Lehigh Football Nation

This weekend, HBO premiered the movie Paterno , a fictional representation of the two weeks covering the span of time between Joe Paterno ’s 409th career game and his lung cancer diagnosis. I watched the movie, curious to see how Barry Levinson would portray the events, and how Al Pacino and a litany of really great actors would put the whole thing together. The movie had a Shakespearean quality to it, trying to make an interesting case study of Joe Paterno and an examination of two fateful weeks.  Like many movies, it took actual events, and the writers formed a narrative around it - much like Shakespeare's Julius Caesar wasn't based on the actual conversations between Marcus Brutus and Cassius. Predictably, in their response to the movie , the Paterno family chose to attack the movie’s credibility. "The HBO movie regarding Joe Paterno is a fictionalized portrayal of the tragic events surrounding Jerry Sandusky's crimes. Numerous scenes, events and dialogue...

If you're anything like me, you're probably wondering what to watch when there's no Lehigh football game to attend or view on a fall weekend. Fortunately, dear Reader, I'm available to help you answer that question. From the early morning College Gameday at Happy Valley to Colorado/Washington State "Pac 12 After Dark", there are a boatload of different opportunities to immerse yourself in the wild, wonderful world of college football. Every week on College Sports Journal, I compile a list of links of every live internet stream that the NFF College Football Broadcast schedule puts out .  But this week, you don't even need to go there, because everything you'll need, Patriot League, FCS, or FBS, I'll have right here.

Still bummed that Lehigh's Patriot League Championship season is over?  Yeah, me too. That doesn't mean that I've totally tuned out the college football landscape, though. Starting tonight, there's some terrific games on TV and online streaming that I'll be watching, both at the FCS and the FBS level.  Happily, the FCS Round of 16 games are not all going up against each other like last week, so the opportunity is there to catch one or more of those games - and you can bet that I will be. Below the flip, starting with the MAC championship game tonight, are my picks for games to watch, and - why not? - some picks as to who I think will win. (Yes, it includes Penn State.  Stop asking.)

You didn't ask for them, but here's my pick for this week's FCS Top 25. Photo Credit: Chicago Tribune Illinois State kicker Sean Slattery, right, celebrates with quarterback Koty Thelen after scoring the game-winning field goal as Northwestern running back Justin Jackson, left, reacts.  (Nam Y. Yuh/AP)

The decision was made.  We were going up to my parent's house over Labor Day weekend. I knew it was the right decision, the correct decision.  My dad, who had suffered a back injury, was rehabbing, requiring for the first time in his incredibly active life to require the use of a walker to get around.  He and my mother wouldn't be driving down to Lehigh for any football games in the next couple of months, which effectively meant if I was going to spend any significant time with them, it was going to be this weekend - opening weekend.  The weekend that I wait for with fevered anticipation for more than nine months. But sometimes bubbles need to be burst.   For the last nine months, I've lived in bubbles: a bubble of Lehigh football, FCS expertise, and a focus on the football season.  I had lived in a bubble where I thought my father was still invincible, even in retirement unable to stay in one place, always able to come down with mom to vis...

Where does it ever end? That's the question I keep asking myself lately. It seems to have added up for me from six months of lunacy, one where collegiate athletic departments have been caught up with such a large number of horrifying incidents. There's serious allegations of rape by athletes at  Baylor  and Vanderbilt .  Louisville hiring prostitutes to lure in potential recruits.  The case of the Stanford swimmer who got off with a slap on the wrist after raping a young woman.  They are literally everywhere, with new twists and turns coming in so fast it's hard to keep up with it all. Even past scandals involving college athletes don't seem to keep themselves out of the news lately, either.  The Penn State Jerry Sandusky story that never seems to die got a new lease on life when alleged abuses were revealed as far back as the 1970s .  The when-will-it-ever-end revelations of  sham classes at North Carolina .  The continuous tric...

(Photo Credit: The Oregonian) Even though Lehigh isn't taking on any FBS teams this season, it's not too early to take a look at the 2016 college football schedule and look at some of the games that pit FCS teams vs. FBS teams and look for potential upsets. Recently, Craig Haley over at Stats p icked his Top 15 FCS vs. FBS matchups .  All around the college football landscape, college football prediction season has begun, analyzing way-too-early Top 25s , and projecting positional battles in preseason camp. There's even a preseason ranking based on existing or current corporate sponsorships , a blog posting I thankfully don't have to do for the Patriot League.  (That's because it's obvious.... everyone knows Lehigh is a Pepsi town, while Lafayette represents a Coke city.) For the overall world of the FCS, though, leading into the season there are few things more exciting than a Jacksonville State putting The Fear Of The Big Guy Above into Auburn, or P...

