Lehigh Football Nation

With a little over a week to signing day, the incoming football class of 2021 is in real focus. I'm always hesitant to jump the gun on verbals to Lehigh.  I've been around this long enough to realize that commitments can change. But I've also found that when you get this close to signing day, you've got a fairly good picture as to what the class looks like. All verbals are considered "verbals" and are very much unofficial until signing day, but many student-athletes have tweeted their commitments and their tweets are included below. So a week before signing day, here's some information as to what we know here at LFN about the incoming class. (A huge thank-you to Rich Heelan and Todd Cuddington , who have done a great job as they always do tracking recruits.  Their constantly-updated spreadsheet is here. )

How do you write about sports when it doesn't feel like a game anymore? This is the crux of the question I've been struggling with over the last few weeks. Like many of you, I was shocked at the election of Donald Trump to become our next President.  Also like many of you, I paid as he did things differently when it came to talking about the political foes he defeated, how he went about assembling a cabinet, and how he engaged the press. Everything about this point in time in history feels historic.  No set of Americans have ever elected someone like Donald Trump as President.  Nobody, not Trump of the mobs of Twitter people that seem to follow him, have used Twitter to attack people so directly almost like a weapon, especially focused at journalists that are trying to get at the truth. Frankly, nobody knows what's coming next. So how do you write about sports at a time like this?  How do you compartmentalize what you're feeling about the election, and ...

Is it already time to ask Santa for a bag filled with new Lehigh recruits? Since the conclusion of Lehigh's championship 2016 football season, head coach Andy Coen and all of his assistant coaches have been on the trail recruiting the next great Lehigh football players.  While it's a "quiet period" now, as per the NCAA, the Mountain Hawks have been busy. But what, exactly, does Lehigh need in regards to the offseason? I forgot; that's why you're here.  Let me share what I think.

Kids come to play football at Lehigh because they want their games to matter. They come to Lehigh willing to sacrifice so much, because they want to win games, of course, but they also play the game in order to win championships - Patriot League Championships. They want those rings. Sure, they get to square off against the Villanova's, James Madison's and New Hampshire's of the FCS world to measure themselves against the best of their division.  And they get to participate in the nation's most played Rivalry in all of college football, putting them in an elite club of players and into college football history. All of those things are very important, of course, and allow them great playing memories and, in the case of the Lafayette game, perennial bragging rights.   But 2015's heartbreak in Hamilton, the 49-42 loss  to Colgate, really hurt on a fundamental level for this Lehigh team.  When that senior class was recruited, one of the things that ...

I have this vision. It's the weekend of the home opener at Murray Goodman Stadium, Labor Day weekend.  It could be a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. And it's 6:00 PM. In 2018, the Lehigh football team will open the season with a big celebration of the football program - at Navy, Lehigh's first game against an FBS team in over a decade. In 2017, why not, as a one-off opportunity, try to have one Lehigh football game, the home opener, be the first-ever night game at Murray Goodman Stadium? Will it cost money?  Yes.  Will it be easy?  Probably not. However, is it doable?  I've got to believe the answer is "yes".

Still bummed that Lehigh's Patriot League Championship season is over?  Yeah, me too. That doesn't mean that I've totally tuned out the college football landscape, though. Starting tonight, there's some terrific games on TV and online streaming that I'll be watching, both at the FCS and the FBS level.  Happily, the FCS Round of 16 games are not all going up against each other like last week, so the opportunity is there to catch one or more of those games - and you can bet that I will be. Below the flip, starting with the MAC championship game tonight, are my picks for games to watch, and - why not? - some picks as to who I think will win. (Yes, it includes Penn State.  Stop asking.)

The first time I asked a question of Lafayette head football coach Frank Tavani was in 2004. It was at Fisher Field, and I had just spent my first game ever in the press box. I had gone into that press box hoping to cover an expected Lehigh victory over Lafayette, the final crowning glory to yet another Lehigh football season. I barely knew what I was doing, how I should act, or how to set up a computer in the press box.  But there I was, taking notes for a "game diary" for a national website called I-AA.org. I had proven my bona fides for writing by penning a very long, very detailed summary of the Lehigh/Colgate game a few weeks prior.  That game, a Lehigh victory that went down to the wire, was sort-of a precursor to the type of coverage I do now during Lehigh games in terms of tweeting, except rather than tweet it out instantly to followers, I would write all the observations down, shuffle them up, edit them, and put them in a thousand-word article.  (Trust...