Lehigh Football Nation

(Photo Credit: Brown and White) With this year's Patriot League Media Day being a Patriot League Media Conference call instead, the opportunity is there for media folks to tweet out things like preseason all-Conference lists and the preseason polls. When the league posted their preseason all-Patriot League team, unsurprisingly there were seven Lehigh football players on it, one of whom was senior OL Zach Duffy . I sent out a tweet congratulating the seven - Duffy, junior RB Dom Bragalone, junior P/K Ed Mish, senior OL Tim O'Hara, senior WR Gatlin Casey, senior WR Troy Pelletier, and senior DE Tyler Cavenas - and almost immediately Zach responded. No congratulations are needed since we haven't accomplished a single thing yet. Sorry if that sounds sour. We appreciate the recognition. — Zachary John Duffy (@ZachDuffy72) July 27, 2017 In the span of a tweet, Zach established immediately that re-reading one's press clippings from the 2016 season is not s...

The Patriot League officially kicked off the 2016 football season with football media day at the Green Pond Country Club, and Lehigh was picked in a tie for 3rd.  Colgate was picked 1, Fordham was picked 2, and tied with the Mountain Hawks was Holy Cross at 3. Senior OL Zach Duffy and senior LB Laquan Lambert , were asked what they thought of the preseason pick. In other years, you might have gotten a bit of a chest-thumping response, but this year's group was notable in the calm way they answered the questions. "I think that's fair," Zach said.  "It's where we finished last year, and we haven't proved much yet.  We haven't achieved our goals yet.  I wouldn't have wanted to be picked any higher since we haven't earned it." "We have high expectations on ourselves," Laquan added.  "This fuels the fire for us.  We're just going to have to take it day by day if we want to win a championship." No cries of d...

It was a very notable fact that there were no long faces at Lehigh's table at Patriot League Media Day. That's not to say everyone was satisfied. It is true that the Mountain Hawks were picked to finish fifth in the preseason poll, the lowest they had ever been picked as far as anyone could remember. It is also true that, when the subject of the defeat at the hands of Lafayette in the 150th meeting of the Rivalry came up, visible discomfort crossed the faces of junior QB Nick Shafnisky , junior LB Colton Caslow , and head football coach Andy Coen , as you would expect. But the results of the preseason polls and the outcome of the last game of last season could not dampen the enthusiasm emanating from Lehigh's table today. "Last year, we were picked second, and this year, we're picked fifth," Shafnisky said with his characteristic fast-paced energy .  "and... we'll see how we turn out this year.  I can't wait to see." "We...

In the past, the opening comments from the Patriot League Executive director took a good ten to fifteen minutes. But since it was Jennifer Heppel 's second day on the job, her opening comments were short and sweet. "I turned on the computer, retrieved a voicemail, and despite the fact that I was convinced I would lose the battle, I considered it a day well lived," she said. Before addressing the assembled media at the Green Pond Country Club, she had met with all seven Patriot League football coaches and discussed the different rules changes. "I couldn't be more excited to be here honored to be the next leader of the Patriot League," she continued in her brief comments. A few minutes later, Lehigh was picked to finish fifth in the preseason Patriot League football poll.   Sophomore WR Troy Pelletier, junior LB Colton Caslow and senior P Austin Devine were named to the preseason all-League team, and just like that, the media were unleashed to me...

It was not a shock, at the Green Pond country club halfway between Bethlehem and Easton, that Fordham was picked to finish first in their first season back as a full card-carrying member of the Patriot League. After all, they had two preseason Walter Payton award candidates on their roster, QB Michael Nebrich and WR Sam Ajala , as well as 10, count 'em, 10 other members on the Patriot League preseason All-League team.  Scholarships, and the great coaching and recruiting ability of head coach Joe Moorhead , had Fordham as the runaway favorite. It was a shock, however, to see who was picked to finish right behind the Rams. Though Lehigh was coming off a 2013 season where they were ranked in the Top 25 most of the year, they only had two players on the preseason all-League team, senior OL Ned Daryoush and senior DL Tim Newton .   Nonetheless, the Mountain Hawks were picked second over the two teams that beat Lehigh last season, Lafayette and Bucknell, the two te...

Patriot League executive director Carolyn Schlie Femovich has, by any measure, has presided over an extraordinary 2011-2012 athletic year. That football scholarships were not the only interesting subject on Patriot League Media Day is a testament to the number of history-making moves that has taken place in the span of the 2011-2012 football offseason, and it's something that Femovich certainly understands well. "It's been a very significant year for the league, and I give the presidents and athletic directors a lot of credit for that," she said. "The scholarship decision was a significant step for us, the admission of Boston Univeristy will be a strong member for us, and the expanded TV package - I think it's all an indication that what we're doing has value and merit: other people want to join us, we put a product on the field that is successful, and a product that people can be proud of. It's a good place to be."

