Lehigh Football Nation

I wish I thought this would actually happen. I wish the Patriot League was proactive, and thinking several steps ahead. But as an observer of the Patriot League for more than twenty years, I don't think the Patriot League Presidents, or any of their athletic representatives, are nimble enough and proactive enough to actually take a look at what's happening with the CAA right now in regards to James Madison possibly leaving for the Sun Belt . If they were like me, they'd take a look at the CAA in football in a post-James Madison world.  They'd see an extremely unwieldy 11 team conference without much of a theme. Only four CAA members would be a part of "CAA Football" - Delaware, Towson, William and Mary, and Elon.  There would be just as many America East Members as CAA members - UNH, Maine, Stony Brook, and Albany.  The other three - Richmond, Villanova and Rhode Island - are in hoops-only conferences. Could they soldier on as a divisional conference?  Maybe. ...

Unless you've been living under a rock the last five years, you've probably heard about "realignment", or, as I like to call it, "realignmentageddon", in Division I athletics. Led by Nebraska's departure from the Big XII to the Big 10, the dominoes have tumbles all through Division I, directly affecting pretty much every conference's membership with the exception of the Ivy League. Central to "realignmentageddon" is football, whose value to television executives is broadly accepted as the reasons why, say, Rutgers and Maryland abandoned decades-long relationships with their old conferences in order to get larger chunks of TV money. But why is it only individual schools?  Why wouldn't a conference which currently sponsors FCS football just decide, one day, to become an FBS conference? The short answer is: the NCAA rulebook is written than way. But the long answer is that the NCAA rulebook, essentially, forces the current FCS ...

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that sometime Lehigh opponent Monmouth recently made a move to leave the Northeast Conference (NEC) in all sports to join the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) in all the sports that they sponsor.  As it turns out, the MAAC does not sponsor three sports in which the Hawks compete: women's field hockey, women's bowling, and football, which meant that Monmouth president Paul G. Gaffney II needed to apply back to the NEC to become an associate member in all three sports to remain. It didn't seem impossible that Monmouth would remain in the league in these three sports. But today, Monmouth got their reply from NEC commissioner Noreen Morris , returning the will of the NEC presidents: yes to field hockey, and no bowling and football . With Monmouth's "Plan A" going by the wayside, the Hawks are now certainly looking at their "Plan B"'s - one of which could very well be the ...

According to sportswriter Mark Blaudshun , a 30+ year beat veteran of college football now residing in New Jersey, a key move was made by two schools, Monmouth University and Wagner College, that affects the FCS football landscape next season. "Conference reconfiguration continues on all levels," the short blog post stated.  "According to the sources familiar with the process, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference will add Quinnipiac, Wagner and Monmouth from the Northeast Conference. The announcement will be made on Friday." In and of itself the announcement doesn't directly affect the Patriot League.  But it might. With their move to the MAAC, a conference which does not sponsor football, the Seahawks and Hawks now have to make a decision on their football programs.

With the best Commodore VIC-20 graphics available for the cover art, Jefferson Starship 's "Winds of Change" album seriously underwhelmed pretty much everyone at the time, yielding few hits. Some folks think just because collegiate realignment has yielded few hits on the Patriot League hit parade, it doesn't really matter to them. I mean, what is it to the Patriot League if the CAA comes back from the jaws of the dragon, or if Conference USA is out of control, or the Atlantic Ten is simply dreaming that the Big East basketball conference breaks apart? As I started to mention yesterday , it very much does matter.  In the case of Georgetown, their TV deal with the Big East could very much affect the availability of aid for other sports programs, including football. In the case of Fordham, the Patriot League's other affiliate program in football, the winds of change are, without question, even more pronounced.

As weakly-sung 80's hair metal ballads go, you could do a lot worse than the Scorpions ' "Wind of Change", the German group's documentation of the fall of Soviet-style communism in Eastern Europe.  (Though I never could get into Klaus Meine 's vocals, which were always comically flat to me.) To some Patriot League fans, the wind of change blowing through collegiate athletics right now seems as distant to them as the Scorpions' last hit record.  Does it matter, they seem to say, that the Big East might break apart?   The Patriot League, after all, has their core ideals and priciples, and if the rest of the NCAA tears itself apart over money, ego, or something else, what is it to the schools of the Patriot? The answer, of course, is absolutely everything - no matter what any deniers might say.  As I'll demonstrate in this blog posting, what happens in the Big East could potentially make a very big difference in the Hoya football program.

