Lehigh Football Nation

(Photo Credit: Dan Gleiter/PennLive) Head coach Andy Coen came into the conference room at Taylor Gym with a broad smile on his face - the type of face that comes from winning a Patriot League Championship last year, of course, but also the type of face that comes from a man quite happy with his incoming recruiting class. The fifteen names in the incoming class, "with four extra guys to announce later [on]", Coen said, seemed to fill Lehigh's needs, the fifth consecutive year that Lehigh has been recruiting with the same type of  scholarships as the rest of FCS. "We had to shore up some depth, we really had to get a little bit of everything," he said.  "We graduated a lot of guys in the secondary, so it was important to get a good group there this year, and I think we did that." Four defensive backs were announced today as being a part of the incoming class, DB Divine Buckrham, DB Tre Cundiff, DB Tre Neal , and DB Jaylen Floyd . "The ...

In the run-up to signing day, I caught up with a few of the new recruits to ask them about their recruiting stories and their high school football career. Today our subject is DB Divine Buckrham , who competed at The Kiski School, which is based just outside of Pittsburgh, PA. The Kiski School is an all boys, small, private school with an enrollment of 210 students. Despite its small size, it has a long, storied history of football, too. "From the early 1950's to the present, it is well documented that Kiski has fielded teams deep in football lore and history," Kiski's team website says . "Many of the country's greatest football players of the time started their careers at Kiski." Situated not far from State College, PA, Kiski graduates include QB Darryl Clark and RB Curtis Enis , two names which should be well known to Nittany Lions fans.

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".