GAME THREE, WILLIAM & MARY AT LEHIGH – Stars Align, Finally, For Nationally-Ranked Clash Between Tribe and Mountain Hawks

On By Chuck Burton

BETHLEHEM, PA – This weekend’s game between nationally-ranked William & Mary (2-0, 2-0 Patriot League) and nationally-ranked Lehigh (2-0, 2-0 PL) is by far the most consequential meeting ever between the two schools.

It’s not just that it involves the only one the FCS football schedule this weekend that involves two Top 20 teams going head to head.

It’s the fact that this, a Patriot League conference game between William & Mary and Lehigh, was literally forty years in the making.

Lehigh has been nationally ranked before, even in the 1980s, when the Mountain Hawks and Tribe were playing on a more regular basis. So has William & Mary, a long time member of the CAA and CAA Football, where the Tribe have competed for the last 30 years.

But at no other time in history has a Lehigh and William & Mary game been so hyped or been infused with so much importance – in terms of conference title races, Lambert Cup races, even FCS Playoff positioning.

William & Mary’s 2-0 record so far has been defined by their defense, who have an amazing 10 turnovers in two games against Villanova and Delaware State. Freshman CB Cade Ellis leads the secondary with two interceptions, his second settting up PK Max Lipinksi‘s game-winning kick as time ran out, cementing the Tribe’s 35-32 win at Villanova in their first trip to Pennsylvania this season.

“The guys have done a really good job forcing and creating those turnovers,” William & Mary head coach Mike London said this week. “Another thing is that we’ve been able to get into the quarterback’s face 15 or 16 times. Sometimes when the quarterback sees that he gets rid of the ball quickly, shortening possessions, or perhaps even score on defense.”

William & Mary’s offense came alive a bit last week with RB Andrew King, who bulled his way in the end zone for two touchdowns against Delaware State, and QB Winston Watkins, who exploited Villanova’s pass defense for the game-tying pass in the final minute of that game.

Lehigh’s first two games have been decidedly devoid of much drama, first running over Holy Cross 35-10 and then bowling over Georgetown 45-14. Both games were over well before the fourth quarter, and both were dominated by RB Luke Yoder, who leads the FCS in rushing touchdowns (6) and is sixth in the nation in rushing yards (250).

“Yoder, he’s the real deal,” London said this week. “He can run the ball downhill, to the outside, they have a good, tough running game, they want to run the ball, run it down your throat. We’re going to have to build a wall, play great defense, make sure tacklers are in and wrapping up. We have to make sure all points are on.”

On the Lehigh side, head coach Rich Nagy talked about the balance Lehigh’s offense showed against Georgetown, as it wasn’t only the Yoder Show. The offensive line carved out 573 yards of total offense, allowing 302 rushing yards and allowing Johnson to throw for 271 yards on 16 for 19 passing, allowing him to spread the ball around to eight different receivers. WR Anthony Feaster hauled in three of those for 113 yards, and TE Joseph Marranca added a 2 yard touchdown grab.

In addition, first year RB Aidan Mayfield also emerged with a breakout 95 yards rushing on 17 carries, with his first career rushing touchdown. He added a 27 yard reception, making it three Mountain Hawks with over 100 all-purpose yards on the afternoon.

“We had to have improvements in our pass game,” Nagy said, “and Hayden has worked hard with his receivers. Instead of making it a pressure situation, let’s just remember who we are, have confidence. The balance of our pass game and our run game was fun to see.”

As a former defensive coordinator, Nagy saw plenty about William & Mary’s defense that was cause for concern.

“They are such a sound football team,” he said. “There’s no weaknesses that you see, offensively or defensively. I think their offensive and defensive lines are very good, a really good quarterback, good skill players. And defensively, they’ve done a great job of keeping play in front of them and creating turnovers. And they have a heck of a field goal kicker. You know every point is going to matter on Saturday. “

In the run-up to this week, you get the sense that it’s the first time both William & Mary and Lehigh are meeting each other firing on all cylinders. If you look at the record book, you don’t see much of a series, or a rivalry. William & Mary has dominated Lehigh, the Tribe winning eight of nine meetings. They played every year from 1984 to 1992.

Looking at those games could provide a hint, oddly enough, of what Lehigh and William & Mary fans might see on Saturday.

A Quirky Series

It is extremely odd for a college football team to not schedule each other for nearly 80 years, then play each other yearly for nine years, all withouut being in the same athletic conference. Why such an odd scheduling quirk?

Forty years ago, William & Mary President Thomas Graves proposed that the name of the academically-oriented athletic conference involving Colgate, Holy Cross, Bucknell, Lehigh, Lafayette and William & Mary be called the “Colonial League.” It would come into existence in 1986, and undergo a name change a year later to the “Patriot League”.

Starting a brand new academically-oriented conferense in I-AA football in 1984 made a lot of sense for a school like William & Mary at the time.

A few years prior, the Tribe were forced to reclassify from I-A (now called Football Bowl Subdivision, or FBS) as I-AA (now called Football Championship Subdivision, or FCS).

“During a special convention of the N.C.A.A., the majority of Division I-A institutions approved attendance and stadium-size requirements for membership in Division I-A that the majority of the Ivy League teams [and Colgate, Richmond, Holy Cross and William & Mary] could not meet,” The New York Times reported at the time.

