Lehigh Football Nation

Happy holidays and hope everyone has a merry 2020 and beyond.  Here at LFN, we wanted to compile a post listing the best and most memorable victories in the 2010 decade as voted on by one superfan who's been doing this for a very long time. As the fine folks at Lehigh Sports remind us, the 2010s were particularly great from an aggregate standpoint.  A Lambert Cup-winning season (given to the best FCS team in the East), a 7-3 record against Lafayette, and a whole lot of individual achievements are just the tip of the iceberg. The 2010s were very good to us... 4️⃣ @PatriotLeagueFB titles 💍💍💍💍 2011 Lambert Cup 🏆 2️⃣l Playoff wins .595 winning percentage 42-18 PL Record 7️⃣-3️⃣ vs. Lafayette 1️⃣8️⃣ game PL winning streak 🔟 All-Americans 1️⃣ Walter Payton Award runner-up #GoLehigh pic.twitter.com/buLimC0nSX — Lehigh Football (@LehighFootball) December 31, 2019 But in this wonderful decade there were individual games that were things to celebrate as well....

One of the nice things about having done this for long is that at my fingertips I can summon up the definitive account of the last five meetings of The Rivalry through my game recaps of the time.  Here's a quick summary of the last five times Lehigh faced off against Lafayette in the most important game of the season.  And heck - it's Throwback Thursday somewhere, right?

Too often, we define football players by statistics. As sports obsessives, we try to come up with figures and metrics to measure people, their contributions and their relative worth.  QB rating, yards per carry, tackles for loss - all numbers of measurement. Fans forget that there are human beings behind all of those numbers.  They don't encapsulate what it is to be a football player, teammate, person, fighter, boyfriend, husband, and father. Brett Snyder , who passed away this past Sunday at the age of 41, spent his entire life proving, successfully, that numbers don't matter.  He spent a lifetime going beyond mere numbers and showing that heart, fight, perseverance, and touching as many lives as possible in a positive way is much more important. It is the toughness you bring to life, the faith you show, and celebrating life's blessings that mean everything.  I learned this through Brett's extraordinary life.

I read the announcement that head coach Andy Coen was stepping down as head football coach late Friday evening. It was an announcement that I was expecting, to some degree.  Those of use who have been following the program closely knew that something was amiss with Andy.  And yet, the reason for him needing to step down was devastating. "Life has thrown me a curveball," Coen said in the press release on Friday, December 7th, 2018. "I am in the early stages [of early onset Alzheimer's disease] and it is best for me to eliminate stress and concentrate on my health and well-being.  My wife, Laura, and my children, Molly, Nolan and Finn have supported me throughout my career and are my biggest fans.  This is a very difficult decision for all of us, but it is what is best at this time." It was the gutting, pit-in-the-stomach diagnosis nobody wanted to be true.  Just like that, a bigger challenge than simply winning football games faces the man who has be...

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 ...

There really aren't any other words to use.  The season is currently  broken . Anyone who bravely worked their way to the game last weekend in rainy, windy Worcester, Mass had to have come to the same conclusion. The only thing keeping 2-6 Holy Cross from breaking their previous high-water mark of 59 against the Mountain Hawks was mercy.  In the red zone late in the game, the 2018 Holy Cross Crusaders would settle on their largest-ever margin of victory against Lehigh in program history, taking a knee to win the game 56-0 instead of probably winning the game 63-0. Things... looked... broken . "This is an embarrassment," head coach Andy Coen rightfully said on the radio after the game.  "We didn't do anything right." Every stat sheet passed out to the Lehigh players and coach staff ought to be put into a burn cage and set afire. There should be a parental campus-wide internet filter preventing anyone associated with Lehigh from Googling t...

Can you tell that I haven't really wanted to finish this report card for last week's game? Like a teacher a hour before pacing break, I didn't want to go through the film, the grades, and the play-by-play of the Penn game, but eventually, I did, even though it wasn't exactly pretty. The true hope with this report card, more than usual weeks, is that it's seen as a springboard to getting to the season that all folks associated with Lehigh will want.  With nationally-ranked Princeton looming ahead this week, it takes on added importance.

The Lehigh coaching staff took a page from Ole Miss' spring game in their annual Brown/White scrimmage at Murray Goodman stadium. The scoring system Ole Miss used was to spot their defense a 23-0 lead, and the scrimmage's goal was to  have the offense drive on the defense just like a regular football game. It is the hope of every Lehigh football fan in every game in the upcoming 2018 season that the offense scores more than 23 points a game.  Last year, the Lehigh offense averaged for than 35 points per contest. But the Brown defense this Saturday was up to the challenge of containing the White offense. Twelve times, the offense lined up with a potential drive to score points, and nine of those times, the defense forced the offense to punt or stuffed a 4th down conversion. It's true that the offense scored three touchdowns, one from rising senior QB Brad Mayes , one from junior QB Tyler Monaco , and one from sophomore QB Addison Shoup.    It is also true...

