Lehigh Football Nation

Yesterday, I attempted to expose one myth: about the supposed guaranteed riches and benefits that await a school like Montana should receive if they go to FBS and a WAC that's currently on life support.  If they want to roll the dice and go ahead, that's fine with me: but do it for the right reasons, and don't intimate that the FCS playoffs system is dying and blame it for all your financial woes. Today I'm going against the other threat to Football Championship Subdivision: the schools that pick up their ball, their tradition, their scholarships for a bunch of kids who just want to get an education - and pull the plug on the entire program. That's exactly what happened at Northeastern University and Hofstra University this past offseason, and was recently applauded by a reporter at the Boston Globe . Whenever the subject matter in the larger world of college football turns to TV contracts, larger and larger athletics programs and out-of-control spending, ...

(Photo Credit: Kurt Wilson of the Missoulian) You can get plenty of hits on Google if you combine the two words "WAC" and "trouble". But probably not as many as there would have been even just a few weeks ago. That's because the WAC - who has two teams currently ranked in the Top 25 in Boise State and Nevada - has announced in the next 30 to 60 days that it will be offering bids to four, and perhaps five, potential members . If you came back from Mars and read these statements, you'd probably think that the future for the WAC is rosy.  Unfortunately for the WAC, however, Boise State and Nevada will be bolting for the Mountain West conference starting in 2011 - and while the WAC might attempt to reload with a combination of basketball-only schools and FCS football-playing schools, make no mistake about it: the WAC is still in a real struggle for its survival. It's in this atmosphere that Montana athletic director Jim O'Day sent an email to a...

It was a tough call as to what this weekend's "Sunday Word" would be. With Colgate's emphatic win over Georgetown and Holy Cross' thrilling win over Fordham, the word "order" was a strong candidate. With Harvard slamming Lafayette and Cornell defeating Bucknell, perhaps "Ivy" would have been appropriate. But at this moment of time - when it seems like there are earthquakes or aftershocks rocking the college football world every couple of weeks - it's not a weekend to simply discuss the issues that face the Patriot League. It seems like the entire reality of college football is "fragile". It's been an unwritten rule in years' past that talk of conference realignments, schools moving up from Division II to Division I or from FCS to FBS, or even puff pieces about not having football wouldn't see the light of day during the regular season - mostly because the emphasis of coverage was (and should be) on the exploit...