In the news last week came, essentially, four new claims of abuse that happened at the hands of Gerald Sandusky while he employed as a linebackers coach at Penn State. All are, at a bare minimum, troubling, and they invite the question "who knew what, and when" in terms of these allegations. Three of the allegations, however, are worthy of further examination because they could demonstrate that the administrators at the time, which would include former athletic directors Ed Czekaj and Jim Tarman , violated the law. It also could eventually - though nothing has surfaced yet - implicate Joe Paterno . With the very important caveat being we don't know everything, we do seem to have enough to bring some context to the goings-on inside Penn State's athletic department during the last 40 years.  The only clear fact was that child sex allegations weren't handled with the respect they deserved.

The crimes committed by Gerald Sandusky continue to be a band-aid that is re-applied, and continuously ripped off, the arms of those of love Penn State. Already convicted by a court of law, Sandusky has what is effectively a life sentence, while others who were in power at Penn State during the 1998 period where sex crimes were reported internally, Graham Spanier, Gary Schulz and Tim Curley , have still not faced any sort of trial and are still at-large today . Last week, with an interesting sentence appearing deep in an insurance lawsuit involving a Sandusky victim settlement, the band-aid was once again ripped off. The details of the lawsuit claim that Joe Paterno  chose not to act in 1976 when one victim reported abuse by Sandusky, while Sarah Ganim , the hero reporter who broke the Sandusky story wide-open five years ago, added a second story of abuse in the 1970s where Paterno pressured one of Sandusky's victims over the phone in the 1971 to not press charges agai...

Recently, I wrote an entire article about how the way the NCAA allows schools to become FBS is broken. It turns out I had no idea exactly how broken until I was guided towards the Idaho Vandals Football Consultant report, helpfully posted in full on the University of Idaho's website . In that report, one of the possible avenues that Idaho was mulling over was to join the WAC. I was confused - the WAC had stopped sponsoring FBS football long ago, a couple of years after then-commissioner Karl Benson finished his uncanny impersonation of Baghdad Bob in regards to saving FBS football for that conference - only to leave his job to take over at the Sun Belt Conference. But it turns out, after a fresh read of the NCAA rulebook, it is indeed true. Like a bad horror movie, the zombified WAC football conference could indeed resurrect itself - and, in the process, shows how royally screwed up this system of FCS and FBS movement really is.

People rightfully can paint me as an FCS football fan.  I love Football Championship Subdivision, the section of Division I where Lehigh and the rest of the Patriot League competes.  I find the quality of the games tremendous, and the emphasis on football and competition as the exact right balance. From that fact, some might also think I'm performing cartwheels around my office now that the University of Idaho, after they were unceremoniously cast out of the Sun Belt as football-only members, have decided that their only choice to retain football is to join the rest of the Big Sky in sponsoring football at the FCS level, starting in 2018. You'd be wrong about that. What Idaho's decision really should be telling us is that the process for switching subdivisions is a senseless, conference-driven exercise that forces schools into making tough decisions that they shouldn't be forced to make.

Cruel doesn't begin to describe what Stan Kroenke has done to fans of the St. Louis Rams. He didn't only move the Rams back to LA this week.  "On his way out he decided he had to torch the city, saying 'Any NFL club who signs on to this proposal in St. Louis will be well on the road to financial ruin,'" a not-so-cheery recap from the fans recapped on MMQB .  "This from a guy who proudly claims he was named after two amazing St. Louis baseball players. It was a completely classless act of revenge from a little man who profited greatly by being in St. Louis. He not only made himself look pitiful, he also made the NFL look like a heartless organization that only cares about money." St. Louis is now left with a stadium that isn't yet paid off, the Edward Jones Dome, and no football team to play games there. Nobody asked me, but to me, this presents the opportunity of a lifetime for the private, Jesuit Division I school in St. Louis.

To many sportswriters who have followed English Premier League soccer in any capacity, the holy grail is promotion and relegation. United States sports leagues, for a wide variety of reasons, do not allow its teams or franchises the ability to get "promoted" to the top flights of their professional leagues.  That's largely to protect the teams at the bottom, which can stink as much as they'd like, but will still share in the profits of the league. In the EPL, however, the teams that finish in the bottom are "relegated" to the "Championship" division, and the teams that finish on top get "promoted" to the EPL. Many sportswriters have tried, and failed, to devise a promotion/relegation system for a variety of pro sports.  But I think where it could best work is in the worlds of FCS and FBS football. Hear me out.