There have been an awful lot of Lehigh quarterback "controversies" the past few years. But last year, after being anointed the starter in preseason camp, senior QB Chris Lum took control of the starting quarterback job, and didn't let go. Not fighting for a job this summer is a pleasant change of pace for the Lake Orion, Michigan native as preseason camp is about to open for Lehigh. (more)

On Friday, November 20th, 2009, Lehigh head football coach Andy Coen appeared to be playing for his job, following a 3-7 season going into the big game against Lafayette. His Lehigh team would win that game, 27-21 in overtime . Back then, Coen was in a polar opposite place as to where he is today. Strangely enough, that same guy that seemed to be at the edge of losing his job in 2009 didn't seem too different than the coach I saw and interviewed at Media Day this week. Coach Coen's offseason couldn't have been more different than the others - but the guy coaching the team, refreshingly, isn't different at all. (more)

This year, the Patriot League is celebrating its 25th anniversary as a football conference.  Tomorrow, at Patriot League Media Day , this fact is expected to at least be mentioned, if not marked in a special way. But there's a cloud over the 25th anniversary celebration. While classic Patriot League players like RB Gordie Lockbaum and RB Kenny Gamble are honored, many folks are wondering if the league will make it another five years, let alone another 25. That's because football-only member Fordham is well on their way to 63 football scholarships - and it seems increasingly likely that the Rams will be leaving the league at some point very soon. (more)

If you believe sites like NFL Draft Scout , senior OL Will Rackley  - Lehigh's massive tackle out of Riverdale, Georgia - could be picked in QB John Skelton territory in the NFL draft. It is early - incredibly early - but he's projected as going in the fifth round  as a guard , and he's listed as the ninth-best in the nation, behind massive talents like Villanova senior OL Ben Ijalana and Florida State senior OL Rodney Hudson . Going into his fourth year of starting on the offensive line, the strong, massive talent has garnered plenty of recognition on countless all-America teams. Individually, he's been spectacular even if, as a unit, the offensive lines of which he's been a part have not been dominating in the Patriot League. In his senior year, Rackley - now  Lehigh's offensive team captain - will have one last opportunity to not only improve his game for the NFL scouts, but to make the entire Mountain Hawk "O" Line unit a controlling force ...

Senior LB Al Pierce has a reputation as being a young man of few words. After  snagging the game-winning interception in the 27-21 win over "that school in Easton" last November, he deflected the glory off himself towards Lehigh defensive coordinator Dick Kotulski - despite multiple efforts by the media (and myself) to have him talk more about the defining moment of the 2009 season. During Patriot League media day, I interviewed him and senior OL Will Rackley .  After one question which Rackley answered particularly well, I turned to him and asked Pierce about his thoughts.  He said, "He said it all!", not needing to add to an already perfect answer, in his mind. If there's a theme to this Lehigh defense - of which Pierce is the captain - it seems like it's going to be "speak softly - and work and hit real hard". That's a sentence that seems to describe Pierce perfectly. (more)

I remember head coach Andy Coen 's first Patriot League media day at the Green Pond Country Club .  Oddly enough, in many ways it was very similar to last week's turn at the annual media event. Then as now, he thinks of the beginning of August as "like Christmastime", when he starts to see what sort of a football team he's going to have in the fall. Coaches are expected to be excited about their teams going into August.  Last week - just as he did in 2006 - coach Coen was, as expected, looking forward to fall practice. But he did add something that he didn't say in previous years - that he had a "great group coming back" that "would be hard at work building on what was accomplished in spring ball." In 2006, Coen inherited a program was, in many ways, really former head coach Pete Lembo 's team. Now that the tiny football class of 2010 has graduated, this program is now filled with experienced players that all have Andy Coen...

Patriot League Media Day is supposed to be all about the players and coaches, and the excitement of the upcoming football season. But with the subject of football scholarships sucking out the air in the room to some degree - and the absence of last year's offensive superstars like QB Dominic Randolph - caused some of the emphasis to be, wrongly, diverted from the coaches and student-athletes. Lost in the issues of Craig Haley's controversial report on media day and my observations of the scholarship proceedings was what the media was supposed to be there for: the upcoming 2010 fall season. And this year has no shortage of interesting storylines and compelling personal stories. To net it all out you need to just start with the preseason picks as to who is going to be in contention. In Part Two of the roundup of Patriot League Media Day, we focus on Fordham, Bucknell and Georgetown. (more)

Patriot League Media Day is supposed to be all about the players and coaches, and the excitement of the upcoming football season. But with the subject of football scholarships sucking out the air in the room to some degree - and the absence of last year's offensive superstars like QB Dominic Randolph - caused some of the emphasis to be, wrongly, diverted from the coaches and student-athletes. Lost in the issues of Craig Haley's controversial report on media day and my observations of the scholarship proceedings was what the media was supposed to be there for: the upcoming 2010 fall season. And this year has no shortage of interesting storylines and compelling personal stories. To net it all out you need to just start with the preseason picks as to who is going to be in contention.  In Part One of the roundup of Patriot League Media Day, we focus on Lafayette, Colgate and Holy Cross.   (more)

