Lehigh Football Nation

In all the pregame talk about an offensive showcase, we all forgot about how defense might be critical for the winning team in this important Patriot League Lehigh and Colgate clash. Many saw the previous box scores and just assumed that Colgate's powerful offense, who put up more than 50 on Yale, would do something similar to the Mountain Hawks defense. Not so. After a 75 yard touchdown run by Colgate QB Jake Melville to start the game, the Lehigh defense forced two enormous turnovers, including a forced fumble by sophomore SS Sam McCloskey that was recovered by freshman FS Riley O'Neil on Colgate's first drive of the second half. The play would allow Lehigh to tie it up with a 25 yard FG by sophomore PK Ed Mish , and it would fire off a string of 17 unanswered points that would give Lehigh a 31-17 lead that they would never relinquish.

Not going to the #HateTheGate (or, alternatively, #SlamTheGate) game at Murray Goodman, and you need to show your #Project10K support in some other way, either by watching TV or watching the game online?t Never fear.  LFN's here.

(Photo Credit: The Colgate Maroon News) It's a big game in the Patriot League this weekend at Murray Goodman Stadium, and the FCS experts have been weighing in - and to a person, all picking Colgate to win. Craig Haley of STATS/Athlon Sports : An at-large playoff bid is out of the question for Colgate, which is going to have to repeat as Patriot League champion to get back to the postseason. The Raiders are reeling, while Lehigh’s offense (51.3 points per game the last three weeks) is soaring no matter if the quarterback is Nick Shafnisky or Brad Mayes. Shafnisky is due back this week. Emory Hunt over at Football Gameplan also has picked Colgate to win , and the vast majority of posters in the Any Given Saturday fan community as well have picked the Raiders.

There's no question that this weekend's Colgate and Lehigh game is an enormous game for both sides.  There's also a bit of a quarterback "controversy" on the Lehigh side as to who will come out for the first series, award-winning sophomore QB Brad Mayes or award-winning senior QB Nick Shafnisky . One thing that has gone a bit unnoticed is the impact of Hurricane Matthew on the game this weekend. Not so much the impact of the southerly weatherly system on the weather at Murray Goodman, which is still on target for a mostly cloudy, 65 degree day, with a small chance of showers in the late afternoon, but the impact on the Lehigh and Colgate players, many of whom call Florida their home. Added to the already-challenging coaching twists centering around 4 O'Clock exams, something that head coach Andy Coen reminded me of last week, is the concern that the fourteen Lehigh football players from Florida, including Mayes, senior LB Colton Caslow, junior WR Ga...

(Photo Credits: Lehigh Valley Live) The word cloud around the Lehigh Colgate game the last decade has almost always involved the words "tundra", "cold", and "November". So when the 2016 schedule was released, and Lehigh fans read "October 8th: Colgate", many were disappointed, even as they still circled the game on their calendar with a maroon Sharpie. They were probably thinking back to last season, when, in the second weekend in November on a prototypical Lehigh/Colgate chilly afternoon with a chance of snow showers, the Mountain Hawks and Raiders were battling, essentially, for a Patriot League championship, ending up five yards short of a game-tying touchdown. But now, in what seems like a better move by the minute, the moving up of a critical conference game that has very often determined the eventual winner of the League seems terrific for not only both schools, but the entire Patriot League. That's because, in a week that d...

You didn't ask for them, but here's my pick for this week's FCS Top 25. This week's candidate for the LFN Top 25 curse?   Sacred Heart , with Colgate a very close second, but there were a lot of teams in the lower reaches of my Top 25 that suffered defeat, in a list that includes Fordham, Southern Utah and (again) William and Mary , who suffered a second straight crushing defeat in two weeks, this time at the hands of New Hampshire . Never in a million years did I ever think Tennessee State, Cornell and North Carolina A&T would simultaneously be in my Top 25, yet there they are.

The timing between college football games I attended at the Yale Bowl was a shade under thirty-nine years. How were both games similar? Well, in both games Yale lost.  Also, both games were played at the Yale Bowl.  In addition, there were fans at both games wanting to have a great college football experience. That's where the similarities end. Many thoughts went through my head during the game this weekend, an incredibly encouraging one for Lehigh as they are surging, on a three game winning streak going into league play after scoring a grand total of 154 points in the last three games, or, if you're scoring at home, an average of over 51 points per game. But not all the thoughts were ones about Lehigh, or Yale, or the game at hand.  Many of the thoughts I had, after staring out at the 2,196 souls that came out on an overcast, but perfectly adequate weather day to watch an extremely entertaining game, involved the fans that did not show up at one of the iconi...

(Photos and Graphic courtesy of Lehigh Athletics) Suppose you put in a copy of NCAA Football '14 into your dusty Playstation 3.  You create a team, "Lehigh", and put in the entire Lehigh roster, and make them 99s across the board. You pick a team to play against - say, Yale - and you pick a place to play, of course, the Yale Bowl.  You put it on the medium setting. Would these stat lines seem out of place if you played that game on that system? Sophomore QB Brad Mayes - 33 of 46 passing, 524 yards, 6 touchdowns, 0 interceptions. Junior WR Troy Pelletier - 13 catches, 213 yards, 3 TDs. Junior WR Gatlin Casey - 6 catches, 169 yards 2 TDs. They look like something out of a video game - yet those are the real stats to come out of the Yale Bowl this weekend in an extraordinary, awesome, ridiculousness of an offensive performance.  These numbers weren't the only great numbers to come out of this record-setting game out of the Yale Bowl, but they stick out...