Lehigh Football Nation

Sometimes, the lawnmower engine you've pull-started five times finally gets up and running after the sixth time you've pulled the recoil starter handle - the gas igniting, the smoke billowing, the engine humming.  And other times, after you pull the recoil starter handle, you hear the parts stirring, something in there  wanting to fire, but it doesn't.  Something's amiss - some debris, something out of tune - but the upshot is, ignition doesn't happen. This is the place where Lehigh football is right now. The lawnmower that is Lehigh football has ignited - a little.  The engine has had power, and created a whole lot of smoke.  But in the end, each time the system has returned to rest, unable to use the power to get the job done and achieve a single victory.  Things are out of tune. It's not ideal to have to be in a must-ignite moment against, historically, the second-biggest rival on the football schedule, the team against whom so many epic bat...

(Photo Credit: Alex Fisher/The Daily Pennsylvanian) Both Penn head coach Ray Priore and Lehigh head coach Andy Coen aren't necessarily focused on the numbers and the exploits of individual members of their offense. Priore, focused on finally beating Lehigh for the first time in his head coaching tenure, and Coen, trying to right the ship after a very shaky 0-3 start, have different things to worry about. But this weekend's affair at Murray Goodman, if the past is any guide, could have the potential of a highlight reel of tremendous catches by some receivers that are getting looks by NFL teams. Twice before Penn WR Justin Watson and Lehigh WR Troy Pelletier have played against each other, and both times Watson and Pelletier have lit up the opposing secondaries for some tremendous catches and some amazing numbers. For Penn, it's allegedly about building off the win over Division II Ohio Dominican last week.  For Lehigh, it's supposed to be about getting...

Brown and White, 1957 Everyone had heard of the Lambert Trophy on the campuses of Lehigh and Lafayette. Awarded to the most outstanding college football team in the East, it was routinely won by some of the legendary big-school programs of the time.   Jock Sutherland 's Pitt teams and Earl "Red" Blaik 's Army teams dominated the Lambert Trophy balloting in the first couple of decades of the award. In 1957 the Lamberts and their board members, including Kermit Roosevelt , son of Teddy Roosevelt,  decided that there ought to be a Lambert Trophy for smaller schools in the East as well - schools that played against "major colleges", but didn't play the majority of their games against those schools. It gave an extra jolt of excitement to the Rivalry.

Bill Leckonby, The Hill School "72 aspirants greeted Lehigh's new football coach, Bill Leckonby, on the first day of the six-week spring training session," a Lehigh Alumni Bulletin inauspicously announced in the spring of 1945. It was reflection as to how low the Brown and White football team had sunk that the announcement didn't come with more fanfare. After all, Lehigh was in the middle of a nine-year stretch where they had only been able to muster one tie in the span of eleven contests with their bitter Rivals. Six times they were shut out.  Only once did they score more than 7 points against the Leopards. It probably didn't register that hiring of the former St. Lawrence University star, and former pro football player for the AAFL's Brooklyn Dodgers, only a few years removed from military service in World War II, would forever change the direction of Lehigh athletics. Few probably realized at the time that the inauspicious announcement would ...

The Doris Day -esque face, presumably a co-ed from nearby Cedar Crest, leaps off the official program of the Lehigh/Colgate game of November 4th, 1961.  A reference to a "House Party" on the cover, and "inside!  A computer in the University!" only adds to its snapshot in time. The first-ever meeting of the Red Raiders and Engineers at Taylor Stadium (or Packers, as the Brown & White had then started calling them) was expected to be a loss for a Lehigh squad that wasn't expected to do much after a 4-5 season under hall of fame head coach Bill Leckonby . "An underdog for last Saturday's game, as it has been for most of the season," the B&W said, "the squad displayed a powerful ground attack in the first half, accounting for two TDs, and an alert, spirited defense in the last two periods." It would only be the second home game of the year for Lehigh at Taylor stadium - five of their first six games, save a 20-6 win versus t...

In 1961, fifty years ago this week, Lehigh was dominating, and Lafayette was struggling. The "Packers", as the Brown & White called them then, were 6-2 going into the traditional rivalry game at the end of the year. There was no postseason berth - and no "Middle Three" championship, as Rutgers had beaten both the Leopards and Packers - but Lehigh was No. 2 in the Lambert Poll behind Amherst, and a resounding win over their arch-rivals could make them the No. 1 team in the East. The Leopards, on the other hand, suffered through an "rather disastrous" 2-5-1 season in 1961, according tothe Brown & White , only squeaking by Muhlenberg and tying Temple in the "Mud Bowl", their only other victory came against Tufts - which seemed, though, to portend a tougher game for Lehigh than the records might show. And it certainly was one for the ages.  With hall-of-fame head coach Bill Leckonby on the sidelines, Lehigh would avert a certain tie...

This Monday, the Lehigh football family lost one of its legendary coaches and athletic directors in "Bill" Leckonby at the age of 90 . You may read the press accounts about his death, but it really doesn't take into account his transformative effect on the Lehigh football program and even the initial visions of the Patriot League. A star tailback at St. Lawrence and on the Brooklyn Dodgers of the AAFL (but as a "triple threat" he could also be considered a quarterback), he would leave pro sports to fight in the Navy during World War II. When he returned in 1946, he would be the youngest head football coach Lehigh has ever had at 28 years old and in four years would lead Lehigh to their first-ever perfect undefeated and untied season (9-0-0) in 1950. The first-ever Lambert Cup would be won by Leckonby's 1957 squad, and in his final year of coaching he would win another in 1961. Overall, he would have 85 coaching wins and six "Middle Three" champi...