Lehigh Football Nation

Last season, there was little drama on the defensive side of the ball going into the spring season. With all-Patriot League names like DT Sajjad Chagani, DE Tom Bianchi, LB Billy Boyko and CB Bryan Andrews on the roster, you knew that the squad was more in a mode to "tweak" rather than to "retool". This season sees not only these three position leaders graduate, but plenty more, making the defense much less experiences, and a much larger area of competition, than last season. “The defense needs to get better,” head coach Andy Coen said in this week's release . “They didn’t perform very well in our last scrimmage and our coaches have challenged them. We haven’t had a lot of live tackling because we’re in a tailback situation. Last week we got more into it, we scrimmaged, and we didn’t tackle very well. We have to improve upon that."

Can it be already that half of spring practice is already in the books? While many of us were watching the NCAA Tournament, ripping up our office pools while watching Louisville upend Michigan in the championship, the Lehigh football team was getting better. "We're just trying to learn and get better each day," head coach Andy Coen said in Lehigh's mid-season spring report .  "We've got so many young, young players... I think we have a lot of talented players here, but a lot of the guys haven't had the type of opportunity that they're getting now." "I think this team is lacking experience," Coen told me, "but I don't believe we are lacking talent. We have been fortunate over the past three years to have some very talented players and they have kept some other guys off the field." As we take a peek at the offense today, we see some of the players that have impressed the coaching staff thus far - and, what has to...

A 10-1 record.  A thrilling win on the road in front of over 17,000 fans over the Big South co-champs, Liberty.  Thrilling wins over Princeton, Holy Cross, and Georgetown.  And five straight over the Mountain Hawks arch-rival in Easton. There was an awful lot for Lehigh football fans to celebrate from last year's 10-1 season, only the tenth season in Lehigh's nearly 130 year history in which the Mountain Hawks had more than ten victories. So what's the first thing that head coach Andy Coen brings up as the spring football season and schedule got unveiled today? “This group is all going to be about being hungry,” he said .

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.