Covering All College Sports Since 2012
We’re now officially a week away from Selection Sunday, and Samford, with their win over Chattanooga, is officially in the field. Other than that, it’s a big heaping helping of chaos that means a ton can still happen on the last day of the regular season!
Lehigh won, but beating Colgate was special in a way that many won’t understand.
When Lehigh (1-8, 1-3 Patriot League) faces off against Colgate (3-6, 2-2 Patriot League) this weekend at Murray Goodman Stadium, there will be stakes.
Two weekends left to the FCS regular season, we’re even closer to knowing what the 2022 FCS Playoff field will look like. For a big number of teams, there’s a lot to play for – and for some, a lot to see what develops for those precious at-large bids.
WORCESTER, MA – Watching last week’s thrilling Holy Cross/Fordham game as someone who’s watched a lot of Lehigh football in my life, it was hard to not get flashbacks. The thrilling 53-52 win by Holy Cross (8-0, 4-0) over Fordham (6-2, 2-1) was unquestionably the game of the year in the Patriot League, if not.
It’s time to really start thinking about what this November’s FCS Playoff field might look like.
If you’re a numbers person, it might be best to skip down to the end, because this Saturday, the Bucknell Bison (0-6, 0-2) will be traveling to Bethlehem to take on the Lehigh Mountain Hawks (1-6, 1-1) in a battle between teams that, to put it mildly, are desperate to get into the win column.
For the Lehigh Mountain Hawks (1-5, 1-1 Patriot) and the Cornell Big Red (2-2, 0-2 Ivy), the final non-league matchup at Schoellkopf field in Ithaca, NY provides a similar opportunity for both teams.
It took all of three plays at the beginning of the second half for Fordham to retake the lead.
College football is a lot like a burlesque show. As the show rolls forward, more and more gets revealed about what your college football team is.
After a promising drive stalled ending with a missed 40 yard field goal attempt, Monmouth (3-2, 1-1 CAA) would score the next 35 points en route to a humbling 35-7 win over Lehigh (1-4, 1-0 Patriot), handing the Mountain Hawks their third straight defeat.
What might have happened to the Patriot League had the Presidents genuinely gave a fair hearing, and accepted, Monmouth as a member?
PRINCETON, NJ – It was a beautiful late autumn day at Princeton stadium, a perfect afternoon for football. And for a half, at least, it was a very good afternoon for Lehigh football as well. The halftime score read Lehigh 10, Princeton 10, and Mountain Hawk fans had every right to be excited. Heavy underdogs.
I do not know whether in this game (slated to kick off at 3pm), in this 62nd meeting of the series, Lehigh (1-0, 1-2) will experience a win or a loss against Princeton (1-0, 0-0). What I do know is there is enough of a rivalry between the two schools that I can tell you a little bit about the ecstasy and agony of these matchups.
QB Reece Udinski goes 17-for-17 on his first 17 passing attempts, scoring two passing touchdowns before his first incompletion midway through the second quarter.
You are probably coming to this preview to get a breakdown on the big game in Murray Goodman Stadium this weekend, where Richmond (0-0, 1-1) will take on Lehigh (1-0, 1-1) in a really tough out-of-conference battle for the home team. Indulge me for a moment, though, while I talk Lord of the Rings.
Despite getting outgained 422-306; despite losing the turnover battle (Lehigh turned it over twice, Georgetown 0 times); despite giving up four first downs with penalties and running 30 fewer offensive plays than the Hoyas, the Mountain Hawks lined up with 1:04 to play with the ability to deny Georgetown’s two point conversion and preserve the win – and they did so, putting them, at least for now, atop the Patriot League standings.
Despite the fact it’s only the second game of the season, it’s hard to overstate the importance of this game to establish either Lehigh (0-0, 0-1) or Georgetown (0-0, 1-0) as Patriot League contenders in 2022.
In front of 6,101 enthusiastic fans, many of them students, the No. 5 ranked Villanova Wildcats did what was expected of them, running out to a big lead en route to a 45-17 victory.
When I look at Lehigh’s 2022 season opener this weekend at Villanova, I see the ingredients of a possible rivalry, but the truth is, the game between the Mountain Hawks and Wildcats is not a rivalry.
There is also something that feels different about this group than those of the last few years – a feeling that maybe, just maybe, the program is on the verge of turning a corner.
