Lehigh Football Nation

The so-called "Big 5" conferences of collegiate athletics don't want things to remain the way they've been. "Relative to the legislative process, we are very much at a point now where we can't get anything that's transformative through the system," Big XII commissioner Bob Bowlsby said earlier this month , helping kick off football media day season with fireworks. "I think that's particularly felt by seven or eight conferences and the five major conferences in particular. It is just very difficult to do anything that would benefit our student athletes or our institutions that doesn't get voted down by the larger majority." What's the real story behind the NCAA legislative process - what's the showdown really all about?  And why is this important?

It is truly hilarious when people who don't know what they're talking about try to make news points, and news decisions, based on one side of the story. Such is the case with the breathless coverage of the Big 10's decision, led by former Wisconsin head football coach (and current athletic director) Barry Alvarez , who shared with the Milwaukee-Journal that Big 10 officials " recently agreed to stop scheduling nonconference games against FCS programs. " Of course, the first thing papers around the country do is pull a picture from such an FCS game involving Wisconsin from last season - surely a poster child for a blowout, right? Um, not exactly.  Northern Iowa gave Wisconsin " all they could handle " in a 26-21 nailbiter. Wait, it gets better.

As a Lehigh fan, it was a season to remember - one of the all-time great ones. Assuming there's no shenanigans, the Mountain Hawks will be enjoying their first Lambert Trophy since 2001, and there's still a great possibility that senior QB Chris Lum 's record-breaking season may result in the first-ever Lehigh football player to ever receive the Walter Payton award, the equivalent of the Heisman Trophy at the FCS level. But before this awesome season comes to a close, two interesting articles came out over this holiday season that are worth reporting before we wax philosophic about the season that was and before we start to announce prospective Lehigh recruits.

Few analogies are as overwrought as the consistent characterization of football being a "war".  I do it; Pat Forde does it; everybody does it. But it seems strangely appropriate to use this as my "Sunday Word" this weekend. With Democrats and Republicans making every single tiny appointment and legislative action as an epic struggle between good and evil, anything on the political front these days feels dangerous - whether it means driving the American economy into a ditch, or not. So it goes, too, with all the big issues on the docket in the NCAA this past week. If you thought Congress was the only body that had walkouts, no-shows, financial straitjackets and throwing the least well off under the bus, you should see the "war" happening in the halls of the NCAA. (more)

In retrospect, Jim Tressel was just an actor. Just like Bill Cosby , or Randy "Macho Man" Savage - an actor, playing a part. Wrestlers, of course, create bigger than life personas inside the ring of simplistic good-or-evil characters, often designed to deflect, like an illusionist, the reality behind what people were seeing.  That's the lot of the wrestler - and the actor. And Tressel - seen here, back in his days as a I-AA national championship winner with some of his dominating teams at Youngstown State - was no different from those who make their living making it seem like they're someone else. Whereas Macho Man wore crazy getups to make one doubt his sanity (in the ring), Tressel played the role of dad. A good, Christian dad, wearing suits and ties to games. Looking like a cross between Woody Hayes and Pat Riley . At once looking like a clean, quasi-militaristic vintage 1960's coach, exuding control.  He looked almost too much like the part of...

Say this about Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany - he knows how to get an audience.   Yesterday, Delany put himself front and center once again after picking up a topic that two NCAA commissioners, the late Myles Brand and Mark Emmert , had floated but never pushed - the idea that scholarships to play collegiate sports should include the "full cost of attendance". Currently, the "full cost of attendance" of an athletic scholarship includes tuition, dorms, classroom materials and other expenses. But Delany's endorsement of the proposal to include transportation and a stipend for personal expenses as scholarship money turned a whole lot of heads for a lot of different reasons. (more)