Lehigh Football Nation

Spotlight On: QB Brad Mayes Rightfully, much of the focus of Lehigh's football coverage this offseason has been on the offense.  That makes sense; after all, Lehigh ranked near the top of every receiving and rushing category in 2016. Yet most of that coverage has been on guys that have been on preseason FCS all-American teams ( senior WR Troy Pelletier, junior RB Dominick Bragalone ) or probably should have been on more of them ( senior WR Gatlin Casey ). Oddly, the focus on those all-League caliber players have shifted the focus from what could be the most important transition from the 2016 offense to the 2017 offense - the transition to a new starting quarterback. Certainly, junior QB Brad Mayes was no ordinary understudy for the Lehigh Mountain Hawks last season. Though technically he did back up QB Nick Shafnisky , he showcased his obvious talent multiple times last year, most notably breaking a Yale Bowl record with 524 passing yards and scoring 6 passing touchdo...

Spotlight On: S Sam McCloskey Lehigh Sports issued a release Friday evening that announced Lehigh's team captains for the 2017 season . Some of the names, senior OL Zach Duffy and senior OL Brandon Short , were hardly surprises - after all, they were team captains last year. Another, senior DL Jimmy Mitchell , is a steadying leadership force on the defensive line - again, not much of a surprise. But the presence of junior S Sam McCloskey as the fourth team captain raised some eyebrows.  It's unusual to be a junior team captain, though QB Nick Shafnisky and LB Colton Caslow had been team captains as juniors. As head coach Andy Coen explained, "What's really impressive is that in our ballots contain only seniors with the ability to write-in people. A lot of our guys obviously had to write in Sam, so that was really interesting to see. Our coaching staff feels he's ready right now to be a strong captain and his peers obviously feel the same way."...

Spotlight On: DE Tyler Cavenas and NG Jimmy Mitchell This past year, the NCAA mandated that two-a-day practices would no longer be allowed , which naturally has changed the way Lehigh has been camping this August.  "A single day may include a single, three-hour, on-field practice session and a walk-through. During walk-throughs, protective equipment such as helmets and pads can’t be worn, and contact is prohibited," the NCAA said. “The guys like the new procedure, the new process we have in place here,” head coach Andy Coen said. “The guys are more fresh not having the two-a-days. [Sunday] was the first day we went full pads and had live tackling and the kids were fired up about that. We didn’t do a lot, just enough to get our feet wet.” With no contact during the two-hour walkthrough session, pads and contact are a more rare occurrence.  To senior DE Tyler Cavenas , though, what did that mean? "I [still] feel like we can push ourselves," he told Le...

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...

You hate to put it this way, but this weekend's tilt between Lehigh and Cornell could be the anemic force versus the extremely movable object. Lehigh's defense would be the movable object, ranking dead last in FCS in total defense, but the Not So Big Red's offense, ranked 121 out of 123 FCS teams, hasn't exactly impressed either. It sets up two teams extremely hungry for victory this Saturday, eager to get something positive going before the rest of the regular-season schedule gets back underway. In May, this might have seemed like a speed-bump up in Ithaca.  Now, it seems like a game that must somehow be a victory to get the bus out of the ditch.

Once upon a time, Lehigh's football team was many preseason pundits' consensus No. 1 in the Patriot League.  It wasn't even a question. Sure, some of that was due to the fact that Fordham, now for the first time in years an full, card-carrying member of the Patriot League, was ineligible. But in 2010 and 2011, Lehigh was the undisputed king, with wins over their Rivals, undisputed Patriot League championships, and even playoff victories against Northern Iowa and Towson. This season, it's a new team with a dynamic offense and a team loaded with talent that is the undisputed champion going into the 2014 season.  With one of the best FCS quaterbacks in the nation, QB Michael Nebrich , and a talented defense backing them up, the Rams now have the targets on their backs. And if Lehigh hopes to stand a chance to challenge the new kings of the hill, they will have to improve immensely on the defensive side of the ball.