(Photo Credit: Alec Turner c/o Lehigh Athletics) For those that care about these things, Lehigh entered the first round FCS playoff matchup 21 1/2 point underdogs. And if we're being fair, that was probably the right number. The Seawolves were 9-2, nationally ranked with seven conference wins in the tough CAA and one of their losses coming to a very strong FBS team in South Florida.  In contrast, unranked Lehigh came into the game 5-6 and only were here because they upset Colgate 41-38 on the road and won enough Patriot League conference games to win the autobid. Yet a young Lehigh team was game to put their best foot forward and to have a heroic sendoff for potential NFL prospect senior WR Troy Pelletier , and in that, the game was a rousing success. With junior QB Brad Mayes expertly picking apart one of the top defenses in FCS, time after time he'd find Troy for reception after reception, each one highlighting his impressive skill set as an audition for the nex...

For the first time all season, it was a dark, wet day for a Lehigh football game. It was not at all ideal for the more than 15,000 fans, and countless tailgaters that made it to the tailgates but not in the stadium, partying and tailgating outside the gates of Murray Goodman. It was also not at all ideal for Lehigh's high-powered passing game, and during a disastrous second quarter with three turnovers, it felt like the wheels were coming off the Mountain Hawks' chances at successfully defending their Patriot League title. It seemed like everything that could go wrong, was actually going wrong.  Three fumbles resulted in three Lafayette recoveries.  A third down conversion incompletion by Lafayette QB Sean O'Malley became an unexpected first down, thanks to an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that kept their drive alive.  A 14-7 first quarter lead became 17 unanswered points, leading to a 24-14 deficit against the best defensive team in the Patriot League. In thi...

Senior OL Zach Duffy could have chosen to talk about any number of career highs when he reflected this week in The Brown and White about his time as a football player at Lehigh. He could have talked about building the program up from a 4-7 team into a Patriot League champion, crushing the sweet dreams of Lafayette last year in Easton in the 152nd version of The Rivalry, 45-21 , or perhaps he could have waxed philosophic about the last time Lehigh squared off against Lafayette at Murray Goodman Stadium, the time when QB Nick Shafnisky threw aside a Lafayette defender and the Mountain Hawks blew the doors out with a 49-35 win. But that's not what he talked about at all. He went right at the "agony of defeat" moments instead, talking about the loss to Lafayette in 2013, the infamous " it's supposed to suck, and it's supposed to hurt " game where an 8-2 Lehigh team faced off against a 4-6 Lafayette squad that ended up going to the FCS Playoffs ...

I thought a fun way this season to show off the historic nature of Lehigh and Lafayette's football Rivalry might be to do a jump through the decades. (If you want to learn more about the Lehigh and Lafayette Rivalry, read my book: The Rivalry: How Two Schools Started the Most Played College Football Series, available in both paperback in Kindle versions. ) Lehigh and Lafayette's Rivalry in football started in 1884, when Lafayette student manager (and founder of the football team) Theodore Welles approached the founder and student manager of Lehigh football, J.S. Robeson , and challenged them to a game of "foot-ball", a ground-based game that resembled more of a cross between rugby and soccer than the modern game of today. Let's turn back the clock 130 years, and proceed decade by decade, and you'll see how many times Lehigh and Lafayette have played over the years, and hopefully get an appreciation on how the game changed and evolved over time.

It has been a most unusual season for Lehigh. Starting the year off at 0-5 and getting swept in their out-of-conference schedule, the Mountain Hawks were in danger of having their season go off the rails. But two things have come together over the last five football games that have put Lehigh on the brink of back-to-back championships. The first is the late blooming of the Lehigh defense, which kept battling every week since the low point of the September 30th loss to Wagner to do the job in four of their five Patriot League conference games.  The second is the development of junior RB Dominick Bragalone into a bellcow running back, a back who has to be in the conversation for Patriot League offensive player of the year. In five Patriot League games, Bragalone has run for 863 yards in 5 games, rushing for 11 touchdowns and adding two more receiving touchdowns as well.  The South Williamsport, PA native certainly wasn't unknown before this week - after all, as a ...

