Lehigh Football Nation

Picture this: you're a Patriot League team that was ranked in the Top 25 most of last year.  You've lost your starting quarterback to graduation - a guy who is playing professionally.  You have questions at quarterback, but you have an incredible receiving corps coming back - so why aren't we picked to finish first in the Patriot League? Thought I was talking about Holy Cross?  Well, I was .  But I was also talking about Lafayette - a team who legitimately could make most of the same claims that the Crusaders have, with QB Rob Curley playing football overseas and a chip on their shoulders because they were picked 3rd. In a way, though, it's much worse for the Leopards. Their last-gasp loss to Lehigh, the 27-21 overtime loss, has had nine months to fester. If you thought the size of the chip on Holy Cross' shoulder pads were big, wait until you see Lafayette's. (more)

Like every other football team in the country, Georgetown fans are thinking that this season is a fresh new start, with plenty of new faces and a chance to build something special in Washington, DC. The trouble is that this isn't the first time the Hoyas have felt this way.  Georgetown, under head coach Kevin Kelly , is rebuilding.  Again.  For the fifth year in a row. But it's not just change happening with the Georgetown football program; it's radical change, and change, it seems, that the Hoya players believe in. It's quite conceivable that when Lehigh faces off against the Hoyas in the next-to-last game of the year, they will see a team they do not recognize at all from years past. From Georgetown's perspective - who went 0-11 last year, and has struggled mightily in Patriot League play since forever - that can only be a good thing. (more)

Most years, it's a gimme to pick last year's champions to repeat the following year.  But admittedly, last year wasn't just any old year for the Holy Cross Crusaders. Last year,  QB Dominic Randolph , currently in camp with the NFL's New York Giants, was at the helm of the Crusader offense, well on his way towards shattering every significant passing record in the Patriot League.  His choice to return for his final year of eligibility sent shockwaves through the rest of the league, as it should have.  His decision making ability and skill to find the weak spot on the opposing defense was unbelievable. It might be understandable to believe that the loss of Randolph to the NFL would cause a dropoff.  But a dropoff to being picked 4th in the preseason rankings, behind Lehigh and Lafayette?  4th, with two of Randolph's biggest receiving targets returning? 4th, with the preseason player of the year returning on defense? "I guess we'll have to prove it on t...

Sometimes is seems like not much changes from year to year up in Hamilton, New York with the Colgate Raiders. And that's probably just how Raider fans - and head coach Dick Biddle , who is entering his fifteenth season coaching the team playing in the frozen tundra of upstate New York - like it. There's no drama this season in Hamilton, really compared to the rest of the Patriot League. Elsewhere, there are quarterback battles in training camp, staff changes, head coaching changes and plenty of news to keep the newspapers and internet buzzing. Colgate? They're wondering which players they can reload with while their senior signalcaller - and leading running back - return to shoulder the Raider load in 2010. There's no drama in Raidertown.  (more)

One thing is abundantly clear about the Bucknell Bison: things are changing. New head coach Joe Susan - a guy that cuts an imposing figure - came to Lewisburg like a Scarlet Knight galloping from Rutgers.  With the royal endorsement from famous Bucknell alumnus (and former recruit) Greg Schiano , Susan came to instill something new in a country more accustomed to following basketball schedules than football schedules. And even though it's early, he is - beyond a shadow of a doubt - succeeding in his quest to change things at Bucknell. It's a new dawn in Lewisburg - and Patriot League coaches had better be paying attention, or they could become victims of a Bison stampede. (more)

At Patriot League Media Day, head coach Tom Masella seemed like he would rather talk about the upcoming football season, his potential NFL prospect TE, or Fordham's brand-new locker facilites than football scholarships. "He's a scholarship player, he's a scholarship player, and he's a scholarship player," Masella told Craig Haley of the Sports Network in regards to everyone's favorite off-season Patriot League topic.  Scholarships were still on everyone's mind, though - after all, despite Fordham's presence at Patriot League media day, scholarships were the reason that they were competing as an Independent in 2010 instead of competing for the Patriot League title. The fact that Lehigh will be playing Fordham as a non-conference opponent for the first time since 1989, however, doesn't mean any less to the Rams than before. They know full well that what they're playing for - a chance at the FCS playoffs - will require no large slip-ups...

