Lehigh Football Nation

  It's the spring, and what that means is that the weather (hopefully) is getting better, the flowers are blooming, and - most importantly - we're in the middle of spring football season. Soon I am planning on posting an update on what has gone on in FCS football since the end of last season (spoiler alert: it is a lot!), but first I wanted to take an initial look at Lehigh's fall 2022 football schedule, and what sort of fun we can expect. But before I do that, I wanted to highlight something that my Twitter pal Omar Rashon-Borja wrote about his beloved Holy Cross Crusaders.     In this piece , he talks about a special game Holy Cross played last year at Polar Park, the minor league home of the Worcester Red Sox (or the "WooSox" as they are commonly known up there).  The game was branded the EBW Classic, featured an important Holy Cross vs. Colgate league matchup, and attracted 9.508 fans to attend ( which was about 2,000 more than their average at Fitton Field ...

You didn't ask for them, but here's my pick for this week's FCS Top 25. This week's candidate for the LFN Top 25 curse?   Sacred Heart , with Colgate a very close second, but there were a lot of teams in the lower reaches of my Top 25 that suffered defeat, in a list that includes Fordham, Southern Utah and (again) William and Mary , who suffered a second straight crushing defeat in two weeks, this time at the hands of New Hampshire . Never in a million years did I ever think Tennessee State, Cornell and North Carolina A&T would simultaneously be in my Top 25, yet there they are.

There have been times this season that Lehigh has been agonizingly close to winning games they have ended up losing. It's as if they've been stuck with bad karma; that they've been oh-so-close to winning, but some bad karmic event keeps them out of the victory column. Against the Big Red on homecoming this weekend, the Bad Karma seemed to be at Schoellkopf Field for Lehigh once again. A well-defended pass bounced into the hands of Cornell WR Collin Shaw  set up one Big Red touchdown. and a low snap to punter junior P Austin Devine set up another, making a 17-0 Mountain Hawk become a very slim, thin-feeling 17-14 spot for Lehigh. But then just like that, the Lehigh offense seemed to have finished with its bad karma, with senior RB Rich Sodeke leading the charge to set up one big touchdown, and scoring the final exclamation point on Lehigh's first win of the season. It all added up to a satisfying return to winning for the Mountain Hawks.

This weekend's Lehigh/Cornell game, if you're not able to make it to Ithaca, will be available to be viewed online, but it will require a subscription and a fee to do it. It's available to on the Ivy League Digital Network , and you can buy it on a school day-pass basis. I forget the price of Cornell's day pass, but if you went for the monthly subscription to ILDN back when we played Yale, then you're good for this weekend's game at Cornell. The game is Lehigh's latest start of the season, at 3:30 PM up in Ithaca. My plan is to can listen to the game for free on www.espnlv.com (or on the radio at AM 1230 and 1320 of the Lehigh Valley).  The reassuring voices of Matt Kerr and Matt Markus will be on the call. And I will also say that if you follow my Twitter feed (@LFN), I'll do my best to keep up with the action.

We break down the Cornell game after the flip. The Cornell Big Red are led by the youngest head football coach in all of Division I, David Archer . His resume sounds like a college football player's dream; starter on the offensive line at Cornell, invited to remain on the coaching staff after a year as an assistant at Franklin and Marshall, and then, after five years and a surprise departure from then-head coach Kent Austin , being promoted from within to become the head coach at your Alma Mater. What may not be a dream is Cornell's record ever since he took over.  While not entirely his fault, Archer has gone only 3-11 as head Big Red.  Still, it's more victories (and more losses) than I've enjoyed as a Division I head football coach, and he's not even 35.  (To both of you who are wondering: My Division I coaching record is a perfect 0-0-0.) Cornell is a typical Ivy League school in that NFL prospects have been known to compete up in Ithaca, and this ...

You hate to put it this way, but this weekend's tilt between Lehigh and Cornell could be the anemic force versus the extremely movable object. Lehigh's defense would be the movable object, ranking dead last in FCS in total defense, but the Not So Big Red's offense, ranked 121 out of 123 FCS teams, hasn't exactly impressed either. It sets up two teams extremely hungry for victory this Saturday, eager to get something positive going before the rest of the regular-season schedule gets back underway. In May, this might have seemed like a speed-bump up in Ithaca.  Now, it seems like a game that must somehow be a victory to get the bus out of the ditch.

OK, I hear you say, how come there are co-Reader's Choice Players of the week this week? Sophomore WR Craig Zurn , who had 55 all-purpose yards and - most importantly - gave Lehigh six points at the end of the first half with his amazing downfield block of a Cornell special-teams player to seal the touchdown. His great play on offense and special teams might ordinarily be enough to give him those honors... ...had I not been tracking the poll from the get-go. Until about, oh, say one hour before the polls were closing, an amazing number of votes came in for the local kid from Jim Thorpe, PA. Before that time, sophomore QB J.B. Clark had a comfortable lead in votes (and he also had his best day as Lehigh's quarterback, going 24-35 passing with 264 yards passing, 1 passing touchdown, and 1 rushing touchdown that gave Lehigh the lead.) This one time, I'm going to be offering Player of the Week honors to both. Game balls will be going to: Readers' Choice: Sophomore WR C...

