Lehigh Football Nation

Some fans of Eastern universities complain about boring schedules, especially in September. Lehigh's schedule is anything but boring, though, in 2010. It's time for Lehigh fans to mentally wrap our heads around the following truth: the Mountain Hawks' home opener is against none other than the defending FCS National Champions. Lehigh has already opened their season ticket plans for 2010, and soon will make some individual games available for purchase. But aside from the obvious buzz around the game versus "that school in Easton", what could be the biggest out-of-conference game in recent memory will be on September 11th when Lehigh plays their home opener versus Villanova. (more)

It sure seems like - for now - the inexorable march towards sixteen team superconferences is at best sleeping, or at worst dead. After shrieking announcements that the Pac N was going to swoop in and poach five different football teams from the Big XII, the Big East might take all the rest and college football would be forever changed, it seems like, according to Andy Staples' Sports Illustrated article talking about the proceedings that "powerful outsiders, concerned that the Pac-10's plan to supersize to 16 by pillaging the Big 12 would set off an unstoppable chain of events, helped broker the deal, which may have saved college sports as currently constituted." Staples stopped short of saying it, but it could very well be one of the "powerful outsiders" that saved the Big XII may have been one of the forces that seemed to be driving it to destruction: Fox. (more)

Usually, the analogy of dominoes is overdone.  But it's hard to escape it now that we know that Colorado has elected to join the conference formerly known as the Pac Ten , and Nebraska has elected to join the conference formerly known as the Big Ten . Where might other dominoes fall?  Will the Big XII cease to exist - or survice?  Will the Big East crumble, too - or expand by four (or more) teams?  Will the Mountain West become a Western counterpoint to the Pac-N - or see its best teams lured to that conference? It's a crazy, dangerous world out there right now, especially if you think you have all the answers on FBS conference realignment. But it's a good time - with a break in the action, sort of - where we can see where this all is could lead. It could be the start of megaconferences, the involvement of Congress - or not much else. (more)

I've been following the BCS/FBS conference realignment craziness with a whole lot of interest, having penned a piece on it for the College Sporting News that basically stated that the chance of a current FCS team making it into a BCS conference was between slim and none, and slim was nowhere to be found . It's hard to tell which rumors are real and which ones are imagined, but ESPN apparently has some pretty solid sources together (finally) that seem to imply that Nebraska could announce their intentions of being a member of the Big Ten as soon as Friday . If that happens, and the Pac Ten goes through with their threat to invite Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado to their conference, there are a lot of teams that might be available for other BCS conferences to poach. The most intriguing of the scenarios? A couple of teams defined by their basketball success... getting offered an invitation by the Big East. (more)

It shouldn't be much of a news item, really, but as the NCAA released their Academic Progress Rate numbers this year it was no surprise to see Patriot League schools all over the honor list . Gushes the press release, "For the fifth consecutive year, Yale University had the most teams (24) recognized, followed by Dartmouth College (22) and the University of Pennsylvania (20). By conference, the Ivy Group had the most number of teams honored (135), followed by the Patriot League (90) and the Big East Conference (70). " Today, the NCAA released the full data for their APR numbers; not only the numbers from last year, but the four-year averages which the awards are based. Let's take a moment to look at the numbers for football and men's basketball for the Patriot League - and then compare them to the rest of Division I athletics. (more)

Recently, the New York Times' George Vecsey   ran an article about Duke head lacrosse coach John Danowski . The last name "Danowski" means a lot to folks in the New York area: John is the son of former Fordham and New York Giant great QB Ed Danowski , who played football in the 1930s just prior to World War II. Danowski was known for being an all-American halfback on the 1933 team that featured the proto-"Seven Blocks of Granite" line that would become legendary, and the following year was famously photographed putting on sneakers at halftime of the championship game versus the Chicago Bears. Played on a sheet of ice at the old Polo Grounds, the story goes after going into halftime with a 10-3 deficit, the Giants changed to sneakers which gave them the extra traction to come from behind to win the game 30-13. The article then mentions: “He always said the sneakers were a good story,” [his son] said, “but the real story was that the Bears were arrogant an...

(Photo Credit: ESPN) Most schools the past few weeks were preparing great sendoffs for their students. Lehigh had humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel talk at graduation, and hosted a slew of reunion events, for example. At Navy, however, a graduation headlined by Vice President Joe Biden was not all hats flying through the air and talk of a strong military for now and the forseeable future. Instead, an old sore was opened. Thanks to the New York Times and a controversial professor at Navy who is out of step with many of his academic peers, the folks at Navy instead were spending time disavowing the " academies' march towards mediocrity ". Eight days before athletes at Navy should have been celebrating years of hard work and toil, they faced the ridiculous charge that somehow their degrees didn't mean as much as their classmates'. (more)