Lehigh Football Nation

Perhaps you've heard that the Cubs, managed by a Lafayette grad called Joe Maddon , broke their more than century old championship drought vs. the Cleveland Indians last night. The Lehigh Mountain Hawks' championship drought isn't quite as long as that. But if the Brown and White hope to raise the trophy at Murray Goodman Stadium this weekend, they'll need to break a mini-curse of their own. It refers to the Mountain Hawks' inability over the last four years to win both Game 10 and Game 11 on the schedule, specifically during the last four years. There have been years that Lehigh has needed Game 10 to have a chance to win the Patriot League, but haven't been able to get it done.  There have been other years where they've needed Game 11 to do so, and missed. When Games 10 and 11 have title implications, and when Lehigh wins those games, they tend to be Patriot League champs.  When they lose one or the other, there tends to be the type of hurt that...

(Photo Credit: Matt Smith /The Express-Times ) When I look back at Lehigh's football program over the last four years, I can't think of a single game that wasn't meaningful. And when you think about this fact, that's a powerful thing to say about this group of seniors that will graduate this season. So many programs have off years, years in between quality starting quarterbacks, years when players who find themselves in NFL training camps graduate, and the number of holes to fill are too great to compete for championships, let alone playoff spots. But that didn't happen for this group of Lehigh athletes in 2013. Despite needing to replace two players who found themselves in NFL training camps, WR Ryan Spadola and LB Billy Boyko , a starting quarterback, QB Michael Colvin , and an all-Patriot League secondary consisting of CB Bryan Andrews and S Billy O'Brien , the expectations on this year's team was great: Win the Patriot League.  Build off a ...

(Photo Credit: Kevin Mingora /Morning Call) "You didn't cry or anything when Lehigh lost this weekend, did you?" That was the greeting I got when I came back into the office (from another Lehigh football fan, interestingly) this Monday, as if he knew that I would be taking the loss this weekend especially hard. I did not cry.  But I did hurt.  And I know not a few men that I respect that I know cried on Saturday. This is probably not a revelation to most people who know me through this writing vehicle or in person, but yes, I took the loss hard. Believe me, if you saw my wife and son recently, they'd probably tell you that I was not a pleasant person to be in the car with on Saturday.  Or Sunday.  Or Monday. The truth is, I take every loss hard, and losses to what is the biggest rival in football, Lafayette, hurt especially hard.  It is an occupational hazard of caring too much about a sports team. To me, losses to Lafayette are supposed to suck....

On the third play of scrimmage, Lafayette freshman QB Drew Reed fumbled the ball off a bad snap. The ball squirted loose from the line - where a Lehigh player might have fallen on it - and instead nudged in the direction of junior RB Ross Scheuerman , who found himself with the ball in his hands, and, on the broken goal line play, wide open space to get into the end zone. It was that type of day for the Mountain Hawks - a day when five years of Rivalry frustrations, five years of balls bouncing the wrong way, and five years of Lehigh victories came crashing to an end. It was a game where Lehigh never led.  It was a game when the Mountain Hawks came close to coming back - and clearly believing that it could, and would, happen.  But it wasn't meant to be, as Lafayette took home all the marbles on Saturday - the Patriot League Trophy, the Patriot League championship and autobid, and the win over Lehigh that the players, and the many people that follow the Lafayette footb...

(Photo Credit: Bob Cornell /Colgate Sports Information via the Morning Call ) There will be an entire week to get ready for the 149th meeting between Lehigh and a certain school from Easton. But it's worth taking a tiny peek back at this weekend's game - just a tiny one - to see how far this team has come. This Lehigh team has gone through a multitude of challenges this season, on the field and off. And it's a true "achievement", no matter what happens this Saturday, that this team is in a position to win the Patriot League the final weekend of the year.

Every single Lehigh player remembered. They remembered the chaos on the field last year at Murray Goodman Stadium, when Colgate beat Lehigh and celebrated on their field, Lehigh's field, after their championship win. They remembered the team photos.  The hats.  The championship trophy.  The championship picture.  In  their   house . And they remembered that they didn't want to see that again this season. For the second straight week, senior RB Keith Sherman ran over a Patriot League opponent.  For the second time in two must-win games, Lehigh won a game they had to have to keep their Patriot League title and playoff hopes alive. But up in Hamilton, it wasn't a time of whooping and hollering after the game. It was a line and a postgame handshake - in other words, business.  And Lehigh, in their most complete defensive performance of the season, got their business done in very impressive fashion.