The term "control of your playoff destiny" is thrown around a lot. The 3-6 Mountain Hawks were in control of their destiny this weekend.  Win against Holy Cross, and Lehigh will stay alive for no worse than a co-Patriot League Championship and possibly a ticket to the FCS Playoffs. By the time the clock hit triple zero's, the Mountain Hawks did what they had to do, beating the Crusaders 34-21, and keeping destiny in their own hands with one more regular season game to go - the 153rd meeting of The Rivalry next weekend vs. Lafayette. Junior RB Dominick Bragalone carried the offense on his back with 30 carries for 205 yards and 4 touchdowns, but he and the offense fed off the energy of  some big Lehigh defensive and special teams plays.  Once Lehigh went up 14-0,  Holy Cross would never get any closer than a touchdown.

Not headed to the the frozen tundra at Murray Goodman Stadium to catch the critical Holy Cross/Lehigh game? Why?  THIS IS IT, FOLKS.  This is one to catch in person. Yeah, I know it's going to be cold.  Yeah, I know that life is busy.  But it's a home game, it's win, and stay alive for a Patriot League Championship.  It's a big game; there's no doubt about it.  You need to be there for big games.  Future generations of your family are counting on you to say that "I was there on that freezing cold day at Murray Goodman". So after that sales pitch, you still can't make it, and still want to know how to you catch the game? Never fear.  LFN's here.

Holy Cross' and Lehigh's paths to having fun playing football have been different, but two teams that appear to have reclaimed the fun to some degree will be facing off this weekend at Murray Goodman Stadium in an intriguing, important football game. The 4-6 Crusaders have only one path to a Patriot League co-championship: beat 3-6 Lehigh this weekend, and hope 3-6 Lafayette and 5-4 Colgate lose at least one game the rest of the way. But in Holy Cross' regular-season finale, it doesn't really feel like it's about the postseason - which would only happen in the unlikely event of Lehigh and Holy Cross finishing at 4-2, and Lafayette and Colgate finishing at 3-3 in league play. For Lehigh, though, the Patriot League Championship and the opportunity to play in the FCS Playoffs is still very much in play.  Beat Holy Cross, and beat Lafayette in the 153rd meeting of The Rivalry, and this Mountain Hawk team will have a ring fitting in their future and a football pr...

(Photo Credits: Mike Geer/Lehigh Athletics) "We went right at 'em." That was head coach Andy Coen talking to Lehigh Sports' Steve Lomangino after the Mountain Hawks' 42-21 win over Bucknell. With their Patriot League title hopes on the line, and the No. 1 defense in the Patriot League the opposition, it seemed like the Mountain Hawks might enter into the type of defensive struggle that defined last year's game against Bucknell. But after junior LB Mark Walker forced and and grabbed a Bison fumble and returned it to the Bucknell 9 yard line, junior QB Brad Mayes didn't mess around.

Not headed to Lewisburg this morning to catch the Lehigh/Bucknell game? OK.  I do sort-of understand.  It's a noon start, and it's pretty far away.  You're still somewhat in a Halloween-candy coma, and heck, is today fall back, turn-the-clock-back an hour, or is that on Sunday? So you can't head out.  So how do you catch the game? Never fear.  LFN's here.

I got to Jack Coffey Field late. I knew it was going to be close, getting to the Bronx for the 1:00 PM start.  My son was marching in the band for the parade that morning, and nothing was going to keep me from going to that event, completed under a perfect sky and perfect weather shining upon Main Street.  Earlier in the week I made a calculation on whether I could make it to kickoff by leaving as soon as his marching gig was complete. If I left, right as it ended, and didn't make any stops, and the traffic was just right, it was doable. So I decided it was a go.  I'd be headed to the Bronx on a gorgeous Saturday that felt a lot more like September than November.

(Photo Credit: Lehigh Athletics) The ambulance came onto the field for the third time during a Lehigh football game.  On this occasion, it was that senior TE Drew Paulsen was trying to recover an onsides kick for the Mountain Hawks.  Down only a field goal, head coach Andy Coen was trying to get the ball back to take advantage of momentum. But something happened. On the tackle, he had a head or neck injury, necessitating for the third time this year that an ambulance had to come on to the field for a Lehigh game. The extremely-loved senior out of Tampa, Florida was carted out on a gurney, and headed to local Presybterian hospital for observation.  On the TV broadcast, they showed tears from some of the players on the sidelines. Lehigh lost to Fordham, 45-35, in an extremely frustrating game where the Mountain Hawks turned over the ball  four times, twice in the red zone, and twice setting up Fordham in their red zone.  But the injury to Paulsen,...