Lehigh Football Nation

We're going to try something different this week.  No, don't worry, we'll still break down this week's game and everything, but we're just going to make it it quicker and a lot easier to read. You can read College Sports Journal's preview of the game here , and my mostly-football-free "Tailgate Report" here . Below, we're going to do a quick once-over of Lehigh's game notes and possible injuries, then we'll dive right into 5 things to look for with Bucknell, my Keys to the game, and the cherry on top will be my Fearless Prediction. I called this game a "Family Reunion", thanks to all the coaching links between Tom Gilmore, Dave Cecchini and the makeup of both coaching staffs, and in Keith Groller's preview of the game in The Morning Call , he and Gilmore went into even more detail. “It has been a long relationship,” Gilmore said of Cecchini. “I coached Dave’s younger brother, J.T., at Dartmouth in the ...

If you've been following my Twitter account, you might have caught some "possibilities" as Lehigh's next head football coach like Lou Holtz, Brett Favre and Bo Pelini .  The chance that any of those three guys actually are offered and accept the Lehigh head coaching position are somewhere between zero and zero.  (The full list of my Twitter "possibilities" are all on this thread on the Lehigh Sports Forum .) However the actual Lehigh head football coaching search is well underway, with real names and real possibilities. I've come up with a list of fifteen possible names, some which I've heard whispered as candidates, others which might be good fits at Lehigh for a variety of reasons. UPDATE: I have found five more names of possible head coaches that I am adding to this list below. Who are the twenty people?  Here they are, in alphabetical order.

WR Lee Kurfis literally came out of nowhere last year on the Patriot League and national scene. Hard to believe now, but going into the 2013 season, he wasn't a member of the preseason all-Patriot League team, despite playing very well in several games his junior year when WR Ryan Spadola , now with the NFL's Miami Dolphins, was out with mono. Maybe it was the unorthodox style of running.  Or maybe it was because people forgot about his sneaky quickness to break for the ball.  But after Kurfis almost singlehandedly helped Lehigh overcome a three-score opening-game deficit to Central Connecticut State , Lehigh Nation certainly knew that Lee had the potential to be a great one in the annals of Lehigh history. Now of course, the rest of FCS Nation knows who Mr. Kurfis is, as he finished atop the FCS on average yards per game (122.8), 3rd in FCS in receptions per game (9.0), and finding his name on the ECAC All-Star Team, the AP FCS All-America team, Sports Network All-S...

(Photo Credit: The Citadel Alumni Club of Pittsburgh) I don't think it's too much of a reach to say that pretty much everyone involved with the Lehigh football program now wants to add something else to their Christmas wish list from Santa - a new offensive coordinator. Consequently, Valparaiso, a non-scholarship Division I football program the competes in the Pioneer Football League, seems to pretty much have gotten the early Christmas present they were looking for. This morning, Dave Cecchini was announced as the new head coach of the Valpo Crusaders , making people who know Dave happy, because he's clearly been in line for a head coaching position for many years, and sad, because they know he's going to be a particularly big void to fill in terms of Andy Coen 's offense.

(Photo Credit: Brent Hugo /Lehigh Sports via the Morning Call ) Being a new Lehigh quarterback or wide receiver is no easy task. Your athletic director, Joe Sterrett , is a former star quarterback for Lehigh.   Think he's invested in the program? Your receivers coach, Dave Cecchini , was a star member of head coach Hank Small 's "Air Lehigh" teams of the early 1990s.  Now he works every day with members of the offense. Your recently graduated receiver, WR Ryan Spadola , will be lining up for the NFL's New York Jets on Sunday. Every day each Lehigh quarterback and receiver sees Lehigh Hall of Famers all over the place - something that might be intimidating to some. But not senior QB Brandon Bialkowski and s enior WR Lee Kurfis .  They clearly embrace challenge of stepping into those shoes. When I asked Brandon what we should expect this Saturday in his first ever start, he responded simply.  "Expect Air Lehigh to be back," he said.

The analogy is not perfect. When WR Wayne Chrebet came to Jets training camp in July of 1995 as a free-agent signee, the 5' 9 1/2 inch tall athlete from Hofstra was turned away by the security guard , thinking he was "just another Hofstra kid" trying to sneak his way in to see some of the big stars training in Hempstead, Long Island, like QB Boomer Esiason or LB Mo Lewis . WR Ryan Spadola, too was a Jersey resident.  He, too, came from an FCS school, a I-AA school.  But nobody turned the blond-haired, 6'3 Spadola away at the gates of SUNY Cortland, even if the Jets depth charts had his name written in pencil rather than Sharpie, down at the very bottom, just like Chrebet years ago. When Chrebet reached out to Ryan to talk pointers on Jets training camp, it wasn't just an email conversation between a legendary Jet and a rookie still learning the ropes.  It was also a bridge between two powerful Northeast football programs in the mid-1990s, Hofstra and Le...

