Lehigh Football Nation

More and more, college football is becoming more of a lifestyle than a diversion. The experiences are more immersive; college football days don't just take place on one day a week, it's a three, or sometimes four, day weekend.  It involves tailgates.  Parties.  Maybe a night out. Most importantly, there are games on TV - or, now, the internet - all the time.  There are literally hundreds of matchups available to watch, or stream, every day of the Experience Weekend.  Whether you watch it a home, your butt firmly on the couch, or out with friends, it's becoming an all-encompassing affair. Who will cut through all the channels showing Godspell, or Robinson Crusoe, and point you to where the Week 1 Experience Weekend games are being broadcast? More to the point, where's a Lehigh football fan - old or new - to start? The answer is - of course - you come here.  You've come to the right place. Starting on Thursday, there are plenty of football games...

(Photo Credit: The Republican) I'll admit it: UMass has hit pretty much all my sore spots over the years. Perhaps it was being in the crowd of that 1998 playoff game, where the Mountain Hawks were a horrible pass interference call away from advancing to the I-AA semifinals, complete with the "Lehigh: We're Just Better" sign.  (UMass would go on to become I-AA national champions that year, surprising Georgia Southern in the championship game.) Perhaps it was the move to the MAC in order to play FBS football, after years of moaning from the powers-that-be at UMass that football was a money loser.  If you're losing money in FCS, a move to the MAC is the equivalent of selling your underwater mortgage for an even larger mortgage, because this time, things will be completely different . Perhaps it was playing at the home of the New England Patriots, 100 miles away from Amherst and home to the NFL franchise that broke my Eagles-loving wife's heart. But i...

By any measure, times have not been great for the remaining "Northeast Four" of the old Yankee Conference. Now competing in the Colonial Athletic Association, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and UMass were the final teams remaining north of the Big Apple when Northeastern and Hofstra decided to fold their football programs within a week of each other . Since that fateful day a year and a half ago, Rhode Island announced their intention to join the limited scholarship NEC in 2012 , and this summer UMass announced their intention to join the MAC conference in FBS , where they'll attempt to kindle a football rivalry loosely based on the Temple/UMass basketball showdowns in the days of John "Darth Vader" Calipari and John " Knock Your Kids in the Mouth " Chaney . That has left New Hampshire athletic director Marty Scarano (pictured), and Maine athletic director Steve Abbott, feeling more and more isolated in football. And in the past few da...

(Photo Credit: The Providence Journal) Two days ago, I blogged about Rhode Island's thoughts on leaving the CAA in order to join the NEC . Yesterday, I talked about the impacts on that move on the CAA and NEC .  Today, I'll talk about whether the Patriot League is affected at all by this move by Rhode Island - because as things stand right now with the league and their stance on offering largely need-based aid, it doesn't appear to be. The problems are neatly summed up by a member of the Providence Journal 's URI Forum , a meeting place for fans of the URI program.  Reaction to the Rams' football move to the NEC have been mixed there, and some members were motivated to ask the Rams' athletic director, Thorr Bjorn , about his thought process.  He was specifically asked, "why the NEC?  Wouldn't the Patriot League be a better option for URI, with games versus A-10 leaguemate Fordham and nearby Holy Cross?" "I would have preferred URI going...

(Photo courtesy the South County Independent) Yesterday, I blogged about Rhode Island's thoughts on leaving the CAA in order to join the NEC .  Today, I'm blogging about the effects of their move on the rest of Northeast football - including the Patriot League. Interestingly,  Northeastern's discontinuation of football was certainly bad news, and Hofstra's president pulling a "Sonny Corleone in the tollbooth" on football a week later was also a seismic event concerning football in this area. But URI's decision could have an even greater impact in the long run for all three Northeastern FCS football conferences. It could have an impact that affects directly or indirectly all three conferences: the NEC, CAA, and Patriot League. (more)

I learned one thing, really, on my ten day vacation from my day job, blogging and writing: in college football, there truly is no offseason. I planned a vacation in the mountains right before the Fourth of July, thinking that it's generally a dead time for college sports.  I'm not alone, either.  Most sportswriters do the same thing. So what happens the week I'm gone?  Mike Szoztak, the longtime Rhode Island beat writer from the Providence Journal , drops the bombshell that the Rams are looking at moving their football team from the CAA to the NEC starting with the 2013 season. Ram sightings at Delaware's Tub, seen in this picture, might be less and less frequent. At the beginning of 2009, the CAA had twelve teams and had split into North and South divisions. The main discussion point back then was how they were going to be able to accommodate Old Dominion and Georgia State in their powerhouse conference - and how many at-large bids they might have in the futur...

Every week, I try to go through the rest of FCS Eastern football and highlight some of the other goings-on in FCS that have an impact on the subdivision in which Lehigh plays. This week saw three different FCS teams - all at one time rumored as expansion targets for the Patriot League - upset FBS teams. It seems inconceivable now that any of them would accept a place in a league with need-based scholarships. But first, let's look a bit more at the Patriot League's wins - and losses - in Week One. Holy Cross' 20-7 win over Georgetown may have been somewhat underwhelming by my account - but senior QB Dominic Randolph's 36-for-56 414 yard performance earned him the Sports Network's Offensive Player of the Week honors anyway as well as the Gridiron Club of Boston's "Golden Helmet" award . It probably wasn't the way Randolph wanted to break the Patriot League's all-time passing yardage mark - trailing 7-6 to Georgetown entering the fourth quarter,...