Lehigh Football Nation

New Year's Eve is supposed to be about all the good things about college football. For FCS, it's about the run-up to the FCS National Championship game in Frisco, Texas.  This season - again - North Dakota State heads to the party once again, while the No. 1 team in the nation. Jacksonville State, tries to be the team that finally harpoons the Bison to break their consecutive national championship streak. In the FBS, the bowl games that really matter - the plus-one playoff teams, the four teams that could win their bowl championship - are being played.  Lots of people will tune in.  Advertisers will see a very strong return on investment on their ad buys for the game.  The administrators for Alabama, Michigan State, Clemson and Oklahoma will be entertained, and well paid. Yet now, at the end of 2015, there are dark clouds on the horizon looming pretty much everywhere about the entire sport.  Folks are worried about head injuries more than ever.  The...

It's the most wonderful time of the year, according to my radio. Although it can't possibly be the most wonderful time of the year, since there's no Lehigh football or Patriot League football teams playing right now, I suppose the next best thing - recruiting period for the next four years of Lehigh football - is in full swing. My thoughts for Santa pretty much involve the players I think Lehigh needs in the upcoming years, so, as I do every year, here's what I would like Santa to leave under head coach Andy Coen's tree this season. (No lumps of coal, hopefully.)

Everything about the 2015 season screamed "rebuilding," even if the Lehigh faithful never really could bring themselves to completely believe it. Lehigh was coming from a frustrating 2014 where the Mountain Hawks came close to beating James Madison at home, but couldn't finish the game, making Lehigh slide to an uncharacteristic 3-8 record. There was the departure in the offseason of RB Chris Leigh , the one player that scored a touchdown for the Mountain Hawks in the 150th meeting between Lafayette and Lehigh in Yankee Stadium, and RB Brandon Yosha , the transfer running back that battled injury and chop blocks leading to his retirement from football as well. With pretty much any other team and any other fan base, expectations for the year would have been low.  But at Lehigh, expectations are sky-high, for better or for worse, all the time.  Perhaps it's the historic success of the program; perhaps it's the fans, who are spoiled by all the Patriot League...

Being a college football fan sometimes means being disappointed.  It comes with the territory. Disappointment comes in many forms. In the Lehigh football world, there's the type of disappointment when a non-Lafayette game is lost, like when, say, the Mountain Hawks underperform in a loss to Yale .  While you can be upset that the Bulldogs push you around in your own house , the disappointment abates, eventually.  You get a bunch of really good wins, win the most important game on your schedule, and the disappointment fades away.  You move on, the Yale game an aberration in a mostly terrific year. But recently, a bunch of Lehigh football players disappointed for a different reason. What they did isn't exactly a secret, but I thought it worthwhile to say exactly what such news does to huge fans of the Lehigh football program, like myself, and how it affects many of the other passionate Lehigh fans that are a part of the great Lehigh football community.  ...

All the Rivalry games are memorable in their own way for everyone in attendance, from the seniors playing in their last game to the kids playing on the grass embankment. The there will be four plays that will be remembered the most, the four plays that defined this game for Lehigh and really demonstrated how tough this team was in 2015, and how tough they might be in 2016. Most importantly, though, was the fact that Lehigh finally was able to chuck aside any doubts about winning a big game. Wins against Lafayette are always important for the many Lehigh fans in the near-16,000 people who attend these games.  But winning this particular game was doubly important for this Lehigh squad that seemed to almost desperately need the win in order to demonstrate to the fans in the Valley who they are, who they were, and where they're headed.

We break down the #Rivalry151 - and we give our fearless prediction below the flip. One of the things that makes Lafayette such a dangerous and frightening team is the fact that they're 1-9, oddly enough. As a Lehigh fan, despite the Xs and Os, you have to wonder if Lehigh will come out flat tomorrow, after a h eartwrenching loss last week to Colgate, 49-42 . Coupled with that is the fact that Lafayette has had two weeks to contemplate the end of their football season, to get healthy, to come to terms with the end of their football careers. Sometimes, even in a huge Rivalry game, with a Patriot League championship on the line last week, you wonder if the Mountain Hawks can bring it as intensely as they brought it to Colgate. Despite the breakdown, despite the football side, the question is - can they?

Chuck laid down on the couch, his therapist staring at his pencil.  He focused at a spor on the celing, listing to the pelt of rain on the thin roof overhead. "Do you remember it now?" the balding doctor with the shaggy salt-and-pepper beard asked. "I... I don't remember," Chuck said.  "I have a vague recollection, some faint memories, about being... excited.  About being excited for a football game, but not The Rivalry I expected.  It was being played... in a stadium I didn't recognize.  It was a dream.  A nightmare.  It had to be a nightmare." "Go on," the doctor said.  "This is good.  Very good.  By confronting what.... happened last year, you can finally face up to it and defeat it.  Defeat your nightmare.  Defeat a year's worth of angst.   Defeat it." "I don't know," Chuck said.  "It's all so hazy." "Let's see if we can work this out," the doctor said.  ...