Lehigh Football Nation

It was bound to happen sometime.  I got the message from a friend of mine, whom I met with a whole bunch of other guys at Lehigh heading up to Rathbone dining hall so very long ago. He had just dropped his own son off at college. He remembered heading up to Rathbone with all those guys and gals that first weekend in South Bethlehem, brought together almost at random, the only thing really linking everyone together being they got in to Lehigh.  We didn't know it then, but it was the first step of an exciting adventure that, for all of us, anyway, would be rewarding and wonderful. I didn't initially get into this writing thing to talk about how great it was to be a student at Lehigh, oddly enough, though for me it was, indeed, great.  I've gotten here over time, after writing about an awful lot of football games, writing about the Patriot League, writing about Football Championship Subdivision, or FCS, and about "what I damn please ( a term coined by my grandmoth...

I somehow don't think that the Lehigh experience for freshmen will be anything like the 1979 not-so-classic movie (starring, posthumously, the very talented Leslie Blalock, who was clearly shafted of the Oscar from Sally Field in Norma Rae - union organizer, shmunion organizer - could she skate like that? I think not!). But as the incoming Lehigh freshmen come to South Mountain today, find out their residences, go over their class lists and textbook lists, and find out about fraternities and sororities, it's time to have them get to know about what's REALLY important: being a Lehigh football fan. I never had a primer like this when I went to Lehigh back in the day. So to you, incoming Lehigh freshman, I present a list of what it means to be a Lehigh football fan. * Know the Nation. Know first that of all the college fan nations out there, Lehigh's fan nation was the very first. Sure, while Gator Sports Nation , Nova Nation and all those Johnny-come-latelies are ...