(Photo Credit: The Express-Times ) If there's one word we've heard a lot in the media, and from both schools this week, it's "marbles". "We're playing for all the marbles," head coach Andy Coen said in the Lehigh Football Report this week, echoing what seems to be anyone following the game in the Lehigh Valley. It is true that the winner of the game this weekend will be Patriot League champions, with a 4-1 conference record. It is also true that the winner will, beyond a shadow of a doubt, head to the FCS playoffs this weekend.  (While Lehigh could sneak in the field with a loss, it seems real unlikely.) But more than that, the winner of this yearly Rivalry battle will indeed win something more than just a Patriot League Championship trophy to keep in Bethlehem or Easton another year. It really does feel like an old-fashioned game of marbles, where the winner really does take everything they were looking to achieve that season, and the...

(Photo Credit: WFUV) We break down the Fordham game - and we give our fearless prediction below the flip. Though this game doesn't officially count towards the Patriot League standings, make no mistake about how big this game is for both programs. Look no further than the ticket sales for this game. Fordham's Jack Coffey field is sold out, all 7,000 seats, and even on StubHub.com this game is a hot ticket, with no tickets available as of right now.  (Check back if you still need tickets!) A sold-out, 7,000 seat venue for a meaningful football game is what FCS football is all about, and whatever happens it's going to be a fantastic ambassador for Patriot League football broadcast across the country on CBS Sports Network.

We break down the Lafayette game - and we give our fearless prediction, below the flip. Checking Twitter and Facebook is not exactly an exact science when it comes to trying to gauge how fired up a team, or a fan base, is. After a slow start to the trash talk for the 148th meeting between Lehigh and Lafayette, though, there's evidence that the Hate is making a late-week rally as the sheer inevitability of the Rivalry game tomorrow has built the tension. Still, the biggest question for both Lehigh and Lafayette is: Which team will show up for four quarters? If there's one consistent theme from both sides, it's that people have been waiting for both teams to play four quarters of well-executed football.  Will either be able to do so?

If Columbia head coach Pete Mangurian ever wants to take on another line of work, he'd be a great blogger. Perhaps it's understandable that he hasn't done a lot of blogging in his first year as the Lion head coach - I can imagine he's, um, a bit busy -  but his blog makes for interesting reading when he does. Last weekend, after a particularly tough 33-6 defeat to Princeton ,  Mangurian made the game about something other than the lopsided score, or the turnovers - he made it about the fans. It also highlights that Mangurian is in the middle of a rebuilding job at Columbia, and the fact that there will be growing pains as he crafts a winning football team in upper Manhattan.

(Photo Credit: File Photo/The Express-Times) It's tempting, if you're a Lehigh fan, to look ahead. After all, no matter what happens on Saturday, Lehigh will be playing football again after the 147th meeting between Lehigh and "that school in Easton". There's a school of thought to close up the playbook, play not to lose, and find a way to keep the injuries down, rather than play an entire football game. But this is not going to happen on Saturday.  For "The Rivalry" is a season unto itself.  It means a lot more than playoff position or bragging rights. And this Lehigh team knows that the Leopard team that lines up against them is 0-0 in this season, and so are they.  They've won one championship; and they have two more to go.  Another championship is for the taking this Saturday.

It's not like ranked opponents are a rarity at South Mountain - just last year, Lehigh laid out a welcome mat for the defending national champions, Villanova - and promptly got trounced, 35-0. And it's not even all that long ago that Lehigh was nationally ranked and playing at home, either.  In 2004, two Top 20 teams faced off at Murray Goodman stadium in a key conference battle - and Lehigh beat their "other" conference rival, Colgate, 21-14. But it's been an awful long while that a nationally-ranked Lehigh team hosted a CAA team at their place - as equals. This weekend, Lehigh players and fans will have a matchup that has a little bit of everything.  A big, bad CAA team facing off against an upstart Patriot League squad.  A battle between two nationally-ranked teams.  A chance for revenge after the Mountain Hawks' worst game of last year.  But for Lehigh, it's mostly a game about respect.  (more)

(Photo Credit: Monmouth Examiner) Three days from today, Lehigh will be travelling to Kessler Field in Monmouth, New Jersey to open their 2011 football season. The Hawks and, er, Mountain Hawks have played each other twice in their history: once in 1999, and once in 2005, both times at Murray Goodman stadium.  Both were blowouts; in both games, Lehigh put up more than a 50-spot on Monmouth as well. Lehigh is extremely unlikely to put up a 50-spot on the Hawks this weekend, though.  Since that 54-26 victory in 2005, both Monmouth and their athletic conference, the NEC, have improved immensely.   (more)

