Lehigh Football Nation

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that sometime Lehigh opponent Monmouth recently made a move to leave the Northeast Conference (NEC) in all sports to join the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) in all the sports that they sponsor.  As it turns out, the MAAC does not sponsor three sports in which the Hawks compete: women's field hockey, women's bowling, and football, which meant that Monmouth president Paul G. Gaffney II needed to apply back to the NEC to become an associate member in all three sports to remain. It didn't seem impossible that Monmouth would remain in the league in these three sports. But today, Monmouth got their reply from NEC commissioner Noreen Morris , returning the will of the NEC presidents: yes to field hockey, and no bowling and football . With Monmouth's "Plan A" going by the wayside, the Hawks are now certainly looking at their "Plan B"'s - one of which could very well be the ...

(Photo Credit: Staten Island Live) While the news has broken that Quinnipiac and Monmouth will be accepting bids to the MAAC conference and leaving the NEC in all sports, nothing is official just yet.  The MAAC's presidents will be conducting a formal vote on the matter tomorrow, and until then, it's technically speculation. So is the thought of Wagner and Monmouth headed to other football conferences - something that seems fairly logical, should their moves to the MAAC be confirmed.  The MAAC does not sponsor football, and while the Hawks and Seahawks could spend $250,000 in exit money and then re-apply for associate, non-voting membership in the NEC for next season, it's far from clear whether either party would welcome the arrangement. If Wagner is thinking about joining the Patriot League in football, what could that mean to them? It could open up an interesting concept I've felt has been a missed opportunity for years - annual contests to see who'...

Every once in a while I like to talk about Patriot League expansion, especially in terms of football. With eight basketball members and seven football-playing members (including two, Fordham and Georgetown, who are in the league only in football), I think expansion of the league ought to be one of its top priorities. To that end, I had proposed Marist as a very solid candidate in Patriot League expansion in all sports. Marist appeared to fit the bill as a Patriot League school as a small, high-academic private school; its non-scholarship football program had played a lot of football against Patriot League opponents; its conference, the MAAC, finally ceased to exist for football last year; and its men's and women's basketball programs promised to provide great respect for the Patriot League from years to come. (Last year, Marist's women's basketball team proceeded to make the Sweet 16, and have parked themselves in the Top 25 nationally this year.) Last Friday, Maris...

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...