehigh once again. A well-defended pass bounced into the hands of Cornell WR Collin Shaw  set up one Big Red touchdown. and a low snap to punter junior P Austin Devine set up another, making a 17-0 Mountain Hawk become a very slim, thin-feeling 17-14 spot for Lehigh. But then just like that, the Lehigh offense seemed to have finished with its bad karma, with senior RB Rich Sodeke leading the charge to set up one big touchdown, and scoring the final exclamation point on Lehigh's first win of the season. It all added up to a satisfying return to winning for the Mountain Hawks.