In every place in America that I've lived, there's been evidence of the times of the American revolutionary war. Close by, in some form or another, I've been amongst 18th-century farmhouses and ancient taverns where George Washingon, Ben Franklin or John Adams might have sipped madeira or stayed the night. I've visited 12 of the original 13 colonies (South Carolina is the only one that has evaded me). I've been to Boston, the epicenter of civil disobedience against the British, and live near Philadelphia, where the founding fathers made a functioning government amidst the chaos around them that still, to this day, serves as an example worldwide. The theme of revolution seems to be apropos to the collegiate realignment maelstrom that continues to swirl through collegiate athletics as we speak, making ridiculous ideas like Boise State in the Big East and Pitt in the ACC seem somewhat justifiable in the face of all logic. In such an environment, could there ...

I've tried to stay out of this FBS realignment talk.  Really I have. Like many of you, I see the headlines scroll by on Twitter, and try to make some sense of it all - Texas A&M to the SEC!  Conference USA and the Mountain West merge!  Texas State goes to the WAC!  But in many ways, it's like Tibetan soccer to me: a foreign sport that has little to nothing to do with the goings-on in the league I care about, the Patriot League. That all changed with talk that Temple could be joining the Big East . These talks about Temple joining the conference - a school in direct competition for the heart and soul of the Philadelphia market with one of its current members - could be the move that destabilizes everything.

My "Friday Water Cooler" discussions, when I've had them this year, have been notorious for being unplanned affairs, with the idea for the topic only coming together on Friday Morning. And this Friday is no exception, thanks to an intriguing column in this morning's Asbury Park Press by Stephen Edelson . In the article, Mr. Edelson, whose paper covers Monmouth Hawk athletics (the team which Lehigh opened with this year with a 49-24 victory ), talked about the upcoming matchup between Monmouth and Colgate this weekend , of course - but also talked about the Patriot League and NEC being at a "crossroads". Is he right?  (more)

Foolish me, thinking that conference realignment might be put on hold while actual college football is being played. Almost a week ago today, the ACC made its latest school grab from the Big East, nabbing Pitt and Syracuse in a move that was destined to upend conference apple carts all over the country . The move has caused an earthquake of conference speculation - and set other potential moves in motion.  And those moves open up a lot of questions for anyone who cares about the Patriot League.   (more)

(Photo Credit: The Macon Telegraph) You may have missed it, but two pieces of news happened in the last six months that may have a much more profound change on the landscape of FCS football than you might think. In November, Georgia-based Mercer College announced they would be fielding a football team for the first time in 70 years . And in March, their Atlantic Sun leaguemates Stetson in Florida also announced their intent to do the renovations necessary to bring football back to their campus as well after a 55 year hiatus. Chaos theory tells us that small variances (like Mercer and Stetson starting football) sometimes have large, unpredictable ripple effects very far away (like a larger realignment in Midwestern football conferences). Seem crazy? Not exactly. (more)

(Photo Credit: CLT Blog) No, this isn't a blog posting about Rep. Anthony Weiner 's latest Twitter dust-up, though you might think it from the title. But another sort of dust-up seems to be occurring in the world of FCS football programs. It's a different sort of strange tale than Mr. Weiner's - one of UNC-Charlotte football, Conference USA, the Atlantic Ten, and a bunch of athletic conferences that seem unwilling to add the 49ers to their conference lineup. It also offers a huge opportunity for another FCS conference as well. (more)

No, really, does it ever get old to make fun of Al Gore ? Seen here telling the world that manbearpig is indeed real (thanks to the folks at South Park ), his wooden yet passionate crusades, his irregular spasms of passion and energy, and even his exaggerated sighs in the 2000 campaign often make me laugh when I'm feeling down. What I love the most, though, is his movie An Inconvenient Truth . While you can debate whether a movie which genuinely talked about his father's tobacco plantations in terms of climate change (?) should have really won the Oscar, it's really the title that is the best part of the entire movie, which is largely an extremely PowerPoint presentation (with some footage of melting icebergs) that, frankly, I seriously doubt many people actually saw. It's the quintessential "oh-yeah-I-saw-that" movie that nobody saw, since most people like to be on the side of reducing climate change, not denying that it exists. Best of all, "An...

(Photo Credit: The Providence Journal) Two days ago, I blogged about Rhode Island's thoughts on leaving the CAA in order to join the NEC . Yesterday, I talked about the impacts on that move on the CAA and NEC .  Today, I'll talk about whether the Patriot League is affected at all by this move by Rhode Island - because as things stand right now with the league and their stance on offering largely need-based aid, it doesn't appear to be. The problems are neatly summed up by a member of the Providence Journal 's URI Forum , a meeting place for fans of the URI program.  Reaction to the Rams' football move to the NEC have been mixed there, and some members were motivated to ask the Rams' athletic director, Thorr Bjorn , about his thought process.  He was specifically asked, "why the NEC?  Wouldn't the Patriot League be a better option for URI, with games versus A-10 leaguemate Fordham and nearby Holy Cross?" "I would have preferred URI going...

