Lehigh Football Nation

Lehigh and Colgate is always a big game, whether both teams are going in undefeated or, as in this case, an 2-7 team is squaring off against a 8-0 team. In a testimony to how evenly matched both of these teams have been over the years,  no team has won more than 3 straight against the other since the inception of the Patriot League. Colgate and Lehigh have faced off 55 times, and the overall record has been, fittingly, close, with Colgate holding a slender 29-24-2 advantage.  The last tie came in 1980, a 17-17 tie at Taylor Stadium in which Lehigh's John Whitehead and Colgate's Fred Dunlap faced off as head coach.  In a way, that hotly-contested tie sort-of epitomizes the competitiveness of this rivalry today.

There aren't any Patriot League title considerations at play this weekend at Murray Goodman Stadium, but there's a whole lot to play for in this intense Patriot League rivalry. Lehigh (2-7, 1-3 PL) takes on Colgate (8-0, 5-0 PL) this week in what seems to be annually the grudge match of the Patriot League. If you can't make it to the game, you can catch the contest on TV on Service Electric 2 in the Lehigh Valley, with Steve Degler, Doug Heater and Kristi Fulkerson on the call.  That Service Electric 2 broadcast is also streamed online for free via the Patriot League Network . You can also catch the game on FOX AM 1230 and 1320, with  Matt Kerr, Andy Phillips, and Steve Lomangino on the call, with the most excellent Lehigh pregame show starting at 11:30 AM.  You can get it through your regular radio, listen to the broadcast  streamed through TuneIn , or just simply going to the  LVFoxSports.com  webpage and listening that way.

There aren't any books detailing the 4-7 2009 Lehigh football season, nor is it likely that the exploits of that season will be etched in stone at the base of a statue for head football coach Andy Coen . Yet it's a time and place which I return to often when I think back on Lehigh seasons past, and it's where I find myself today as well. The 2009 season felt like an inflection point for Coen's coaching tenure.  His first three seasons, 6-5, 5-6 and 5-6, boasted one Patriot League co-championship, but had fallen short of the lofty expectations that had been set during the Kevin Higgins and Pete Lembo eras of undefeated seasons, playoff wins, and basically scaring the pants off of Lehigh football opponents up and down the East Coast. And when the Mountain Hawks limped to a 1-5 start, the fifth being an awful 7-0 loss to Yale whose only points resulted from a fake punt, it felt like Andy's time at Lehigh was nearing an end.  Nobody actually said  officially ...