Lehigh Football Nation

I've often said privately that I thought that the departure of Andy Reid would probably be the end of Eagles Training Camp at Lehigh. With the hiring of new head coach Chip Kelly , this sad day for the Lehigh Valley and Lehigh University has finally come. In a noon press release, the Philadelphia Eagles organization announced their intentions of holding preseason training at the NovaCare complex and having some free practices at Lincoln Financial Field. I can understand why the Eagles did it, but it's a decision that makes me no less sad.

(Photo Credit: NY Times/Emily Dunker/The Minnesota Daily) I am not usually one to rake the NCAA over the coals. As the cops of collegiate athletics, I understand their job is hard, and too many athletic departments are trying to break the rules.  Even if some rules are strange or restrictive, at their heart they are there for good reasons. But they've been slow to adapt in some ways to an ever changing digital world (as Lehigh football fans undoubtedly are well aware). And yesterday, an enforcement case came to light that just begs for commentary. It's the case of Minnesota wrestler Joel Bauman , who was yanked from competing for the Gopher wrestling team for violating an NCAA bylaw.  His crime?  Recording a song and charging 99 cents for it on iTunes.

Do I seem obsessed with the idea of Lehigh having a 12th game in 2013?  Yes, I believe I am. While my initial thoughts on a 12th game for Lehigh involved a lot of expense - for example, a possible trip to Bozeman, Montana to take on last year's Big Sky co-champions Montana State - it so happens that there's another possible 12th Mountain Hawk game that could come about that is not only a whole lot less expensive, but also would give Lehigh an extra home game. The forces at work would not be from the FCS world but the FBS world.  More accurately, a game versus Pitt and Villanova.

With two Patriot League Championships in three years and a 10-1 record last year, Lehigh head coach Andy Coen certainly has high standards to meet every year. It's not nearly enough to have a "year off" recruiting when you're at - or, in Lehigh's case, near - the top.  You lose all-league players like WR Ryan Spadola and DT Sajjad Chagani and you have to recruit all-league players to replace them.  There's never any room for error. Lehigh fans who have been waiting with baited breath to see how scholarships have found their way into Coen's class of 2017 finally have a chance to discover what, if any, impact scholarships have. The Patsy Ratings offer an answer, and it's a surprising one. Scholarships seem to have had a good impact on Lehigh's first scholarship class.  Did it give Lehigh the same type of large Patsy Point class that, apparently, Colgate and Fordham had?  No, it did not.

Every once in a while, a Patsy Point class crosses the desk of the Committee where the Members check the other side of the paper for more names.  "Is that all?"  they ask, with no response forthcoming. Such is the case with Holy Cross head football coach Tom Gilmore 's Patsy Point class this go-around, his first with football scholarships at his disposal. It's a small class, which in and of itself is not a bad thing, necessarily.  But as you'll see below, the Patsy Point rating system was - shall we say - not kind to Holy Cross' incoming class for this season. Everyone knows, and nobody is more aware of this than the Committee members, that the Patsy Ratings are a deeply flawed system.  They are for entertainment purposes only.  Any resemblance to the true worth of an incoming class is purely coincidental. Using the same system used for the rest of the incoming classes, however, Holy Cross did not score well for the class of 2017.  Not well at all...

Fordham knows the ropes when it comes to football scholarships, and so does head coach Joe Moorhead . Coming last season from the coaching staff at UConn, and himself a former Fordham football player, he's seen the academic side, and the scholarship side. One of the great things about the Patsy Ratings is that it treats all schools equally.  Scholarships, grants, it attempts to treat all the teams the same, whether they've been recruiting with football scholarships for one year or four. Fordham has been ineligible for the Patriot League title the past three years, but they're still eligible for the Patsy Point title in 2013.  Let's see how they did.

It is truly hilarious when people who don't know what they're talking about try to make news points, and news decisions, based on one side of the story. Such is the case with the breathless coverage of the Big 10's decision, led by former Wisconsin head football coach (and current athletic director) Barry Alvarez , who shared with the Milwaukee-Journal that Big 10 officials " recently agreed to stop scheduling nonconference games against FCS programs. " Of course, the first thing papers around the country do is pull a picture from such an FCS game involving Wisconsin from last season - surely a poster child for a blowout, right? Um, not exactly.  Northern Iowa gave Wisconsin " all they could handle " in a 26-21 nailbiter. Wait, it gets better.