Lehigh Football Nation

My vote for the FCS Top 25 for the week ending 11/4/2013 follows below the flip. But first, check out this great picture from the crazy Delaware/Towson game this weekend, courtesy of Towson Athletics. Three times, Towson had a chance to put away Delaware up by 2 touchdowns.   Three times, the Tigers didn't convert. With 4 minutes, 19 seconds left in the third quarter, Towson (8-2 overall and 4-2 in the Colonial Athletic Association) had a chance to pad a 28-10 advantage, but senior PK Drew Evangelista ’s field-goal attempt from 33 yards banged off the left upright.  On the ensuing possession, Tigers LB Monte Gaddis put enough pressure on Blue Hens senior QB Trevor Sasek to incite him to float a deep pass that junior CB Tye Smith intercepted at Towson’s 26-yard line. Smith wove his way 74 yards into the end zone, but the Tigers were flagged for clipping, which nullified the touchdown with 2:27 remaining.  And on Delaware’s penultimate series of the contest...

It's that time of the week where I share with you your weekly Lehigh fan viewing guide for Week 9 of the college football season.  Why go to website after website when all the information you need is right here? If you are not able to attend the game this weekend at Bucknell you can follow the game from the following sources: Online Streaming: Patriot League Network (free) Radio:   ESPN Radio 1230 and 1320 Internet:   Lehighsports.com/ESPNLV.com After the game, there are a boatload of important games, most which are available via live streams!

My vote for the FCS Top 25 for the week ending 10/7/2013 follows below the flip. But first, check out this great picture from James Madison of QB Michael Birdsong as he's crossing the goal line against Richmond last week  (Photo Credit: Joe Mahoney / The Richmond Times-Dispatch ) The sad thing is, this picture was a great one - but Birdsong's ostrich-like touchdown pose would not count for any points, since it would be called back for holding. James Madsion would go into halftime with a 7-6 lead, but both teams would erupt in the second half, ending in a 38-31 marathon .  Dukes KR Dejor Simmons would take the second-half kickoff for a 100 yard touchdown run, and James Madison wouldn't trail by any more than 5 after that point.

It's that time of the week where I share with you your weekly Lehigh fan viewing guide for Week 7 of the college football season.  Why go to website after website when all the information you need is right here? Last week, I was so busy hyping up Lehigh/Fordham that I forget to post my weekly viewing guide. As a result, Lehigh lost. This is reason enough for my viewing guide to make a comeback. If you are not able to attend you can follow the game from the following sources: TV:   NBC Sports Network Dish Network-Channel 159 Direct TV-Channel 220 Online Streaming: NBC Live Extra (free with subscription to NBC Sports Network) Radio:   ESPN Radio 1230 and 1320 Internet:   Lehighsports.com/ESPNLV.com

It's that time of the week where I share with you your weekly Lehigh fan viewing guide for Week 2 of the college football season.  Why go to website after website when all the information you need is right here?

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: 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.

(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...

(Photo Credit: Karl Merton Ferren / Baltimore Sun ) So-called "big-time" collegiate athletics has had an awfully rough year. When the entire QB Cam Netwon affair - you remember, the father of Auburn's star quarterback getting caught offering his son's services for a six-figure sum of money - feels like it happens a decade ago, you know the overall feeling of college football in those Bowl Subdivision ranks has to be one of nausea rather than school pride.  Between the horrors at Penn State, which are unfolding in slow motion in front of the entire world, and the latest conference realignment madness, where money has made a Boise State to the Big East scenario plausible, "big-time" college football, and perhaps even all of "big-time" college athletics, seems severely broken. And then, suddenly, amidst all the lunacy, something comes along that makes you remember why you started following college football in the first place. Many, many peo...

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: The Baltimore Sun) My brain says the bye week is a good thing for a football team.  Injuries get an opportunity to heal, there are more hours in the week to break down game film, and the student-athletes get a few days to sit back, relax, and contemplate what they've accomplished this year. (It also gives another week for senior LB Mike Groome 's playoff beard to grow out, to allow "Mike's beard to be big enough for everyone", as senior LB Colin Newton told me this week.) But it also means that the wait for this weekend, with a full holiday weekend in between Lehigh's last regular season game and this week's "elimination game", has seemed endless. But the wait is nearly over. Below the flip, see Towson broken down, as well as my "Keys to the Game" - and, of course, the "Fearless Prediction".

(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.

While doing research this week for the matchup between the Tigers and Mountain Hawks, I looked into the archives of my blog, as I often do, for special insight on the history of the team Lehigh is to face. You might think there would be something - anything - in there about an early 2000s matchup with the Tigers, or, perhaps, something about their time in the Patriot League. You'd have been wrong, however. The history of Towson is at once different, for the most part frustrating.  And yet, they are a crucial reason why the Patriot League is here today, with a bid to the FCS playoffs. Were the Tigers powerbrokers in the world of FCS football, too?  I think you could make that case.

(Photo Credit: Stephen Flood/The Express-Times) Lehigh's success in the Patriot League has been well documented, as this year is the tenth league championship the Mountain Hawks have achieved. When it comes to success against the champions of the most dominant FCS football in the East, however, Lehigh has enjoyed a few good battles - but have almost always lost. Lehigh has gone on the road and beaten the champion of that conference only once, the famous 24-23 win in 1998 over Richmond.  (They then lost a heartbreaker at another opponent from that same conference the following weekend, 26-20 to the eventual FCS National Champion UMass Minutemen.) If you think the scope of the task of going on the road and defeating the CAA champion is going to intimidate this group of Mountain Hawks, though, think again. "People look at us as a non-scholarship program and maybe think we're a fluke; but we're looking forward to proving people wrong," junior WR Ryan Spado...

(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.

On Sunday, the playoff matchups were announced , and it was revealed that Lehigh would be playing the champion of the CAA, Towson, on the road in Towson, Maryland.  (Time TBD) Some folks seemed, perhaps, a bit miffed that Lehigh didn't get the opportunity to host a home playoff game - but on balance, were pleased.  They'll be able to make a short trip to battle the best team in the CAA this year, and also line up against a team that was once a member of the Patriot League. It's a matchup that has pleased everyone I've talked to.