While it was a bit disappointing to hear from the Lynchburg News-Advance's Chris Lang that their paper didn't bring a photographer to the Liberty game that evening - the more to take of the eminently less exciting Bowling Green/Virginia Tech blowout, even though former Lehigh assistant coach Dave Clawson was there, coaching the Falcons - it did allow me to make my own pictures of the action.  My two Facebook albums of the tailgating and action, #1 , and #2 , are linked. Below the flip, find my choices for Players of the Week, and a list of the other recaps of the game from around the internet.

On any Division I football program that goes from 4-7 to back-to-back league titles in the span of two years, you have to expect that other Division I football teams will be looking your coaching staff, dangling opportunities for bigger things. Such was the case this year with much-beloved Lehigh offensive coordinator Dave Cecchini. When Yale head football coach Tom Williams resigned as head coach after it came to light that he exaggerated claims on his biography , while there was no "official" word that Cecchini was in the running for Yale's head coaching position, it wasn't surprising that rumor mills had his name list for consideration for the top job, among other worthy finalists. What happened next, though, was surprising - and heart-stopping for Lehigh fans.

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.

(Photo credit: Sarah Strackhouse/The Brown & White via the Express-Times) When times are good for the Rams, Fordham usually gets some decent coverage in what is considered the "media capital of the world". But when they lose to go to 1-5, even if it is to the No. 8-ranked team in the country, you're hard pressed to find any mention of the Rams in the New York Post , Daily News , or New York Times . The good news, though, is there's still a lot of press for the Mountain Hawks' accomplishment this weekend.

Earlier this week, I made the easy picks on my hypothetical ballot for the 25th anniversary all-Patriot League team - the defense . Now, for the challenging part. Today, I weigh in on my picks for the offense - and there's bound to be some crying and gnashing of teeth. But one selection on my version of the 25th anniversary team is bound to be completely uncontroversial. That's the selection of the legendary two-sport star for Holy Cross, RB/CB Gordie Lockbaum . (more)

If you're a regular reader of my blog, you probably already know that my "Sunday Word" this week was " Assumption ", so selected because of the shocking 30-24 win by the Division II Greyhounds over the Fordham Rams, (who are still a member of the Patriot League despite their decision to offer full football scholarships starting with the current freshman class). Ultimately, the wordplay of the tiny college from Worcester, Mass was too great to pass up.  (Read it, and I hope you agree.)  But a close second as to my selection of "Sunday Word" wasn't far off from that, either: that word would be "Apocalypse". What else could explain a September that is simply jam-packed with improbable outcomes that might have one looking in the scripture or historic documents to see if, say a 3-1 Georgetown team or a 2-0 Dartmouth team might be a sign of the Rapture? (more)

Could it actually already be time for the Lehigh spring game already?  It seems like just yesterday I was breaking down what needed to be learned this spring on offense and defense . In the past week and a half we've seen the release of the spring prospectus , a new report from Lehighsports.com leading into this weekend's spring game (whose time has been moved to 10:30 AM this Saturday), and 10 questions with new offensive coordinator Dave Cecchini in the latest edition of the Brown & White student newspaper. That's a lot to cover - and only three precious days to do it before the Spring Game.  With two blog postings to go with exclusive interviews with head coach Andy Coen - one on the class of 2014, and another on how the spring season is going - today I'll spend going over what we know going into this crucial final spring weekend. (more)

What was rumored last week became official this weekend: a former Lehigh player has officially returned to South Mountain to become the Mountain Hawks' quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator. After the rumor was broken by Keith Groller on his blog at the Morning Call , the official announcement was made at the football banquet this weekend along with an official release from Lehigh : former Leigh player and assisant coach Dave Cecchini is indeed returning to Lehigh. Cech is not the only former Lehigh assistant coach to be heading to a new position this month - but his return after being dismissed at the Citadel is clearly the dominant story.  (more)

It started out as a rumor.  The Citadel faithful, home of former Lehigh head football coach Kevin Higgins , were unhappy with their disappointing 4-7 record in the 2009 season.  Higgins, according to this article in the Charleston Post & Courier ,   was going to take a "hard look at things" after their final game of the year, an ugly 13-6 loss to Georgia Southern.    The "hard look" actually ended up with Higgins' defensive coordinator (Lehigh veteran Issac Collins , who promptly was named head coach at Division III Widener ) and offensive coordinator (former Lehigh player and offensive mastermind, Dave Cecchini ) being shown the door. Today, however, came the bombshell from the Morning Call 's Keith Groller .  Citing a reliable "source close to the Citadel", the rumor is that something "is in the works" to bring Cech back to Lehigh.  (more)