Lehigh Football Nation

This Sunday, I woke up with my family and did something I don't usually do. I didn't turn on the computer. Didn't check my emails.  Didn't check Facebook.  Didn't check Twitter.  Didn't check the latest news about college football.  Didn't check my fantasy teams.  Didn't check the message boards for the latest dirt. In other words, I didn't go "online" - something that is becoming very, very unusual for me in this day and age. We live in a very strange world right now, where we're encouraged to spend time offline - yet much true knowledge is "online".  In my situation it's especially strange, where I try to figure out - what's the happy medium?

Nobody outside of the inner circle saw this one coming. With most dimestore pundits ( including this one ) thinking that Boston University might be a target of the CAA's effort to solve their current woes, Boston University president Robert A. Brown and the eight presidents of the Patriot League pulled the trigger on a shocker of a conference move. It's a move that was years in the making - yet proceeded at the speed of the winds of rapid change that are coarsing through collegiate athletics. It's a move that doesn't make immediate sense - yet makes perfect sense, the more you look at it. But more than anything, the move, which will take place on July 1st, 2013, is a throwback to how conference expansion used to be.

With the best Commodore VIC-20 graphics available for the cover art, Jefferson Starship 's "Winds of Change" album seriously underwhelmed pretty much everyone at the time, yielding few hits. Some folks think just because collegiate realignment has yielded few hits on the Patriot League hit parade, it doesn't really matter to them. I mean, what is it to the Patriot League if the CAA comes back from the jaws of the dragon, or if Conference USA is out of control, or the Atlantic Ten is simply dreaming that the Big East basketball conference breaks apart? As I started to mention yesterday , it very much does matter.  In the case of Georgetown, their TV deal with the Big East could very much affect the availability of aid for other sports programs, including football. In the case of Fordham, the Patriot League's other affiliate program in football, the winds of change are, without question, even more pronounced.

As weakly-sung 80's hair metal ballads go, you could do a lot worse than the Scorpions ' "Wind of Change", the German group's documentation of the fall of Soviet-style communism in Eastern Europe.  (Though I never could get into Klaus Meine 's vocals, which were always comically flat to me.) To some Patriot League fans, the wind of change blowing through collegiate athletics right now seems as distant to them as the Scorpions' last hit record.  Does it matter, they seem to say, that the Big East might break apart?   The Patriot League, after all, has their core ideals and priciples, and if the rest of the NCAA tears itself apart over money, ego, or something else, what is it to the schools of the Patriot? The answer, of course, is absolutely everything - no matter what any deniers might say.  As I'll demonstrate in this blog posting, what happens in the Big East could potentially make a very big difference in the Hoya football program.

In every place in America that I've lived, there's been evidence of the times of the American revolutionary war. Close by, in some form or another, I've been amongst 18th-century farmhouses and ancient taverns where George Washingon, Ben Franklin or John Adams might have sipped madeira or stayed the night. I've visited 12 of the original 13 colonies (South Carolina is the only one that has evaded me). I've been to Boston, the epicenter of civil disobedience against the British, and live near Philadelphia, where the founding fathers made a functioning government amidst the chaos around them that still, to this day, serves as an example worldwide. The theme of revolution seems to be apropos to the collegiate realignment maelstrom that continues to swirl through collegiate athletics as we speak, making ridiculous ideas like Boise State in the Big East and Pitt in the ACC seem somewhat justifiable in the face of all logic. In such an environment, could there ...

For some reason, this picture (credit to graduate  Larry Shulman , who tweeted this picture of graduation as it happened) seems to perfectly capture the state of Lehigh's graduating class of 2012. Lehigh graduates are entering an uncertain world, where youth unemployment is high and the jobs of tomorrow aren't exactly as clear as they could be. Some, like the young woman in the picture, seem just a bit apprehensive of what's up ahead. Here's a dirty little secret, grads: there's always something to be apprehensive about. But you have the tools - starting with your Lehigh degree - to make it.

When the Patriot League allowed for member schools to offer conventional football scholarships this past winter ,  then Lafayette president Daniel Weiss noted that "we believe over time what this decision is in the best interest of the league because it will help us with future membership prospects." While everything I've heard still points to the Patriot League taking a cautious eye at expanding with new football-only or all-sports members, the League has definitely put themselves in a better position to attract potential new members in the maelstrom that is college football realignment at the moment. It is in this environment where Richmond athletic director Jim Miller waded, into a swamp where the CAA awaits word of a resolution of the Mexican standoff between Old Dominion, George Mason and Virginia Commonwealth and their potential exits from the conference. I feel his comments on conference speculation might spell the end of Richmond's relationship with...