Lehigh Football Nation

(Photo Credit: Alec Turner c/o Lehigh Athletics) For those that care about these things, Lehigh entered the first round FCS playoff matchup 21 1/2 point underdogs. And if we're being fair, that was probably the right number. The Seawolves were 9-2, nationally ranked with seven conference wins in the tough CAA and one of their losses coming to a very strong FBS team in South Florida.  In contrast, unranked Lehigh came into the game 5-6 and only were here because they upset Colgate 41-38 on the road and won enough Patriot League conference games to win the autobid. Yet a young Lehigh team was game to put their best foot forward and to have a heroic sendoff for potential NFL prospect senior WR Troy Pelletier , and in that, the game was a rousing success. With junior QB Brad Mayes expertly picking apart one of the top defenses in FCS, time after time he'd find Troy for reception after reception, each one highlighting his impressive skill set as an audition for the nex...

It was marginally better than last seasons 1st round loss to New Hampshire, but it still wasn't close. After holding Stony Brook scoreless in the first quarter and battling back to a 24-14 deficit at halftime, Stony Brooks' 2-play, 77 yard drive where QB Joe Carbone found TE Cal Daniels for a 40 yard touchdown pass to make it 31-14.  Despite a couple of second half touchdowns to keep it somewhat close, Stony Brook would add four more touchdowns in the second half to really pull away from the Mountain Hawks. Statistically, Lehigh battled pretty hard most of the way - especially on offense, when senior WR Troy Pelletier concluded his Division I football career as gaining the most receiving yards in Patriot League history.  On the day he had 10 catches for 94 yards and a terrific touchdown grab that undoubtedly caught the eyes of some NFL scouts. Junior QB Brad Mayes (33-for-48 passing, 333 yards, 3 TDs, 0 INT) and junior RB Dominick Bragalone (75 rushing yards, 40 r...

For whatever reason, you didn't make the trip to Stony Brook, New York.  You've popped your popcorn, iced your Yuenglings, and put the meatballs in the crockpot - and then you panic. How do I watch the game?  What is ESPN3?  Can I watch it on my TV?  Do I need to subscribe to something?  WHAT DO I DO??? Never fear.  LFN's here to help.

At the very least, Stony Brook will be among the best defenses that Lehigh has played against all year, if not the absolute best. Stony Brook is ranked 21st in the FCS in total defensive yards allowed, with 316.9 per game.  This ties them with Colgate (also 21st) but is slightly behind Bucknell (294.6) and Yale (302.8) in that category. But Colgate, Bucknell and even Yale did so with a schedule that isn't nearly as taxing as the week-in, week-out struggle that Stony Brook had as a member of the CAA.  It's one thing to give up a combined six points to Marist and Georgetown, as Bucknell did; it's quite another to hold New Hampshire and Richmond to 24 points, both resulting in wins. Stony Brook is a physical football team - the closest equivalent that Lehigh has faced this season in that department has been Yale.  Over the course of the season, they have run the ball more often than they've thrown it, but when they have thrown the ball, generally after setting up...

I remember the last game Lehigh played on Long Island; I was there.  It also happened to be a FCS Playoff, or back then, I-AA Playoff, game.  It wasn't against Stony Brook, who finished their very first season in I-AA that year with a 5-5 record and a win over St. John's (NY), 28-6. It was against a team that used to be the biggest college football program on Long Island - an East Coast independent, Hofstra, that was led by head coach Joe Gardi .  Like Stony Brook, Hofstra had transitioned to I-AA football, but they had done so much earlier, and even with the challenge of scheduling as an independent, had developed into a playoff team quickly. Hofstra used to have a national presence on the football stage.  Jets fans marveled at the diminutive WR Wayne Chrebet , and fell in love with his story - the local boy who led the Dutchmen in receiving, but only was on the Jets because he hustled his way into a tryout.  Legend has it that the security guard at...