(Photo Credit: Chris Shipley /Special to the Morning Call ) There's no doubt about the fact that it was a terrific day for Lehigh football on Saturday. For the only the second time this year, the Mountain Hawks never trailed, and the many questions that surrounded the team after the loss to Bucknell were, in large part, answered. But I also heard something interesting, too, in several conversations with fans. It's the idea that Lehigh's "losing" to Bucknell was the perfect thing to happen to this team at this time.

If you went into Murray Goodman Stadium and said you knew exactly what to expect from this Lehigh Mountain Hawks team, you were lying. Everyone involved with the Mountain Hawks football program had seen, or heard about, the loss to Bucknell. If they had sharp eyes, too, they saw the former starting quarterback, Brandon Bialkowski , on the sidelines in a jacket, his arm immobilized so his collarbone can heal. You had to go back a long way to find a Lehigh team with this much uncertainty, with this much at stake, with three games left. And in this environment, this Mountain Hawk team responded. The Mountain Hawks would never trail in this game, though the Crusaders would tie the game twice, at 7-7 and 13-13.  But then, after filling in permanently after what seemed to be a rib injury to junior QB Matt McHale , freshman QB Nick "Shaf" Shafnisky came into the game and guided Lehigh on three touchdown drives in a convincing 38-20 victory.

I didn't get much sleep this week. And when I did get sleep, I had this "nightmare", which I swear on my grandmother's grave is what I had pass through my head this week. It was a vision of some office - nobody's office, really, just the type of sunny, airy office that only exists in the world of dreams. In it were Lehigh head coach Andy Coen , offensive coordinator Dave Cecchini , and myself. Both men were grim.  There were going over game film of a blowout loss to Bucknell. As each lowlight hit the computer monitor, coach Coen and coach Cecchini would just get angrier and angrier - and would look sideways at me, as if I, somehow, were really to blame. What was kind of funny was that even though I'd had this psychic dream of Lehigh getting crushed by Bucknell this Saturday, I still didn't believe it could actually happen . Waking up on Saturday, I saw no reason to believe that my dream would in any way be indicative of what would actually ...

(Photo Credit:  Chris Shipley / The Morning Call ) Below the flip, enjoy this week's "LFN Players of the Week" for the Georgetown game. You'll notice that there's a lot of nicknames below after last weekend's 45-24 win over Georgetown.

It wasn't a typical Lehigh weekend for me as I headed to Murray Goodman. With my family, including my mother and father visiting Murray Goodman stadium for the first time in a long time, I spent most of the game experiencing most of the game in a place where I haven't been in a while: the "stands". When you cover a team, it's a bit too easy sometimes to take refuge in the press box, hermetically sealed from the rest of the fans out in the fresh air.  Too often, too, that's what I do: plop in the press box, not to emerge until after the clock reads zero. This time around, though, I had the incredible experience once again to enjoy most of the game in the stands, thanks to my family, and it couldn't have been a better one, thanks to the best efforts of the other fans. The picture above was taken on my phone, from where I was sitting on Saturday.

The term being bandied about the season in regards to the 2013 Mountain Hawks was the "Cardiac Kids". Every week, the Mountain Hawks would fall behind.  Every week, there would be hiccups, issues, and heart-stopping moments, but most often would end up in Lehigh victories. Most fans wondered: Could it be possible, would it be possible, for Lehigh to put the pedal to the metal against an opponent, to surge to a huge lead, go for he jugular early, and never look back? This Saturday, the Mountain Hawks answered. Lehigh scored the most points they'd scored in the first half since 2002, scoring on seven of their eight drives of the first half and narrowly missing the eighth.  They'd cruise to a 38-3 halftime lead before the second stringers would make the final score look a lot closer. In short, it was exactly what most of the 9,866 fans in attendance were looking for in the first Patriot League conference game of the season.  Never trailing.  Making the game...

(Photo Credit:   The Morning Call ) Below the flip, enjoy this week's "LFN Players of the Week" for the Fordham game.