(Photo courtesy the South County Independent) Yesterday, I blogged about Rhode Island's thoughts on leaving the CAA in order to join the NEC .  Today, I'm blogging about the effects of their move on the rest of Northeast football - including the Patriot League. Interestingly,  Northeastern's discontinuation of football was certainly bad news, and Hofstra's president pulling a "Sonny Corleone in the tollbooth" on football a week later was also a seismic event concerning football in this area. But URI's decision could have an even greater impact in the long run for all three Northeastern FCS football conferences. It could have an impact that affects directly or indirectly all three conferences: the NEC, CAA, and Patriot League. (more)

I learned one thing, really, on my ten day vacation from my day job, blogging and writing: in college football, there truly is no offseason. I planned a vacation in the mountains right before the Fourth of July, thinking that it's generally a dead time for college sports.  I'm not alone, either.  Most sportswriters do the same thing. So what happens the week I'm gone?  Mike Szoztak, the longtime Rhode Island beat writer from the Providence Journal , drops the bombshell that the Rams are looking at moving their football team from the CAA to the NEC starting with the 2013 season. Ram sightings at Delaware's Tub, seen in this picture, might be less and less frequent. At the beginning of 2009, the CAA had twelve teams and had split into North and South divisions. The main discussion point back then was how they were going to be able to accommodate Old Dominion and Georgia State in their powerhouse conference - and how many at-large bids they might have in the futur...

It sure seems like - for now - the inexorable march towards sixteen team superconferences is at best sleeping, or at worst dead. After shrieking announcements that the Pac N was going to swoop in and poach five different football teams from the Big XII, the Big East might take all the rest and college football would be forever changed, it seems like, according to Andy Staples' Sports Illustrated article talking about the proceedings that "powerful outsiders, concerned that the Pac-10's plan to supersize to 16 by pillaging the Big 12 would set off an unstoppable chain of events, helped broker the deal, which may have saved college sports as currently constituted." Staples stopped short of saying it, but it could very well be one of the "powerful outsiders" that saved the Big XII may have been one of the forces that seemed to be driving it to destruction: Fox. (more)

Usually, the analogy of dominoes is overdone.  But it's hard to escape it now that we know that Colorado has elected to join the conference formerly known as the Pac Ten , and Nebraska has elected to join the conference formerly known as the Big Ten . Where might other dominoes fall?  Will the Big XII cease to exist - or survice?  Will the Big East crumble, too - or expand by four (or more) teams?  Will the Mountain West become a Western counterpoint to the Pac-N - or see its best teams lured to that conference? It's a crazy, dangerous world out there right now, especially if you think you have all the answers on FBS conference realignment. But it's a good time - with a break in the action, sort of - where we can see where this all is could lead. It could be the start of megaconferences, the involvement of Congress - or not much else. (more)

I've been following the BCS/FBS conference realignment craziness with a whole lot of interest, having penned a piece on it for the College Sporting News that basically stated that the chance of a current FCS team making it into a BCS conference was between slim and none, and slim was nowhere to be found . It's hard to tell which rumors are real and which ones are imagined, but ESPN apparently has some pretty solid sources together (finally) that seem to imply that Nebraska could announce their intentions of being a member of the Big Ten as soon as Friday . If that happens, and the Pac Ten goes through with their threat to invite Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado to their conference, there are a lot of teams that might be available for other BCS conferences to poach. The most intriguing of the scenarios? A couple of teams defined by their basketball success... getting offered an invitation by the Big East. (more)

Two weeks ago, the Colonial Athletic Association had twelve teams, had four of the top teams in FCS, and had the biggest conference in FCS. With Old Dominion coming in 2011 and Georgia State in 2012, the future couldn't have looked any rosier. Now, CAA football looks like it will be two teams shorter for next year - and the long-term future of CAA football is very, very much in doubt - and makes one wonder, who's the next domino to fall? ***** Right after the 2009 season - suddenly, and without much warning, Northeastern was the first team to bite the dust . The official release offers some clues (or excuses, if you prefer) as to why they could not sustain football: “Our goal for athletics is to achieve sustainable excellence in all areas,” said Athletic Director Peter Roby, who made the initial recommendation, which received the strong support of the university administration, the president, and the Board of Trustees. In an open letter to the Northeastern communi...