(Photo Credit: Joe Gill/The Easton Express-Times) How can a game be at once so similar and so different from last year? For sure the similarities include the run-up to this game for both teams. Lehigh suffered through a disappointing regular season, and will finish at under .500, just like last year. They did poorly in out-of-conference play, beat up on the lower echelon of the Patriot League, and played the best teams in the Patriot League close but couldn't get over the hump to win the games that would put them in title contention. All that Lehigh can do to make the season a success is beat the boys from Easton - an almost mirror image of what happened last year. "That school in Easton", in contrast, started out the year gangbusters. For the first time in recent memory, the Leopards swept the Ivy League (including a great overtime 20-17 victory over this year's Ivy League Champion Penn). Only an early loss to FCS playoff contender Liberty was the only blemish on...

(Photo courtesy Five Boro Sports) Winning against sub-.500 teams. A blowout loss to a CAA opponent. Coming up oh-so-close to Holy Cross and Colgate, but falling just short. A description of Lehigh's football season? It could just as easily been a description of Fordham's as well. Before the season started, Fordham looked like a team that could put things together and make a run at the Patriot League title. They had a QB that was getting NFL looks. Their defensive captain was only two years removed from his pick of Holy Cross senior QB Dominic Randolph to preserve their (near) worst-to-first Patriot League championship in 2007. Like Lehigh, they had horses. They just needed to have them all working together. The Rams started out the year in disarray, with a 41-28 loss to Rhode Island and a 40-28 loss to their "Liberty Cup" rival Columbia. Turnovers were the name of those games, and seemed to portend a season on struggle rather than a run at the title. After a...

It's three weeks until the end of the regular season. At 2-6, the Mountain Hawks don't really deserve to have any hope - however infinitesimal - for competing for the Patriot League title. If your record says what you are, Lehigh is an under-.500 team. The record says that Mountain Hawks are a team that beat Georgetown and Bucknell and nobody else. They are a team that didn't score a single point in their last appearance at home three weeks ago. They are a team that played better last week, but still lost a tough game to Colgate 27-20. 2-6. The record tells you what you are, and it's not pretty. This isn't the world of Shallow Hal , where we can be hypnotized like Jack Black into thinking that 2-6 is actually 6-2. And yet, the tiniest hope still exists that Colgate loses this weekend - eighteen miles away from Murray Goodman Stadium - and Lehigh pulls off what would be considered the biggest Mountain Hawk upset of this decade. As improbable as that might be...

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably figured out that the Yankees and Phillies will be facing off at Citizen Bank Park for a double dip this weekend (Series tied at 1), and the hated Giants come to the Linc to face the Eagles for first place in the NFC East. While the composition of the Lehigh student population is most likely split down the middle when it comes to fan allegiences in these two series (I have an annoying number of fellow Lehigh alums that are also Yankee fans), there's another Pennsylvania/New York grudge match happening as well this weekend. This one is happening in Hamilton, New York, as the Mountain Hawks and Raiders will face off for the 48th time in their history. It may not involve the same level of hatred as the Giants and the Eagles, but it's damned close - and it feeds from that Pennsy/Noo Yawk thing, too. It wasn't coined "Hate the 'Gate" week by LB Matt Mohler a few years ago for nothing. Lehigh and Colg...

(Photo Credit: Bucknell Athletics) It's been hashed and rehashed. At the midpoint of the season, Lehigh has played like champs on offense but like chumps on offense. The defense shut out two straight opponents, but the team went 1-1. First it was junior QB J.B. Clark , then sophomore QB Chris Lum , and then Clark again starting on offense, and the running back trio of junior RB Jay Campbell , junior RB Jaren Walker and freshman RB Zach Barket haven't been healthy all at the same time since the first game of the year. The record is ugly: 1-5. And the entire Patriot League schedule looms in front of them. With a home backdrop like that, the squad had to be loving the fact that they're heading out of the frosty Lehigh Valley to play a game on the road. If you're a Lehigh fan, you have to hope that the Hawks find some permanent answers on offense this weekend at Bucknell, while cleaning up some of the mental lapses that have doomed the Mountain Hawks in the first half...