Media Day for the Patriot League was - somewhat surprisingly - a packed affair this year at the Green Pond Country Club. Thirty media members - including a large contingent of radio and local TV media - were on hand to cover their local Patriot League teams. It's promising to be another very interesting year in the Patriot League - it seems like every year it's a wide-open race, and this year is no exception - but this year's media day was as much about what was being talked about when the microphones were off as well as on. Hanging heavily in the room was the "S" word - scholarships. (more)

(Photo courtesy Fordham Athletics) Once again I made the trek up to Patriot League media day to scare the living bejeezus out of the football players of all seven Patriot League teams. You can almost see the thought bubbles of the players here, looking at me as if I was twirling nunchucks or something while talking to them. But the questions I asked weren't too bad - or at least I thought so until seeing this picture from the proceedings. (Just kidding, by the way, Fordham senior OL Robby Reis and Fordham senior DL Darzell Wright , who don't need to email and remind me they could very easily crush my head like an olive. Just a joke, Darzell and Robby. Right? ... Right? ... Guys?) You can read my full conference report at College Sporting News , which includes exclusive quotes from the executive director of the Patriot League. In addition to the report I filed there (and the upcoming blog exclusives with junior QB J.B. Clark , senior DT B.J. Benning , and coach Coen) , I ...

Continuing my series of interviews I did for Patriot League media day, we continue with senior RB Matt McGowan , the Mountain Hawk running back that looks to be doing some inside running now that he's (finally) healthy. LFN: Tell me a little about your background. MMG: I played at Hazelton Area high school which is about an hour away from Bethlehem, had a pretty good high school career, chose to attend the University of Richmond on full scholarship. LFN: Why did you choose to transfer? MMG: It really didn’t feel like a good fit when I was there, so I chose to transfer to Lehigh after my freshman year. I really wanted to be closer to friends and family – it was pretty far to go to Richmond, a seven hour drive as opposed to only being an hour away from home. I was recruited by Lehigh pretty heavily throughout my high school career with coach Lembo’s coaching staff before coach Coen was here, and I had good relationships with all of those coaches, so I always kept my mind open t...

I've been blogging about Lehigh since the 2003 football season, meaning that I'm entering my sixth straight year talking about Lehigh, "The Rivalry", and the Patriot League. It started with a computer, this upstart company called "Blogger" and a dream about a site devoted to Lehigh football coverage: the first "Football Nation", if you will, modeled after my beloved Red Sox Nation which had "officially" come into being only a year or two before my foray into... er... nationhood. Blogging has had it moments like this picture to my left, where I've simply been overwhelmed by the amount of backlog of writing articles that I've had. Holding a day job, while still writing articles for the College Sporting News and archiving articles about the FCS , it's a tough (self-imposed, admittedly) assignment. (And, yes, I probably looked a lot like that yesterday.) Each year I've done this I've looked around and seen many folks ...

We start out the blog with my interviews of the Lehigh football players at Media Day this past week. First up: senior DB Brendan VanAckeren , senior leader on the defense - and someone who loves to hit. LFN: Tell me a little bit about your high school career. You're from this area, right? BVA: I went to Liberty High School here in Bethlehem, and I've been here all my life. I was always a Lehigh guy growing up - I was always kind of around the program, seeing it in the paper and all that, so it was good how it all turned out. I had some close family friends that played for Lehigh, so they took me to games over there and I had a good idea of what it was about. I had been to the Lehigh/Lafayette game a couple of years before I came here, which was also a big draw. When I got into my junior and senior year of high school, when I got into the recruiting process, I got over to Lehigh, loved the coaches, loved the players, and the whole academic/athletic [balance]. It was defi...

Patriot League Media Day was Thursday, July 31st and serves as the official kickoff of the 2008 Patriot League football season. As you can tell from the picture, intrepid reporters were eagerly (and handsomely, if I may say so) attacking the stories of the players, the upcoming season, and the Patriot League issues on the table - while most interviewees, like senior RB Matt McGowan pictured here, look to the side in complete boredom. (Maybe I had better think up better questions next time.) Much was discussed at the Green Pond country club. My initial impressions of the goings-on on Thursday are below. They may mean more when I release my complete interviews with Patriot League executive director Carolyn Schlie Femovich on College Sporting News , and my interviews with coach Coen, senior RB Matt McGowan and senior DB BrendanVanAckeren , but it's still worth simply blogging my from-the-gut impressions of the proceedings. Oh, for the record, Lehigh placed fifth in the Patriot Leagu...