By now, you know that Lehigh has drawn Stony Brook as their first round opponent in the FCS Playoffs. Let's get more familiar with them by starting with the basics. Stony Brook is a member of the CAA, the same FCS football conference that gives use Villanova, Delaware, New Hampshire, and James Madison. They're located near Oyster Bay on Long Island, in Stony Brook, New York, and were established as a part of the SUNY University system in 1957.  Since then, they have grown and expanded in leaps and bounds as a research University, and also collaborate with Lehigh on certain initiatives, most recently with their computer science departments to research machine learning . Their nickname is the Seawolves - which is apparently a real thing - and football-wise they finished 9-2 with their very challenging CAA schedule. They are ranked No. 11 in the country in the FCS coaches' poll and No. 12 in the country in the STATS poll. Oh yeah - they also gave a 9-1 FBS team ...

Lehigh are the Patriot League Football Champs, and will be playing in the 1st round of the FCS playoffs. The FCS Playoff Bracket is going to be revealed on ESPNU at 11:00AM on Sunday on a selection show.  The team will be watching the selections live at the Goosey Gander to find out who they will play, and where. The chance that Lehigh will host a home playoff game appears to be very slim.  Though record is technically not in consideration for whether a team will host a first-round game, other considerations (the lack of lights, no Noon playoff starts) make it difficult if not impossible to host a playoff game at Murray Goodman unless temporary lights are brought in. Being that's the case, it seems very likely that Lehigh will be playing somewhere on the road in the 1st round.  Below the flip, I will give the bracket predictions of the experts and three things I think you should watch for during the selection show.

We're a week away from picking the field, so below the flip, check out what I think the bracket will look like.

As I finalize the release of my book, I realize that something I really enjoyed doing, picking the FCS playoff field, I hadn't done yet this year.  With two weeks to go, below the flip, check out what I think the bracket will look like.

(Photo Credit: Lehigh Athletics) When the Dukes come to Murray Goodman Stadium this September 6th, it won't quite be a full decade since James Madison last came to Bethlehem. But the occasion of that almost-decade-old meeting - the first round of the FCS playoffs in 2004 - is not easily forgotten by either side. For fans of the Purple and Gold, it was the first step towards a memorable FCS National Championship run - all four wins coming on the road. For fans of the Brown and White, however, the memory always goes back to those seven downs.

Overall, people in the Northeast are tough. Maybe it's the cold, New England winters, the thick atmosphere around the financial and media centers of the large cities, or maybe it's just something in the cold melted waters in the tiny hills we call mountains.  Or maybe it's some of the calamities we've had over the last decade-plus. 9/11. Terrorism threats. Multiple storms that have knocked out power, crippled businesses and wrecked homes. The latest happened this Friday, in a tiny, upper middle-class Connecticut hamlet only a half an hour from where I grew up. My toughness, and a lot of the toughness that exemplify many of the people in the Northeast, disappeared. Like many others, I wept for the victims of Newtown. But I was also appreciative for two hugely entertaining FCS football games that provided a very welcome distraction from the horrible events of Friday.

By now you've heard Lehigh was not selected as an at-large team to the FCS playoffs, despite their 10-1 record. While most years, most Lehigh fans, including myself, would pull ourselves together, accept our fate, and then pull together and root for Colgate to make a run to Frisco, this year it hasn't been the case. There is still a lot of bitterness out there.  And I know why. It is not just the function of one playoff snub. It is the mounting evidence over the last couple of years that Lehigh, and by extension the rest of the Patriot League, is a part of FCS, but not really.

Lehigh won ten Division I games this year, something that only three other schools managed this season.  Only one, North Dakota State, was the autobid champions of their conference; the other two, Old Dominion and Montana State, not only made the FCS Playoff field of 20 with ease, they were seeded as one of the Top 5 teams in the country. Lehigh won their final game of the year against their bitter rivals, Lafayette, in impressive fashion, winning 38-21, a three-score victory.  In contrast, FCS playoff participants New Hampshire, Illinois State, and Wofford lost their games by three scores or more, to Towson, North Dakota State, and FBS South Carolina, respectively. ( The Wildcats, in fact, gave up 64 points for the second time this season, falling 64-35 to a team, Towson, that Lehigh beat in the first round of the playoffs last season.) Lehigh went 10-1 on the season, and even led at halftime over the eventual Patriot League champions, Colgate, before falling in the ...

