Lehigh Football Nation

I've been doing this long enough to know that every Lehigh football team is different.  The dynamics running through every team is different; what motivates one team has no impact on the team of the following year. But every big win this 2016 team gets, many of the fans who have been here a while keep whispering: 2011 . Like an Adele Spotify channel, you can't help but be reminded of 2011 when you go to Murray Goodman Stadium or Fitton Field or wherever they're playing.  The popular online game between fans on the Lehigh football message board is: Who was better, 2011, or 2016? The answer is still, beyond a shadow of a doubt, 2011 - for now - but the only reason for that is that 2016 is still in the midst of writing their story.  Yet it can hardly be helped that fans look at the potential of this 2016 team and think, with apologies to Adele, that they are rolling in the same sort of wins that they were in 2011.

Express-Times File Photo, Lehigh 20, Lafayette 13, 2010 It was destined to be a day of defense, and any number of hard-hitting inside linebackers could have been the MVP of the 146th meeting between Lehigh and Lafayette. Lehigh's defense was on the field thirty-six minutes, and never let a tough Lafayette run game wear them down. Almost right out of the gates, Lehigh's defense seemed to want to put their mark on this game. The first three defensive plays featured three straight tackles by senior LB Al Pierce, pounding Lafayette's   RB Alan Elder  and hurrying  QB Ryan O'Neil  into throwing the ball out of play. And it only got better from there.

Chris Leigh RB Lake Orion HS, Lake Orion, MI 6'0, 200 lbs (Photo Credit:   Jarrad Henderson/ DFP via USA Today )

It's starting to become a habit. For the second straight year, Lehigh hosted a Pro Day for three athletes, QB Chris Lum, WR Jake Drwal , and TE Troy McKenna , as well as some other athletes from the area as well. While it wasn't the same as last year, where Will Rackley had a slew of NFL scouts travel to Bethlehem to see his numbers, the trio did bring a very solid performance on a beautiful day in front of a crowd of well-wishers and fans.

When you're a 6'4, 280 lb offensive tackle in college, the three letters "NFL" don't usually enter your thought process. Unless, of course, you're senior OT Troy McKenna . When many players at all levels of football were hanging up their cleats for good after the season, Lehigh's FCS All-American tackle never stopped working to pursue a dream - making it to the NFL. As a tight end. The dream of making an NFL training camp continues for three former Lehigh football players tomorrow with a Pro Day at the University: McKenna, QB Chris Lum , and WR Jake Drwal .

(Photo Credit: Donna Fisher/The Morning Call) At the end of the football season, you had to think he had an excellent chance at the Payton award. Senior QB Chris Lum , who had the most touchdown passes and most single-season passing yards of any Lehigh quarterback - and the Mountain Hawks have had some great ones - was the most dominant quarterback statistically of all the signal-callers who made it to the FCS playoffs. But to the voters in the Sports Network's Walter Payton award, it was not enough. Instead, the award went to QB Bo Levi Mitchell , who had comparable statistics to Lum, but only commanded his Eagles to a 6-5 record.

It's a few days before what could be a spectacular finale to senior QB Chris Lum 's Lehigh football career. This weekend, he's headed to Frisco, TX, where he will discover if he'll be Lehigh's first-ever winner of the Walter Payton award. The Payton Award, offered by the Sports Network to the most valuable player in Division I Football Championship Subdivision, has been called the "Heisman Trophy" of FCS. So what was the first thing he mentioned to me when I contacted him? His grades from the past semester.

While Lehigh fans are (understandably) still a bit disappointed that the season is over, the winter just got a little warmer realizing that the Associated Press and Sports Network released their all-American teams this week, and four different Mountain Hawks were honored. To go along with the all-Patriot League team that was released at the end of the regular season and the AFCA All-America team , it's worth going over the many Lehigh plaudits for the 2011 season.

Lehigh's great playoff ride has come to an end in the ThuderDome, where a loud, partisan North Dakota State crowd listened to an AC/DC song with the title of this "Sunday Word", "Thunderstruck", and struck down Lehigh's offense, shutting out the Mountain Hawks 24-0. It was a disappointing ending to an otherwise wonderful, historic season for Lehigh - one that will go in the record books as one of the best ever. Yet it's impossible to look at this game at some level and wonder, "What if?" What if senior QB Chris Lum 's favorite receiver were not suspended in an unprecedented move by Montana athletic director Jim O'Day , representing the NCAA's FCS subcommittee? In other words, what might have happened had junior WR Ryan Spadola not been "thunderstruck" by O'Day and the NCAA?

In the end, not having junior WR Ryan Spadola didn't matter. In front of more than 18,000 loud North Dakota State fans, and a fearsome Bison defense, the Mountain Hawks couldn't overcome the injuries, the noise, and their own miscues in the 24-0 defeat in the FCS Quarterfinals. It would be the furthest Lehigh had made it in the FCS playoffs since 2001, when they travelled to Furman and were defeated 34-17 by the Paladins.

(Photo Credit: Michael Vosburg/The Forum via the Morning Call) Head coach Andy Coen made no bones about it to Keith Groller of the Morning Call yesterday. He said the team is "really close, and is still hurting" from the first-ever-of-its-kind suspension of junior WR Ryan Spadola for an offensive twee t. Spadola, who didn't even get on the plane to Fargo yesterday, is missed by all. "I think it can be a galvanizing event for our team," Coen said, however,  "I haven't really talked a lot about it with them. I may before kickoff. I just told them we are a family and sometimes issues pop up within a family and you learn from them and grow from them and you get stronger."