On Patriot League Media Day, one theme kept recurring when head coach Tom Gilmore, QB Dante Perri, and DL Dean Colton were talking about the upcoming season: leadership.
I still love college football. But I can’t abide what is happening in Power Five land. I don’t think I can watch it or enjoy it. And it no longer resembles the thing that made it so great for so long.
I often wonder if anybody actually read the legislation that set off the Name, Image, and Likeness fiasco through college sports.
How did we get here? How did we get to this place where, under the fig leaf of Name, Image, and Likeness rights, sports boosters have organized to effectively pay some star players seven-figure salaries?
He was a great man, taken from us too soon from a horrible disease. I know, because I had the honor of talking to him about his passion, Lehigh football, for his entire hall-of-fame coaching career.
“We landed some very good talent and some are capable of helping early,” Lehigh head coach Tom Gilmore told me by email.
The CAA’s move to become a 13 team superconference begs a different question for the FCS – what if that’s the only way forward for any number of smaller FCS conferences? Are we on the brink of a new era, where five, six, and seven member conferences are a thing of the past?
This Thursday, in unveiling their new constitution, the NCAA did the only thing it knows how to do – punt.
After hiring head coach Brent Vigen in January – and opting out the the spring season – they find themselves with a 12-2 record and this time facing North Dakota State in Frisco to possibly win their first National Championship in in 37 years. How did they do it?
Villanova has never lost to a Patriot League school in the postseason; one of their victories came against Holy Cross in their national championship season in 2009 by a 38-28 score.
The 35 yard spiral from Sluka to Coker was on the money – and Coker came up with it and fell in the end zone, and with it, gave Holy Cross their first-ever FCS Playoff win in five tries.
I ate my Thanksgiving turkey, I looked at all the stats, and I figured out who I think the 2021 FCS National Champions will be.
Holy Cross and Sacred Heart are both riding six-game win streaks into the first round of the FCS Playoffs.
One last spin in the dryer.
This Saturday, college football’s most-played Rivalry will contest its 157th meeting between the Lafayette Leopards (3-7) and Lehigh Mountain Hawks (2-8), and the hope is that it will be, well, normal.
In terms of the Lehigh/Lafayette Rivalry, however, which resumes this weekend in the 157th meeting between these two schools, for Leopard and Mountain Hawk fans, I think, college football seemed to end on that day on November 23rd, 2019, and never really quite seemed to get back to the college football that fans once knew before they learned what COVID was and how it was to impact their lives.
It was a game that wasn’t handed to them, either by Georgetown or Mother Nature, and they fought through and won.
It is the type of game only real fans understand.
In the 85th meeting between Bucknell and Lehigh on the football field, the Mountain Hawks rode a friendly home-like atmosphere on the road at Christy Matthewson Stadium to end a long consecutive game losing streak by a score of 38-6.
For three quarters, it didn’t really feel like a battle between a winless team (Lehigh, 0-8, 0-3) and a team still with an eye on a conference championship and an FCS Playoff appearance (Holy Cross, 6-2, 3-0).
“Who are these guys?”
Will Lehigh be able to keep this game competitive? It’s not a question that has been too very often asked about the Mountain Hawks (0-6, 0-1) over the years.
The Penn Quakers leveled their season record at 2-2 after outlasting Lehigh 20-0 at Franklin Field this Saturday.
a turnaround this Saturday could very well set up the remainder of a successful football season for the Mountain Hawks, and make a lot of people forget their early season struggles.
On a sunny 75 degree day, Yale’s offense racked up 420 yards on the Mountain Hawk defense as the Bulldogs (2-1, 1-0) pummeled Lehigh (0-5, 0-1) 34-0.
The number of monkeys on this Lehigh football team’s backs are beginning to mount.
The greatest thing about this rivalry game every year is that the stakes are always higher, and in recent years the fact that it has been earlier in the schedule has meant that there is a critical nature of this game.
BETHELEHEM, PA – Lehigh’s offensive woes continued against a daunting, precise Princeton team, losing 32-0 in front of a crowd of 7,050 at Murray Goodman Stadium this afternoon.
In facing nationally-ranked Villanova, nationally-ranked Richmond, the Mountain Hawks have played two teams that are loaded with 4th- and 5th- year talent that are built to make a run in the FCS Playoffs.
Princeton will be no easier.