In the end, not having junior WR Ryan Spadola didn't matter. In front of more than 18,000 loud North Dakota State fans, and a fearsome Bison defense, the Mountain Hawks couldn't overcome the injuries, the noise, and their own miscues in the 24-0 defeat in the FCS Quarterfinals. It would be the furthest Lehigh had made it in the FCS playoffs since 2001, when they travelled to Furman and were defeated 34-17 by the Paladins.

(Photo Credit: Michael Vosburg/The Forum via the Morning Call) Head coach Andy Coen made no bones about it to Keith Groller of the Morning Call yesterday. He said the team is "really close, and is still hurting" from the first-ever-of-its-kind suspension of junior WR Ryan Spadola for an offensive twee t. Spadola, who didn't even get on the plane to Fargo yesterday, is missed by all. "I think it can be a galvanizing event for our team," Coen said, however,  "I haven't really talked a lot about it with them. I may before kickoff. I just told them we are a family and sometimes issues pop up within a family and you learn from them and grow from them and you get stronger."

(Photo Credit: Dave Wallis/The Forum) Let's say you're a Lehigh player right now. Today, you learned that your star receiver, junior WR Ryan Spadola , was suspended by the NCAA by making an offensive tweet. To call it a distraction would be the understatement of the year . No Lehigh team has ever gone through this.  Heck, no team has ever gone through this.  No player has been suspended by the NCAA for tweeting something. So the question is to you: how do you respond?

On Saturday, it was a head-scratching lead-in on head coach Andy Coen's press conference on Lehigh's historic 40-38 win over Towson in the playoffs. The consensus from the folks I talked to coming out of the room was: why would you lead the press conference with that question?  It seemed like much ado over nothing - though none of us, it must be said, read the tweet in question, either. Five days later, it broke that the NCAA would be suspending  junior WR Ryan Spadola,  and he would not play in Lehigh's FCS quarterfinal game against North Dakota State.

You get the feeling that the Big Guy up there knew this would happen - just like last year. In 2010, Lehigh did something out of the ordinary on their regular season schedule, playing their opener at Drake University in Iowa. And when the Mountain Hawks had a road playoff game after qualifying for their first FCS Playoff game since 2004, they were sent out to Iowa again to take on the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. In 2011, it wasn't Lehigh that played out at the FargoDome in North Dakota - that would have been Lafayette, who played their season opener further west then the Leopards had ever played. It means that Lehigh's trip this week out to the FargoDome won't be something completely unfamiliar to them.  They've all played in a dome before.  They know something about travelling to a Missouri Valley football team. And - if they've checked with Lafayette - they'll know a little about what to expect in their trip to the Roughrider state as...

(Photo Credit: Karl Merton Ferron / The Baltimore Sun ) As Towson entered the field before their playoff game versus Lehigh, and unidentified player came through the large, inflatable tiger head holding a championship belt, not unlike one a prizefighter might wear. As someone who writes about Lehigh football, it provided an irresistible storyline for the playoff game, with echoes of Ali vs. Frazier.  The Thrila in Manila.  A prizefight. It makes naming this game the "Towson Thrilla" from here on forward just that much easier. What did the the Lehigh players think about the move after the game? "We had no knowledge of it until we saw them run out with it," junior WR Ryan "The Answer" Spadola said to me later.  "It was bad on their part because it just got us more fired up." As we go over the mountain of great press about this phenomenal game, I'd like to round up the highlights of those articles, as well as empty out my own note...

(Photo Credit: Karl Merton Ferren / Baltimore Sun ) So-called "big-time" collegiate athletics has had an awfully rough year. When the entire QB Cam Netwon affair - you remember, the father of Auburn's star quarterback getting caught offering his son's services for a six-figure sum of money - feels like it happens a decade ago, you know the overall feeling of college football in those Bowl Subdivision ranks has to be one of nausea rather than school pride.  Between the horrors at Penn State, which are unfolding in slow motion in front of the entire world, and the latest conference realignment madness, where money has made a Boise State to the Big East scenario plausible, "big-time" college football, and perhaps even all of "big-time" college athletics, seems severely broken. And then, suddenly, amidst all the lunacy, something comes along that makes you remember why you started following college football in the first place. Many, many peo...