Weren't scared enough of a opening weekend trip to Des Moines to face off against a team featuring an NFL prospect on the defensive line?   Not intimidated by playing against last year's national champs ?  Think it will be easy to knock off a nearby rival that has owned us in three of the last four meetings?  Or perhaps you think a game on the road against a team that was nationally ranked in 2004... and hasn't left the Top 25 since , will be a good shot at a Lehigh win? You'd think the schedule would get easier after that tour of the Theatre of Pain . But you'd be incorrect. The schedule originally had Lehigh getting a bye week, and starting off a nice long homestand against Harvard on October 9th. But a scheduling snafu meant instead that Lehigh would be spending the week after their break going back to Cambridge to face off against the Crimson, who have beaten them three of their last four attempts. This New England trip won't be any easier than the...

(Photo Credit: Deb Cram/Seacoast Online) You can probably forgive New Hampshire fans for being a little bit obsessed with polls. After all, the announcement this week that they were going to be starting the year ranked in the Sports Network poll at No. 10 was nothing unusual for them. Since breaking into the Top 25 on the 13th of September of 2004 - after their shock 35-24 win over Rutgers, behind the efforts of freshman QB Ricky Santos - they never left the polls. Think about that a second. To date, that's 2,165 days as a top team in FCS. That also off the heels of a year where the Wildcats never dropped below 11th in the country, and rose to as high as 4th.  That's what Lehigh is going to be up against when they travel to Durham, New Hampshire this fall. (more)

(Photo courtesy: Associated Press) New Princeton head football coach Bob Suarce didn't need directions from Bengals' OL Andre Smith to figure out how to get to Princeton, New Jersey. The former assistant coach on the NFL's Cincinnati Bengals, after all, knew the area well. The son of Tony Surace , longtime head football coach at Millville High School, Suarce was a former Tiger offensive lineman and - for good measure - married a four-year Lady Tiger soccer player. To say his New Jersey and Princeton roots run deep would be an understatement. Taking over for terminated head coach Roger Hughes , Suarce comes back to the land of the Shore and the Sopranos to bring another orange and black team back to prominence, this time in the Ivy League. And which fotball team will be the singular focus of Princeton's new head coach this offseason? Why, Lehigh, of course. That will make this game for Lehigh - a classic "trap game" - incredibly dangerous. (more)...

It was the moment every opponent of Villanova was waiting for this offseason.  Draft day was approaching. But this professional draft isn't the one you're thinking it is. Wildcat senior WR Matt Szczur , who was last year's CAA player of the year and voted Most Outstanding Player of the FCS Championship game, was about to find out if he was going to be drafted in the Major League Baseball draft. With legions of Delaware, Temple, Lehigh, Richmond and James Madison fans cheering him on, the word came out: he was drafted in the fifth round by the Chicago Cubs. Undoubtedly, cheers rang out. That is, until Villanova issued a press release mentioning that part of his Cubs contract would stipulate that he would return for his final year of football eligibility. What that means to Villanova opponents is: one more year of Number Four. (Cue the groans.) (more)

Is it really just about 50 days until Lehigh travels to Des Moines, Iowa to kick off their 2010 season? Does that mean that the time is finally right to start taking early looks at the matchups on next year's schedule, and see what sort of players and teams the Mountain Hawks will be up against? It does to me, at least. Especially when one of the players on the Drake team we'll be facing - senior DE Dain Taylor - has been getting NFL scouts and plenty of pre-season accolades going into the season. Drake is a lot more than Taylor, of course. But Taylor's statistics should put to rest any idea that Drake of the Pioneer Football League will be a pushover fifty days from now. (more)