Lehigh Football Nation

First of all, let me be the first to wish all my readers a merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, and joyous Holiday season. And if you're a Lehigh fan, you're probably also wondering what new Mountain Hawk recruits might be needed to continue Lehigh's dominance over "that school in Easton" and also continue their run of Patriot League championships and playoff appearances. Below the flip, see what recruiting needs would make my Lehigh Valley Christmas even happier.  (Santa, are you listening?)

As is the custom in the Patriot League, Lehigh did not release their list of recruits on "Signing day" (even though my running tally of confirmed Lehigh commits is thirteen ). That didn't, however, prevent two local athletes from penning "letters of understanding" to Lehigh yesterday. The Morning Call ran an article about Northhampton High School LB Billy Boyko 's announcement that he will be suiting up as a Mountain Hawk this summer: ''As a kid, I always dreamed of being a [mechanical] engineer and Lehigh's the perfect place for me,'' Boyko said. ''It's a great program and I'm looking forward to winning some Patriot League championships with them. I used to go over there and watch their games a lot when I was a kid. I'm real excited.'' ''Billy's a blue-collar kid who does anything that's asked of him,'' coach Bob Steckel said. ''Since last year, he's said 'Lehigh, Lehi...

Some sharp eyes looking at Lehigh's spring prospectus have found another name added to the class of 2008: LB/TE Mark Wickware . Originally reported to have accepted a scholarship at a Division II school, he has chosen (much to the delight of Lehigh fans) instead to suit up in the Brown & White instead to play Division I football. (Note: I added his name to my original blog posting on the class of 2012 as well.) Heavily recruited by schools like Rutgers as a junior, an injury at the end of that year had him drop off the radar screen of other Division I schools. Even recovering from injury as a senior he did well enough to be an all-South jersey selection, and just recently was selected to play in the 30th annual North-South Jersey Classic which will take place at the Meadowlands on June 30th. Though listed as a TE, he will be playing the game as a LB - where he'll be playing alongside another Lehigh recruit, LB/FB Bryce Arruda, on the South while LB Mike Groome will...

This is going to still be Part III of my "New Realities" series exploring the Academic Index (or AI) for the Patriot League and football, but I won't be making any recommendations just yet to improve the AI. But I will share with you some of the thoughts I've been having while attempting to tackle this debate that has been raging pretty much ever since the inception of the Patriot League. Two comments on Part I and Part II really stood out to me which made me re-evaluate some of what I had written about this topic. The first (paraphrasing) was: "Your commentary on the AI was all well and good, but what does it have to do with Georgetown?" It caused me to reread my postings on this, and he's absolutely right. On this blog I talk about issues that impact Lehigh football, so frequently I slip into a Lehigh mindset when it comes to Patriot League issues. My original posts did try to talk about a league-wide issue from Lehigh's point of view -- the...

Last week, I talked a little bit about some of the realities in regards to athletic recruiting in the Patriot League in today's world. If you hit the link above, you'll see an in-depth talk about the Academic Index (or AI) used by the Patriot League (modeled after the Ivy League's own AI), as well as a talk about the shrinking pool of athletic recruits available to all Ivy and Patriot League schools, and some of the idiosyncrasies that scholarships offer Patriot League institutions in our sports that allow them. Today I'll talk more about the Ivy and Patriot League's AI system, and how it fits in with the big world of football recruiting on a national level. But first, it's worth talking about donuts. Donuts, Chuck? What the Hey!?! Not only are donuts tasty (and against all odds are a popular breakfast "food"), the best way to describe athletic recruiting in terms of the Ivies and Patriot League teams is using the analogy of donuts. Let's think...

With every single one of Lehigh's winter sports teams laying a humongous egg this weekend, and with the reality of Lehigh's recruiting class now fully digested by all you Lehigh football fans out there, it's time to delve into one of the favorite offseason topics: the state of Patriot League football, the types of football recruits we can get, and what steps to take, if any, to move forward. It's a complicated subject, to put it mildly. That's why I'm subdividing this into a "series" of blog postings to go over the state of the league. Part I will introduce about the Patriot League recruiting and compare it against the Ivy League in particular, Part II will consider football recruiting against full-scholarship and partial-scholarship FBS and FCS schools, and Part III will consider where to go from here. Who Are We, Really? The Patriot League is a Division I sports league that competes in Football Championship Series (FCS, formerly known as I-AA) and ...

Yes, we can finally *officially* get excited starting.... now. Lehigh has announced their recruiting class for 2011 and it looks like an extremely exciting group of kids! I know, I know, I'm only a few days removed from my piece about the two sides of my personality on CollegeSportingNews.Com regarding whether it's worth it to get excited about these announcements. Do we know if these kids will be able to make it academically, or athletically, in the Brown & White? No, we don't. But I think I successfully argued that it's certainly OK to think about the potential down the road for your team after seeing the incoming kids. And Lehigh fans like RichH are already abuzz about this recruiting class. From Alquippa, PA to Jupiter, FL to San Jacinto, CA, Lehigh has been covering an ever-increasing area in terms of recruiting. It's hard to believe that a short 15 years ago that Lehigh largely recruited mainly in PA and NJ - nowadays, Lehigh athletes can come from...

It's tough today, let's face it. On "National Letter of Intent Day", you're out on the internet, just like me, with an appetite for the latest information on anyone who might have signed for the Brown and White. We won't be getting a list of recruits today. But tonight, and this weekend, for sure we'll have plenty of steak to sink our teeth into. For appetizers, the Lehigh men's basketball team (10-14, 5-3) will be facing off against Navy (11-12, 1-7) tonight at 7:00PM at Stabler Arena. With Army's home loss yesterday to league-leading Holy Cross 70-54 and Lehigh's thrilling win at American last Saturday (56-54) a win over reeling Navy would give Lehigh a near-stranglehold on third place with an eye towards Bucknell for the #2 spot. Navy, who hasn't won a Patriot League game on the road yet this year, needs to win to simply avoid being cannon fodder for Holy Cross in the tournament. If Lehigh holds serve, Lehigh will be in a pretty go...

It's that recruiting time of year that is simply excruciating for Lehigh fans. We seize on little bits of tomato or salad (like in this picture), scraping by for some sort of update on who Lehigh head coach Andy Coen is looking for, or sniffing around to think about where assistant coaches are driving (or flying) to talk to recruits. There are tireless folks out there (like RichH and ngineer on the voy board) that consistently get the steak for us, working hard and combing over the local press reports for scraps of tantalizing information... who reports for us, and we eagerly gobble down the information. I'm a fan, just like anybody else, and I admit I look over RichH's posts on the voy message board and look at the recruiting websites. But (with no offense to RichH) until I have an official announcement from Lehigh, I tend to make an attempt at curbing my enthusiasm - especially when it comes to reporting who's committed and who hasn't. It is not a stance that e...

It's not all that long ago that a post like this would be just complete and utter speculation about something I knew nothing about. Who's getting recruited for the Lehigh football class of 2011? How the heck would I know? I could say "I want you!", just like this classic Army recruitment poster, but I wouldn't have anything backing up my feelings. Nowadays, we definitely have more information on possible recruits than ever before, thanks to the "magic of the internet" and the Lehigh message board and websites like scout.com who spend all their time tracking possible college recruits in all sorts of sports. Most of the players on scout.com are commits to the "big boys" like Penn State, Michigan, and, yes, even Boise State. But if you are willing to take the time, you can also get information on recruits that are thinking about Lehigh as a place to continue their education. Longshots? Hard to say. Superstars? It's way too early to s...