Lehigh Football Nation

(Photo Credit: Steve Hockstein/NJ Advance Media) Yesterday, Lehigh announced the signing of 12 football student-athletes to National Letters of Intent, or NLI's. Nobody knew exactly what was going to happen in regards to student-athletes, whether they would sign national letters of intent, or not. What ended up happening was a floodgate of signings, not just at Lehigh but across college football. I entered Wednesday thinking that a good target for announced Lehigh football recruits was six, based on little other than my history of observing this stuff.  As it stood, I saw schools like Delaware announcing six football recruits signed before breakfast, and Lehigh had inked their sixth recruit well before I had my leftover General Tso's chicken for lunch. It wasn't just amongst Patriot League or FCS schools, either.  Penn State signed 21 recruits , including one of the top athletes of the Lehigh Valley, who flipped to the Nittany Lions  from UCLA.  Some esti...

With a little over a week to signing day, the incoming football class of 2021 is in real focus. I'm always hesitant to jump the gun on verbals to Lehigh.  I've been around this long enough to realize that commitments can change. But I've also found that when you get this close to signing day, you've got a fairly good picture as to what the class looks like. All verbals are considered "verbals" and are very much unofficial until signing day, but many student-athletes have tweeted their commitments and their tweets are included below. So a week before signing day, here's some information as to what we know here at LFN about the incoming class. (A huge thank-you to Rich Heelan and Todd Cuddington , who have done a great job as they always do tracking recruits.  Their constantly-updated spreadsheet is here. )

On this icy Wednesday, Division I athletes across the country were signing their National Letters of intent. Below the flip, find a montage of different National Signing Day pictures from WR Sasha Kelsey, OL Tim O'Hara, LB Cal Coffman, DE Justin Gille, WR Troy Pelletier, OL Kadeem Smith, DL Harrison Johnson, DB Quentin Jones , and - my favorite snapshot of all, to my left - strutting LB Hobson McCain . (I'll keep adding more signing day pictures to the post as I find them!)

The forecast in Eastern Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley tonight may call for snow and ice, but that's unlikely to keep a lot of happy families heading to high school libraries and gyms in this area. That's because tomorrow is National Signing Day, the college football equivalent of Christmas. Across the country, in some of those high school libraries and gyms, some of those students will be posing with a Lehigh hat next to them, or on their heads, to indicate that they've chosen Lehigh as the place they will be attending college.  (Like rising junior WR Derek Knott , above, a few years ago at his signing day.) Anticipating an announcement tomorrow, we look back.  What do we know?  How are we doing?  Is the next LB Nigel Muhammad, RB Keith Sherman, FS Tyler Ward or WR Lee Kurfis in this class? Everything we know thus far will be revealed below the flip.

My intent for today's blog posting was to comb the world-wide-interwebs for pictures of signing day ceremonies involving Lehigh players - which ended up being a harder assignment than you may imagine. For example, take the picture on your left there (courtesy of the Cincinnati Enquirer ) of the graduating class of St. Xavier Prep, which was called "one of the best senior groups in more than two decades" .  How hard is it to identify incoming DL Nigel Muhhamed , standing first from the left, with his Lehigh cap? I didn't find too many other pictures - but I did find some press articles detailing some of the incoming recruiting class that is scheduled to be announced sometime next week.  All of that is detailed below.  (more)

For many football teams across the nation, tomorrow is indeed "signing day".  High school auditoriums right now are getting festooned with bunting, perhaps, or at a bare minimum streamers.  Some are preparing highlight reels to air as the athletes - with local press in tow - sign pieces of paper committing themselves to a school. Though Patriot League schools are not committed to announce their recruiting classes on "signing day" - and, as a matter of fact, sometimes get some gems by being patient and waiting until after signing day to get more athletes - there are some thoughts I'm having as we find out exactly the names of the incoming football recruiting classes of 2014.  (And, of course, you can keep track of the my ongoing list the the confirmed Patriot League recruiting classes here .)  (more)

Tomorrow many high school football recruits will be going into libraries (just like this one) on "national signing day" to announce their choices for secondary education. The same day, many colleges also announce their entire recruiting class to the world. There are exceptions to this rule, however: the Patriot League and Ivy League. Most Division I schools participate in something called the "Letter of Intent" program. Purely a legal term, it means that the recruit has signed a legally binding document which links him to the school to which he pledged. Many people seem to think that letters of intent are like wedding vows. But LOI's are more like wedding proposals. They are just documents which can be rescinded - they just need to have the OK of both parties involved. Take this case from Northern Arizona : When National Signing Day arrived in February 2003, Paul Como settled. A month after signing with Northern Arizona, he was sure he could have the sa...