The official release of the gut-wrenching game on Saturday has been released on Lehighsports.com : With Lehigh and Cornell swapping the lead back and forth throughout the final quarter at Goodman Stadium on Saturday, it was all about who had the ball last. Cornell quarterback Nathan Ford was the last player to take a snap from the Lehigh 20 yard line, and he made it count by throwing a touchdown pass to Jesse Baker for the 25-24 victory in front of 10,460 fans. I've added my weekly poll to your left for "Player of the Game" to the left: I'm going to start to close it a day earlier so that fans can spend their Wednesdays looking ahead rather than behind. Also, in the Lehighsports.com writeup they have a Yahoo! video clip of the final play and postgame reaction as well as a free podcast on iTunes of the post-game press conference. (I also cross-post the Yahoo! video on my Facebook page as well.) There's also a nice feature on our star quarterback from 1986, Mart...

"Oh, no!" If you heard the radio call by Matt Kerr, the voice of Lehigh on the radio (and you can still hear in on lehighsports.com ), his call summed it up best. Up 24-19 with under 10 seconds to play, at the Lehigh 20 yards line, all Lehigh needed to do is stop the Big Red for one play. One play. Never mind the play of sophomore QB J.B. Clark , who acquitted himself well in his third game as a starter. Never mind the play of the defense, which bended but didn't really break for thirty-three minutes and about thirty seconds of the thirty-three minutes and thirty-seven seconds that the Cornell offense had the ball. Never mind the punt returned for a touchdown by sophomore DB Jarard Cribbs at the end of the first half. Never mind any calls from the referee. Never mind the disorganization on special teams at the end of the first half that led to the missed extra point. Never mind the fumble. Never mind the good, or the bad. It comes down to one play. One play to learn ...

(Photo Credit: Cornell Athletics) This weekend, Lehigh is celebrating Young Alumni Reunion weekend . Starting at the Bethlehem Brew Works at Friday at 9 p.m., it continues on Saturday with a pre-game tailgate starting at 11 a.m and going until kickoff (and probably beyond) at 12:30 p.m, followed by dinner in the Gander room at the Goosey Gander and the Brown & White bash on campus at 9:30 p.m. If you check out the website, though, nowhere does it say some key elements for Saturday. Namely: who we're playing. Maybe that's a function of our record, 1-2. Maybe that's the function of our offense, who haven't scored more than three touchdowns in a game since Bucknell last year. Maybe it's because Cornell is looking a lot stronger at 2-0 this year. On paper, this game isn't a must-win. Although wins against the Ivy League are good for the league and good for Lehigh, the game the following week vs. Fordham is much more significant in terms of our chances for ...

Somewhere along the way to the CAA title and the FCS national championship game, Richmond was going to have to take a trip to the Main Line. And apparently somewhere crossing the busy intersection to Villanova stadium, the Spiders were squashed 26-20 by a Villanova team that, according to head coach Andy Talley, has found it's "focus". "I just felt like we were a team with issues," he said. "We weren't focused. From what I saw at Thursday's practice, we weren't ready to play. Now I don't think we're a team with issues. This team stepped up and played the way we've been expecting this team to play." The Wildcats got the job done by stuffing Richmond's running game, holding Richmond to 82 yards - and Villanova may have also benefitted by the absence of the Spiders' most exciting offensive player, sophomore WR Kevin Grayson , early in the second half with a shoulder injury. And they kept the Spider defense unbalanced wi...

(Photo Credit: Mustafa al-Ammar, The Daily Pennsylvanian) I'm trying something new in an effort to make my weekly wrapups better: I'm going to attempt to sum up all the scores of the Patriot League for the week and also add to it other scores of interest from the Ivy League, CAA, NEC and others as I see fit. The focus will still be from a Lehigh perspective (meaning: the focus will be on Lehigh's past and upcoming opponents), but I think it's worth taking a peek at football elsewhere in the East as well. At Franklin Field Saturday afternoon, a former Lehigh foe (Villanova) faced off against Penn (Lafayette's foe next week) in a "Big 5" rivalry game. Despite junior QB Antwon Young 's four interceptions, Villanova escaped with a 20-14 overtime victory after senior DE Dave Dellasandro forced a fumble in the overtime that was recovered by Villanova - and after the Wildcats had their extra-point blocked, meaning a touchdown and an extra point would have ...

As August charges full speed towards the fall and football season, an important question needs to be asked: have you got your season tickets and tailgate plans in order yet? Season tickets (I believe) are still available, as are individual tickets , though I don't think buying a season ticket guarantees you tickets to "The Rivalry" at this point. If you're a student, your big chance to get tickets starts on September 1st - and I'd suggest jumping on them since "The Rivalry" sells out very early. Undoubtedly some of you have some sort of rig similar to the one on the left (the picture is missing, of course, the fully stocked bar). If so, you're prepared for any upcoming tailgate at home or away, and I congratulate you. (Of course, if you still need some tailgating gear, I'd encourage you to go to the LFN Tailgate store to maybe get that extra grill cover you might have forgotten.) For those of you (like me) who might not have invested in Exxon...