Lehigh Football Nation

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 ...

(All these great photos courtesy of the Philadelphia Eagles , the Pro Football Hall of Fame , and Jim Deegan's blog on Lehigh Valley Live .) What always strikes me about "Concrete Charlie" are his hands.  When you look at them, there's no mistaking that he played football his whole life and played with broken hands.  His fingers jut at angles that physically seem impossible - and they seem, against all reason, to have a football permanently in its grip. Last week,  the "last of the sixty minute men", Penn graduate and Philadelphia Eagle legend LB/C Chuck Bednarik, was in town to promote his new book, " Concrete Charlie: An Oral History of Philadelphia's Great Football Legend " at a book signing.  Fortunately for all Lehigh fans, David Coulson of the Sports Network was also there to give the loquacious Bednarik an interview.    In his interview, "Concrete Charlie" talks fondly about where he developed his love for football: Lehi...