(Photo Credit: Howard Smith /USA Today Sports ) So on the morning of October 5th, I got out of bed. The Lehigh football team was undefeated, of course. WR Ryan Spadola was a receiver on the NFL's New York Jets, and by many indications was in line for more playing time on the biggest of stages, Monday Night football. And G C.J. McCollum , after ripping up the NBA summer league for the Portland Trailblazers, seemed poised to enter the NBA season with a flourish, maybe even competing for Rookie of the Year. By the end of my trip to the Big Apple, all three dreams were shattered. Athletically, most Lehigh people of all stripes had three things in which they take an immense amount of "pride" - the football team, successful on the field for so long, the battle of Ryan Spadola against the odds to make the 53 man roster of the New York Jets, and the first Lehigh player ever taken in the NBA draft, C.J. McCollum.  By the end of Saturday, Lehigh's "pride...

(Photo Credit:  Keith A. Muccilli / Trenton Times ) "Once you have some positive things going, you start saying, 'Wow, I know Lehigh is a great team'.  We started playing football, and it was nice to see.  After this game, there's going to be some 'attaboys', 'good efforts' and everything else, but for us to improve as a team it's got to go beyond the great effort, the good effort, the hanging in there.  It's not enough.  It can't be the case.  It needs to be winning a game that we gave ourselves an opportunity to win." That was Princeton head football coach Bob Surace last year after his Tigers came close to beating the Mountain Hawks at Murray Goodman last season, but coming up just a bit short, 17-14 . Princeton's strong effort that Saturday last season was an indicator that the Tigers, who were 1-9 in 2011, were poised to be a much better team in 2012. They were. After a 5-5 season, where the Tigers beat Harvard and...

(Photo Credit: Justin LaFleur /Lehigh Athletics) Below the flip, enjoy this week's "LFN Players of the Week" and a Two Minute drill on the quotes from this Saturday's game. I've decided to break out the sneak peek at Princeton into a different blog post - for reasons that will be come clear.

It looked pretty grim - so grim, in fact, that many of the announced attendance of 6,386 had already left the stadium by th beginning of the 4th quarter. Central Connecticut State, behind a monster offensive performance by RB Rob Holloman , was methodically beating up the Lehigh defense. There the Blue Devils were, driving to start the 4th quarter, a Lehigh facemask penalty keeping their drive alive, and finally reaching 1st and goal at the Lehigh 9. It was the end of that drive, unbeknownst to all, that would be the difference between winning and losing their home opener.

"At least we have him returning." That's what Lehigh fans have been able to say to themselves each offseason for the last five years. Some first-team all-Patriot League offensive weapon.  Some top Patriot League defensive leader.  Something... measurable.  " We lose a lot, but at least we have him." When Lehigh saw record-breaking  QB Chris Lum lost to graduation, the Nation turned to QB Michael Colvin and  WR Ryan Spadola to keep the offensive machine humming. During the past three season, Mountain Hawk fans have grown accustomed to head coach Andy Coen and offensive coordinator Dave Cecchini' s abilities to mold new players and plug them in, not missing a beat. But they've never had to replace this much.  Last season's top rushers are gone.  The receiver who's noe made the 53 man roster of the Jets.  The linchpin of the offense - the quarterback - gone. As we finally enter the 2013 Mountain Hawk football season, the biggest qu...

(Photo Credit: The Baltimore Sun) It's a huge day, with the long-anticipated preseason matchup today between the NFL's New York Jets and Jacksonville Jaguars.  Lehigh alumni OG Will Rackley and WR Ryan Spadola will be showing the folks on the NFL Network how Lehigh football players play in the pros. Even this, though, does not stop the countdown. Today, our honored athlete is senior RB Keith Sherman , who is one of this year's co-captains and one of the two players I interviewed at Patriot League Media Day .

In the run-up to the game versus New Hampshire, you can bet New Hampshire head coach Sean McDonnell and Lehigh head coach Andy Coen will want to talk about lots of things. The Wildcats lead off the year against an FBS squad, Central Michigan, and the defending Patriot League champions, Colgate.  They're both very winnable games, and they'll hope to be 2-0 going into Bethlehem off of a bye week and a tough first two games. Lehigh will have come off opening games against Central Connecticut State, Monmouth and Princeton, and hope to have solidified all the questions going into training camp - and, hopefully, justified their ranking at No. 17 in the preseason coaches' poll. You can bet, though, what New Hampshire and Lehigh won't want to talk at all about the Wildcats's last visit to Murray Goodman Stadium. That's because they'd then have to talk about "the Divot".