(Photo Credit: Karl Merton Ferron / The Baltimore Sun ) As Towson entered the field before their playoff game versus Lehigh, and unidentified player came through the large, inflatable tiger head holding a championship belt, not unlike one a prizefighter might wear. As someone who writes about Lehigh football, it provided an irresistible storyline for the playoff game, with echoes of Ali vs. Frazier.  The Thrila in Manila.  A prizefight. It makes naming this game the "Towson Thrilla" from here on forward just that much easier. What did the the Lehigh players think about the move after the game? "We had no knowledge of it until we saw them run out with it," junior WR Ryan "The Answer" Spadola said to me later.  "It was bad on their part because it just got us more fired up." As we go over the mountain of great press about this phenomenal game, I'd like to round up the highlights of those articles, as well as empty out my own note...

(Photo Credit: Karl Merton Ferren / Baltimore Sun ) So-called "big-time" collegiate athletics has had an awfully rough year. When the entire QB Cam Netwon affair - you remember, the father of Auburn's star quarterback getting caught offering his son's services for a six-figure sum of money - feels like it happens a decade ago, you know the overall feeling of college football in those Bowl Subdivision ranks has to be one of nausea rather than school pride.  Between the horrors at Penn State, which are unfolding in slow motion in front of the entire world, and the latest conference realignment madness, where money has made a Boise State to the Big East scenario plausible, "big-time" college football, and perhaps even all of "big-time" college athletics, seems severely broken. And then, suddenly, amidst all the lunacy, something comes along that makes you remember why you started following college football in the first place. Many, many peo...

It was billed as a shootout between two of the top offenses of FCS. And it was, indeed, a shootout between the the powerful running game of Towson, and the powerful passing game of Lehigh. It was billed as a game for supremacy in the East. It was, indeed, a showcase between the champions of the Patriot League and the champions of the Colonial Athletic Association, or CAA, for Beast of the East. But with all that was billed and all that was hyped the last two weeks regarding this game, played in front of a sellout, standing-room crowd of 11,196 at Johnny Unitas Stadium, nobody could have anticipated that the outcome of the game, the game-winning play, would come on Lehigh junior DE Tom Bianchi sacking Towson QB Grant Enders in the end zone.

(Photo Credit: The Baltimore Sun) My brain says the bye week is a good thing for a football team.  Injuries get an opportunity to heal, there are more hours in the week to break down game film, and the student-athletes get a few days to sit back, relax, and contemplate what they've accomplished this year. (It also gives another week for senior LB Mike Groome 's playoff beard to grow out, to allow "Mike's beard to be big enough for everyone", as senior LB Colin Newton told me this week.) But it also means that the wait for this weekend, with a full holiday weekend in between Lehigh's last regular season game and this week's "elimination game", has seemed endless. But the wait is nearly over. Below the flip, see Towson broken down, as well as my "Keys to the Game" - and, of course, the "Fearless Prediction".

For the second straight season, Lehigh's football team will be playing after Thanksgiving. And for the second straight season, Lehigh will also be playing in a second-round game in the FCS Playoffs. For these two reasons alone, there is plenty to be "thankful" for this holiday season, for Lehigh fans and players alike.  As we run-up to the playoff showdown against Towson, though, it's worth taking a look back from where Lehigh was, and where they are now.

Some football players are their own biggest mouthpiece.  But senior QB Chris Lum , Lehigh's classy superstar from Lake Orion, Michigan, is not. For many people voting on the Walter Payton award, the FCS equivalent of the Heisman Trophy, they look at statistics, and in Lum's case, they are mighty impressive. But for a star quarterback - who is most assuredly an NFL prospect - the Lake Orion, Michigan native is surprisingly willing to dish credit to others the way he dish completions to his receiving targets.

This year, I had the good fortune to attend my 23rd  "Rivalry", the most-played  rivalry in college football with 147 meetings. And as a Lehigh fan, I was immensely pleased with the outcome. And yet, I cannot recall a stranger edition of this game in my experience. To the seniors who played in this historic game, it was a shining moment in their football season - something they had wanted to do since they came to Lehigh in the first place. But I don't think anybody thought it would go down like this.

(Photo Credit: Matt Smith/The Express-Times) "Goals".  Such an easy term to grasp.  It's used in almost everyone's life in some form or another.  Set a "goal" for yourself, and achieve it. Every person this year who put on a uniform in a Patriot League school had as a "goal" to win the Patriot League.  (Yes, even Fordham, whose wins didn't technically "count" towards the league title, used it as a goal, too.  Per head coach Tom Masella , they were very much aware what their place in the standings would be.) But only the guys in Brown and White would achieve that "goal" this year. On the field and after the game this Saturday, there was a lot of talk about "goals".  It's important to note, however, that winning the Patriot League championship was only one "goal" of many. The next "goal" - having a senior class that has not lost to "that school in Easton" - is the next ac...

(Photo Credit: Eric Schumacher ) It was billed as the Patriot League Championship game - a winner-take-all game between the two best teams in the Patriot League in 2011. In the end, though, the game ended up looking a lot like the last eleven times the Hoyas lined up against the Mountain Hawks. Lehigh's offense racked up over 500 yards of offense and held onto to ball nearly 38 minutes as they took home their second consecutive Patriot League championship with a fairly convincing 34-12 victory.