Let's get something straight off the bat: I am not against bowl subdivision football. Sure, it's patently unfair in that more than half of the "subdivision" is essentially unable to compete for their championship.  Yes, it's a money play.  Yes, it's overhyped. But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy it.  I'm a huge college football fan.  I love Army/Navy, big rivalry games (as long as they don't interrupt my Rivalry game), and marquee matchups.  When Temple played Notre Dame, I listened, and watched.  College football narratives remain the best narratives. Tonight I'll be watching Alabama play Clemson, a most worthy conclusion to the FBS football season.  Let's take a look at what the CFP did right, and what to expect tonight.

Did you think you would get off easy on watching college football simply because it's Lehigh's bye week? First of all, it gives you time to catch up on watching ESPN's College Football Gameday, where you can see the Lehigh flag that frequently makes an appearance on the program.  (Who knows?  Perhaps Gameday will head to Lehigh for the Fordham game next weekend, or maybe perhaps #Rivalry151 in November.) There's also so good opportunities to scout out Lehigh's upcoming opponents in Patriot League action.  Three Patriot League games are taking place at lunchtime, and another is happening at 3:30 PM. If you receive the CBS Sports Network, you can see whether Bucknell will make it a perfect Patriot League sweep over Army-West Point in the 2015 football season.  The Bison face off against the Cadets at noon, and if you don't have it available on TV, it can be seen via subscription from Army's website .  In much of the Lehigh metro area, too, the game c...

If you're not able to catch the Bucknell game in person,  you can stream the game here from the Patriot League Digital Network.  It's a 1:00 PM start and it's the only available video broadcast of the game.  The link is below: Patriot League Digital Network What I like to do in times like this is to mute the PLDN broadcast, and to listen to simulcast of what's local in the Lehigh Valley on AM 1230 and AM 1320 (which you can put on your actual radio, if you like that sort of thing).  Today Matt Kerr, Matt Markus and Steve Lomangino are on the call: http://www.espnlv.com/ As bad luck may have it, the whole Patriot League slate up against one another on the Patriot League network.  There is a chance to catch the end of the Lafayette/Georgetown game after the Lehigh game.  If so, you will be able to find that here: http://campusinsiders.com/network/patriot_league/live ***** For the East Coast, and specifically Penn State and Notre Dame fans, t...

Coastal Carolina is nuts. The Sun Belt is crazy. These will not be among the official statements you will be reading today in regards to Coastal Carolina's whirlwind acceptance of their athletic program into the Sun Belt. The Sun Belt did not make this decision because Coastal Carolina was the most qualified candidate.  They were not convinced by an impressive attendance number or a plan of action that stated exactly how the Chanticleers were going to be able to pay for an expensive, permanent upgrade to the costs and expenses of FBS football. They picked them because they were in the right place, and were willing to go. And that's precisely why someone at the NCAA needs to put a stop to the the madness that is the current structure for drafting FBS teams.

It may not have seemed like much, a bit of news quietly released during the news dumping ground of Friday afternoon by ESPN Stats and Info. "Upgrades sharpen ESPN's college FPI model," the release was titled , a piece which explained some changes that were being made to ESPN's "Football Power Index". One of those changes involve how FCS wins and losses were represented in their model. And it's actually a bigger deal than you think.

When most people think of the University of Notre Dame, they generally think of three things, and not necessarily in this order: Catholicism, academics, and football. Nobody questions the role that football has at Notre Dame.   Football was what allowed the South Bend, Indiana school to grow from a growing Catholic university to a national, iconic institution. But what allowed Notre Dame to become Notre Dame was a path that isn't available to religious institutions today. Much virtual ink has been spilled about the effects of collegiate realignment, how some conferences have been torn asunder, how some schools are stuck in places that don't make sense, how other conferences are receiving piles of money that would make Scrooge McDuck envious. But one of the biggest losers in this conference-driven realignment is the idea of independent football-playing schools, either loosely-tied or untied from the conference structure that drives the bus today. When realignment a...

It all started when I heard that the three-time defending FCS champions, North Dakota State, are looking for a new home opener  in 2016. "NDSU is back in the business of looking for a football game," the post says.  "That’s after the news we broke yesterday that Western Carolina had bought out of its 2016 date in Fargo, instead scheduling a game against East Carolina for September 3rd, 2016. NDSU was scheduled to host WCU on September 1st." Any good Lehigh fan might then ask: are the Mountain Hawks available for a game in Fargo on the first weekend of September in 2016? The official answer is we don't know, because Lehigh hasn't officially posted a 2015 football schedule yet, let alone a 2016 schedule. But that doesn't stop us at Lehigh Football Nation from taking a peek at potential foes for a 2016 road opener - including some exciting names.