Lehigh Football Nation

If you blinked, you might have missed it: a tiny blurb at the end of a Morning Call article about " Kutztown boots soccer, sinks swimming teams ". But the harsh realities of the credit crunch and Depression 2.0 finally hit home at Lehigh athletics in a measurable way: Other area college officials contacted by The Morning Call said they know of no plans to cut sports teams. Lehigh University, however, is trimming its athletic budget, spokeswoman Linda Harbrecht said. ''In response to the current economic climate, Lehigh is making reductions in total spending -- including the budgets that support the sports program -- in an effort to ensure that sufficient financial aid resources are available for current and future students,'' she said. Pretty big news - that the budgets supporting the sports program are having cost reductions. Not the sort of thing you'd announce with fireworks, to be sure. But it's still a huge announcement that makes one wonder ab...

No, seriously, could anyone really blame the Dayton Flyer for looking this smug? After all, as was reported by me on College Sporting News, Dayton's Pioneer Football League (or PFL for short) is now the one-stop shop for non-scholarship football. Their commissioner, Ms. Patty Viverito, has gladly taken the leadership for Division I non-scholarship football coast-to-coast, and has shown more than half a dozen other Division I schools (that don't currently have football) the benefits of playing at that level. Here in the East, the message is clear for those schools in the MAAC who in 2008 have found themselves without a conference (Marist, Iona, and LaSalle): Step up to our vision of non-scholarship football, be willing to travel, and compete to win, and we'd be happy to have you. From my perspective, it looks to me like none of the three programs are planning to drop football altogether. LaSalle has just finished $2.5 million in football stadium improvements, and Marist h...

The one thing you can say for certain about the demise of St. Peter's football is that it came at the absolute worse possible time. It came at a time when FCS powers were meeting in Chicago, IL to discuss the future on non-scholarship football in Division I. I'm guessing that the demise of a non-scholarship conference wasn't on the original list of talking points. Forget for a moment that clever MAAC puns (like the not-so-funny one titling this post) are history. Forget that you won't be seeing any matchups like Iona/St. Peter's in 2007. Forget that St Peter's scheduled out-of-conference foes for 2007 in the form of Monmouth, Wagner, and St. Francis (and a bunch of non Division I teams) are now left in the wilderness with extremely slim chances to reschedule games in the next couple of months. (Although this blogger feels confident about Monmouth's chances of rescheduling.) Forget the St. Peter's football alumni. Forget the returning players of th...