Lehigh Football Nation

I love the NCAA tournament, usually. I play in the office pool, but more than just that, I emotionally get involved with the games.  Yes, that's not an exaggeration.   Emotionally involved.  I stand up and yell at the TV set for teams located in places I've never visited, becoming hoarse for schools I didn't attend, cheering for Cinderellas I didn't know existed a month before. Like most of America, I have fallen in love with the underdog narrative - the plucky, underdog story we've all seen in Hoosiers and Little Giants and countless good, bad, and terrible sports movies over the last fifty years. And as a fan of my alma mater, Lehigh, I guess I live this underdog story on a near-daily basis.  Lehigh is almost always the "smaller school" in all their NCAA athletics contests, whether it's wrestlers going against the semi-pros of Penn State and Iowa, or the football team going against the 100+ scholarshipped players of Yale or Princeton. Th...

This weekend, we had some close "friends" and their kids visit our family for some Pennsylvania fun.  It's was a perfect time to have them stay and visit, while school is still out and right before the football season starts, when everything starts to get crazy for us. Their visiting, getting caught up with their lives, and even playing Hearts for the first time in years with them made me think afresh about the meaning of "friendship", a word whose value has clearly been cheapened since the rise of the "social network". And, surprisingly, in the word "friend" there's also a lesson to be learned about college football expansion, too.  While folks go on about revenue, regionality or even interesting football games, sometimes "friendships" are more important. (more)