Lehigh Football Nation

Lehigh was in a pickle. Catholic (DC) had cancelled their game with Lehigh scheduled for October 7th, 1922, and the football team needed a replacement, fast. Though it's not immediately clear if Charles M. Schwab , then-CEO of Bethlehem Steel, put in a call to the Saint Francis College and Ecclesiastical Seminary in Loretto, PA to fill in on Lehigh's football schedule, it is a distinct possibility.  After all, right hand man (and functioning chief operations officer) Eugene Grace was a Lehigh graduate and athlete, and little happened at Bethlehem Steel or Lehigh University that escaped the notice of both men. St. Francis (PA), which only had 165 students enrolled at the school, had just restarted football for the first time under new head coach John J. "Speedo" Laughran , a former football star at Pitt.

A year ago, two Patriot League schools accustomed to competing for championships instead were merely competing for pride. Colgate and Lehigh used to circle each others' names on the calendar back in February.  That's because more often than not, the outcome of that game had been critical in determining the Patriot League championship, the status of an autobid to the FCS playoffs, or both. Last season, though, for the first time in a long time, there were no championship or postseason implications on the line. On Saturday, for both the Mountain Hawks and Raiders, the "good old days" will be back. In February, with both schools coming off of uncharacteristic under-.500 records, it was not intrinsically obvious that the game on November 10 in Hamilton, New York would once again have a championship on the line. Yet here we are, with snow somewhere in the forecast, and a game with a 1:00 PM kickoff, with a likely on-field temperature of a brisk 37 degre...

In honor of Lehigh/Colgate week, I thought it appropriate to look at some of the Lehigh/Colgate games over the years and talk a bit about some of the highlights. "Hate the Gate" was a term first accredited to LB Tom McGeoy the week before the Colgate game back in 2006, and while the rivalry aspect of this game is a more recent phenomenon, driven largely by Patriot League championships and FCS playoff berths, the first-ever meeting of these two squads came on a cold, November afternoon in Binghamton, New York. It would be the only meeting of the pride of the Lehigh Valley and the pride of the Chenango Valley before the modern era, back in a day when a barnstorming college football team was a critical tool to recruit general students, not just athletes.  The trip to Binghamton was a recruiting trip for both schools, but the Maroons, as they were then known, were aiming quite a bit higher than the Brown & White when it came to football at that time, and it showed.