Lehigh Football Nation

I'm real excited to announce that the book is finally available! The Rivalry takes a look at the early days of the Lehigh/Lafayette football rivalry, and how Lafayette College and Lehigh University were founded, how their athletic departments were created, and (of course) how the football Rivalry got to be as emotionally and fiercely contested as it is. There's lots of new information from newly-available archives regarding Asa Packer, Ario Pardee , the founding of both schools, and the origins of athletics at both schools. This year is Lehigh's sequincentennial, 150 years since Lehigh was founded. But it wasn't originally supposed to be so.  Originally, Lehigh was supposed to be opened in 1866. Why 1865, then? Because Lehigh wanted to rush their inaugural university year to compete with Lafayette for students. Lafayette, thanks to the largesse of Ario Pardee, was developing engineering as a discipline, and Lehigh's trustees, including Asa Packer, wan...

It was common knowledge in 1893 that Lehigh was a rich institution. “[Our] forced economy in itself is a great hindrance to our success in athletic competitions,” a 1890s letter sent out by Lafayette’s alumni committee said.  “Our nearest antagonists - Lehigh, Princeton, Pennsylvania - are now so wealthy, that we, with our comparatively untrained teams, are at great disadvantage.  Our alumni all desire our success but few realize how much this success depends on them.” Thanks in no small part to Asa Packer ’s bequest to Lehigh of a huge sum of money and stock after his death in 1879, the University was the richest institution of higher learning at that time, surpassing, according to the New York Times, even Harvard and Yale. The vastness of Lehigh’s endowment was actually controversial. “In one view, the gift is the noblest one of the kind ever made,” the New York Times said of the bequest, “for it establishes the only institution - so far as we know - which gives ...