Lehigh Football Nation

(Photo Credit: Lehigh Valley Live) Over the years, the schools of the Patriot League have had a reputation as being slow, contemplative, and not exactly proactive when it comes to matters of expansion or conference movements. A recent blog post from an odd source, however, shows how untrue this reputation is, at least in regards to the swirling winds around collegiate realignment the past few years. From the Shades of 48 blog, comes detailed freedom-of-information act information from William and Mary that exposes quite a bit about the process that goes on when a school and a conference are mulling over a potential move. It also shows how seriously William and Mary thought about leaving the CAA and joining the Patriot League.  In all sports.

(Photo Credit: CNN) The bye weekend is always a weird weekend, mainly due to the fact that there's no football game to recap, no game to travel to, no undefeated record on the line. It was made weirder, too, by "Sandy". The epic "Frankenstorm" - as it's been dubbed - that was headed towards my house and the Lehigh Valley ultimately dwarfed my weekend, even pushing - gasp! - football to one side as I frantically did everything to get the house prepared for the storm. It seemed to parallel a similar storm that hit a couple top teams in FCS - thus making, for the time being, the Mountain Hawks the only undefeated team in all of FCS.

My vote for the FCS Top 25 for the week ending 10/13/2012 follows below the flip. And I'll answer the expected question: No, I did not vote for Lehigh as the No. 1 team in the nation, as three voters in the Sports Network poll did this week .

My vote for the FCS Top 25 for the week ending 9/22/2012 follows below the flip.

The power of the Final Four run by the Rams cannot be underestimated for that school, and the Colonial Athletic Association, the conference which is the home of the Rams in all sports. As I've argued previously , at a bare minimum it has to make a wider pool of schools at least mull over the idea of moving their schools to the CAA. But what's extremely interesting to think about is the affect that the Rams' run might have on them sponsoring a football team. What's known is the CAA and Virginia Commonwealth will benefit in a variety of ways by their run - either through NCAA financial shares, based on NCAA Tournament wins, or through increased "exposure" and the donor money that (sometimes) comes through a title run. With the money and "exposure" - and some old-fashioned jealousy - I think the groundwork is in place for Ram football to start CAA play sooner rather than later.   (more)

It's the time of year where you hear about schools like Old Dominion, Villanova, and Georgetown, but not in terms of their football programs. It's March Madness time, and along with the familiar hoops programs like the Hoyas and Wildcats we see other programs like the Monarchs of Old Dominion.  If the chips fall right, we also might possibly see either the Patriots of George Mason or the Spiders of Richmond in the "Big Dance" this year. But this year, it feels like there's more at stake than hoops bragging rights and NCAA money. There's plenty of indicators that there are some significant changes in the wind in FCS' elite football conference, the CAA.  And could the direction of those changes be affected by the performance of certain basketball teams in this year's NCAA tournament?  In this reporters' opinion - yes, they could. (more)