Lehigh Football Nation

(Photo Credit: Karl Merton Ferron / The Baltimore Sun ) As Towson entered the field before their playoff game versus Lehigh, and unidentified player came through the large, inflatable tiger head holding a championship belt, not unlike one a prizefighter might wear. As someone who writes about Lehigh football, it provided an irresistible storyline for the playoff game, with echoes of Ali vs. Frazier.  The Thrila in Manila.  A prizefight. It makes naming this game the "Towson Thrilla" from here on forward just that much easier. What did the the Lehigh players think about the move after the game? "We had no knowledge of it until we saw them run out with it," junior WR Ryan "The Answer" Spadola said to me later.  "It was bad on their part because it just got us more fired up." As we go over the mountain of great press about this phenomenal game, I'd like to round up the highlights of those articles, as well as empty out my own note...

It was billed as a shootout between two of the top offenses of FCS. And it was, indeed, a shootout between the the powerful running game of Towson, and the powerful passing game of Lehigh. It was billed as a game for supremacy in the East. It was, indeed, a showcase between the champions of the Patriot League and the champions of the Colonial Athletic Association, or CAA, for Beast of the East. But with all that was billed and all that was hyped the last two weeks regarding this game, played in front of a sellout, standing-room crowd of 11,196 at Johnny Unitas Stadium, nobody could have anticipated that the outcome of the game, the game-winning play, would come on Lehigh junior DE Tom Bianchi sacking Towson QB Grant Enders in the end zone.

(Photo Credit: Doug Kapustin, The Baltimore Sun) If past performance were indicative of how things are going to go this Saturday, Lehigh would have nothing to worry about. In eleven meetings with the Tigers, Lehigh   has gone 10-1 against Towson, and lit them up for more than 40 points in five of those meetings. But nobody at Lehigh has any illusions that this Towson team will resemble those Tiger teams from the 1990s and 2000s. The Tigers' story is an easy one to admire: from a 1-10 season to a 9-2 record in the SEC of FCS, Towson is easy to like, too recently a member of the FCS "haves" to be hated by anyone.  But even though they're a feel-good story, there's a reason these Tigers are CAA champions.  They are loaded with talent.

(Photo Credit: Karl Merton Ferron, the Baltimore Sun ) It was a poorly-kept secret that President Barack Obama would be making the first-ever presidential visit of Towson. The first basketball fan, whose brother-in-law is  Craig Robinson , the head basketball coach of visiting Oregon State. was there to see a Division I basketball game. But when the game was arranged last year, few folks thought that the President would be taking pictures with the CAA champion Towson Tiger football team - who were on campus preparing for their first-ever Division I home playoff game. As a Lehigh fan, I couldn't help but hope that the presence of the President, First Lady Michelle Obama , and the First Family would distract the Tigers just a little from their gameplans for Saturday.