Lehigh Football Nation

One thing has remained remarkably consistent for the last six years - Fordham has had Lehigh's number. It hasn't mattered that Fordham has had Joe Moorhead, Andrew Breiner, or Joe Conlin , or whether Lehigh was gunning for a Patriot League title, or not - during that time, Fordham has done only one thing consistently, and that's beat Lehigh. Granted, during many of those years, Fordham has some all-time teams, with UConn transfer QB Michael Nebrich , current Arizona Cardinal RB Chase Edmonds , and a cast of terrific Patriot League players too numerous to mention.  But then again, during Lehigh's last Patriot League title year of 2017, fourth-string RB D'Angelo Palladino ran for almost 300 yards on the Mountain Hawk defense for a 45-35 win , something the Lehigh seniors remember all too painfully well. In a year of lowlights, last year's 43-14 loss to Fordham for head coach Joe Conlin's first win as Fordham head coach really stood out to ...

Welcome back to the Lehigh Tailgate Report, a free public service from your pals over at Lehigh Football Nation. The idea of the Lehigh Tailgate Report is to provide a fun report on what to expect at the game, or not at the game, for this week's upcoming game. If you're planning to go to the game, great! It's at Jack Coffey Field in the Bronx, NY. Kickoff is at 1PM.  If you can't make it to the game, the game is available to watch or listen in a variety of ways. Lehigh's local radio broadcast, which starts an hour before kickoff and sets the table for the day's game, can be caught on your AM dial on Fox Sports Radio AM 1230 or 1320. (In the Lehigh Valley, you can also catch the game on 94.7 FM).  Matt Kerr , Jim Guzzo and Matt Markus are on the call this Saturday. Through internet radio, the pregame, game, and postgame can be streamed through TuneIn or just simply going to the LVFoxSports.com webpage . Full disclosure: When I'm at home, this ...

Every head football coach hates to use the word "rebuild" when it comes to their football team, but going into the 2019 Mountain Hawk football season, it was hard to avoid it. From the preseason conference call where Lehigh was picked to finish 5th in the league - a reflection on last season's 3-8 record and the 5-6 record that preceded it - the word "rebuild" seemed to hang over this team. “Over 40% of our team are first-year players,” Lehigh head Tom Gilmore said on that call.  “And we’re excited to see what some of these freshman can do to enhance our roster and push the upperclassmen to be the best version of themselves on the field.” To a fan base that had grown accustomed to the way freshly retired head coach Andy Coen handled preseasons, already there was a sense that under coach Gilmore, things were different. But there was also the sense that perhaps it would take a bit of time to get things to where the Mountain Hawks would be every year c...

Lehigh and Colgate is always a big game, whether both teams are going in undefeated or, as in this case, an 2-7 team is squaring off against a 8-0 team. In a testimony to how evenly matched both of these teams have been over the years,  no team has won more than 3 straight against the other since the inception of the Patriot League. Colgate and Lehigh have faced off 55 times, and the overall record has been, fittingly, close, with Colgate holding a slender 30-24-2 advantage.  The last tie came in 1980, a 17-17 tie at Taylor Stadium in which Lehigh's John Whitehead and Colgate's Fred Dunlap faced off as head coach.  In a way, that hotly-contested tie sort-of epitomizes the competitiveness of this rivalry today. Last year, Colgate cruised to a 48-6 victory , one of the more lopsided in the rivalry's recent history.  This year's edition is unlikely to be a similar outcome.

Welcome back to the Lehigh Tailgate Report, a free public service from your pals over at Lehigh Football Nation. The idea of the Lehigh Tailgate Report is to provide a fun report on what to expect at the game, or not at the game, for this week's upcoming game. If you're planning to go to the game, great! It's at Andy Kerr Stadium in Hamilton, NY.  Kickoff is at 1PM. If you can't make it to the game, the game is available to watch or listen in a variety of ways. Lehigh's local radio broadcast, which starts an hour before kickoff and sets the table for the day's game, can be caught on your AM dial on Fox Sports Radio AM 1230 or 1320. Matt Kerr, Matt Markus and Steve Lomangino are on the call this Saturday. Through internet radio, the pregame, game, and postgame can be streamed through TuneIn or just simply going to the LVFoxSports.com webpage . Full disclosure: When I'm at home, this is my preferred method to catch the game action. Streaming the...

It's what we do every week: copiously go over the opposing game notes and analyze the upcoming game matchup.  I'm starting to call these the "football nerd" previews because it feels like the audience for these detailed team breakdowns are other football nerds like myself.  For Lehigh fans, there is no greater need for a "football nerd"-level breakdown of an opponent than Merrimack.  Few opponents have been as big as an unknown to Mountain Hawk fans as the school that formed right after World War II in North Andover, Massachusetts.  Helping that sense of mystery is that the Merrimack Athletics' website offers no football game notes, and when you click on the link called "Weekly Two-Deep", you get a two-deep from 2018. Merrimack, until recently a member of the Northeast-10 conference in Division II, announced they are going to join the NEC as a full Division I member in time for the 2023-2024 season. “The College’s 2011 strategic ...

Welcome back to the Lehigh Tailgate Report, a free public service from your pals over at Lehigh Football Nation. The idea of the Lehigh Tailgate Report is to provide a fun report on what to expect at the game, or not at the game, for this week's upcoming game. If you're planning to go to the game, great! It's at Murray Goodman Stadium this Saturday at 12:30PM. If you can't make it to the game, the game is available to watch or listen in a variety of ways.  The local radio broadcast, which starts an hour before kickoff and sets the table for the day's game, can be caught on your AM dial on Fox Sports Radio AM 1230 or 1320. Matt Kerr, Jim Guzzo, Tom Fallon and Matt Markus are on the call this Saturday. Through internet radio, the pregame, game, and postgame can be streamed through TuneIn or just simply going to the LVFoxSports.com webpage . Full disclosure: When I'm at home, this is my preferred method to catch the game action. Streaming the...