Lehigh Football Nation

These ain't your mothers' Bison anymore. For years football games against Bucknell didn't register on the radar screens of all Lehigh fans, thanks to a fifteen-game winning streak against the Bison. They do now, though. After that long winning streak, it may, perhaps, have been forgivable for Mountain Hawk fans to think Bucknell's homecoming win at Christy Mathewson Stadium two years ago might have been a bit of a fluke. Any thoughts of a fluke were put to bed after last year's double-digit spanking at the hands of the Bison, though. At a school known around the league as a hoops-first, football-somewhere-down-the-priority-list type of place, Bucknell was a hair away from being in the drivers' seat for the Patriot League championship, taking eventual league champs Fordham to overtime before falling in extra time. Head coach Joe Susan 's goal this year is to have Bucknell take their new culture of winning and take it to the final, logical step:

Like many Division I football programs, Lehigh started their preparations for the upcoming Patriot Football season last Thursday . If you had to list the desires of the football team going into the preseason, chief among them is eradicating the memory of last season, whether it was the 3-8 record or especially the final game of last year . But what I think really gets the Lehigh players going, and in fact what gets most players going at FCS schools, is that they get a shot at something truly special. For Lehigh players, it means they can get a shot at taking down a nationally-ranked team, James Madison, in their own house, a shot at returning a Patriot League Championship trophy to Grace Hall, a shot at turning things around against Lafayette, and a shot at winning a national championship against the best schools of their subdivision. It's a time of optimism for all FCS schools, but it's the shot that truly makes it special. And if there's one thing I fear more