Cary Field, later renovated and renamed Zable Stadium, had no chance to meed the arbiatry stadium size requirements cooked up by an association of FBS schools seemingly designed to exclude a school like William & Mary. It led to a protracted fight betwen William and Mary’s Board of Visitors and the students, alumni and residents of Williamsburg, who were dead set against the expansion.

Now resigned to I-AA status, William & Mary needed to look around at their options of opponents, and schools like Lehigh, Bucknell, Colgate and Holy Cross stood out at I-AA, some of whom were reclassified at about the same time as the Tribe.

That’s how the lopsided series from the 1980s got started.

The Soured Patriot Relationship

In preparation for their eventual entrance into the conference, William & Mary scheduled Lehigh yearly starting in 1984, with the full anticipation they would be playing each other regularly.

But something happened in 1985.

“William & Mary’s potential affiliation with the league was placed in jeopardy Saturday when it was learned three league members – Lafayette, Lehigh, and Bucknell – would oppose grants-in-aid when the league begins in 1986,” The Daily Press reported in the winter of 1984.

(Grants-in-aid is a form of scholarship where the student goes through the financial aid office to determine need, and the amount that the student was deemed eligible to pay could instead be converted into a grant, effectively making it a scholarship. Apparently this was how William & Mary was planning on continuing to offer football scholarships to its players.)

“I’m not in a position to confirm that the league is in trouble,”, William & Mary athletic director Jim Copeland said. “But I can tell you this: Our school intends to keep our football scholarships.”

William & Mary under head coach Jimmye Laycock had landed on their feet at I-AA level and were a whisker away from qualifying for the playoffs that season. Only a thrilling 33-31 win by Richmond, a battle of nationally ranked teams in front of over 21,000 fans kept Laycock’s team from the postseason.

But it wasn’t so much the success of William & Mary’s football team that had the proto-Patriot league in trouble. It was the way they were coming up with their policies.

“The presidents of the Ivy League were dealing only with presidents of the six Colonial League teams. It was their charter with little, or no, input from athletic directors,” The Daily Press reported in 1985.

Athetic director Jim Copeland and William & Mary’s Board of Visitors claimed they were “misled” and said they thought they would be “permitted to retain maximum football scholarships under NCAA I-AA provisions (now 70) unless, down the road, the Indians dominated,” The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. “That, as it develops, was erroneous information.”

One by one unpopular moves were piling up, and the athletic directors felt like they were not being listened to, and ultimately that caused William & Mary to exit discussions. Ultimately William & Mary would join their Rivals Richmond, along with reginal power Delaware and a receently re-introduced program at Villanova in the football-only Yankee Conference.

But the Lehigh games remained on the schedule. William & Mary and Lehigh institutionally were very much aligned – high academics, a liberal arts foundation, solid athletics programs, and a very similar size of undergraduate population.

Some of the games in the nine year series were entertaining, a time when both Lehigh and William & Mary scored points in bunches. In an echo to today, many of the games came down to turnovers, late game collapses, scoring surges,and offensive firepower.

“It’s funny how this series has been,” Jimmye Laycock said after beating Lehigh 28-27 back in 1987 after Lehigh lost a 27-14 lead midway through the fourth quarter. “Last year we had to score three times to come back to win (a 44-34 victory).”

“We let it slip away for the second straight year,” Lehigh head coach Hank Small said after WR Chris Horgarth‘s return set up William & Mary’s first touchdown and Lehigh QB Mark McGowan‘s interception set up the Tribe’s game-winner.

Or the time in 1989 the Tribe scored three touchdowns in the span of seven minutes, Fetty Wapped the Engineers 38-17 by halftime, and survived a furious Lehigh rally in the second half to survive 44-34. William & Mary racked up 356 rushing yards from QB Craig Argo, RB Tyrone Shelton and others, and Argo threw three touchdown passes.

And then there was the duel in 1991, where Lehigh got their only win in the series, outlasting the Tribe 41-37 behind 1,149 yards of offense.Lehigh doesn’t keep records on all-purpose yards, but it’s likely RB Mark Lookenbill holds that record from this game, rushing for 205 yards, catching 12 passes for 137 yards, and scoring 4 touchdowns.

Lehigh was nationally-ranked in 1991, and William & Mary was nationally-ranked when they played Lehigh earlier in the series, but in truth the matchups with each other were dwarfed by their games against the dominant Eastern power at the time, Holy Cross. The Crusaders were a perennial Top 5 team, loaded with scholarship football players. William & Mary were dominated by the No. 1 team in the county in 1986 and 1987, and in 1991 Lehigh and Holy Cross played an amazing 43-42 duel at Murray Goodman Stadium the week before they got their lone win against the Tribe.

What Could History be Telling Us?

If this weekend’s game is anything like those games in the 80s, we can expect lots of scoring, turnovers making a huge difference in the swing of momentum, and the game not really being out of reach for either team until Murray Goodman Stadium’s clock reaches 0:00.

It should make for a great game for casual FCS observers around the nation – and a lot more nail-biting than usual with most Tribe and Mountain Hawk fans.

NO. 16/16 WILLIAM & MARY TRIBE (2-0, 1-0 PL) AT NO. 8/9 LEHIGH MOUNTAIN HAWKS (2-0, 2-0 PL)
Murray Goodman Stadium, Bethlehem, PA, Saturday, Sept. 12th, 2:00 PM
LIVE STATS
BROADCAST (ESPN+): PxP – Marco Socci; Analyst – Lance Haynes
RADIO BROADCAST (Lehigh – Fox Sports Radio 94.7 FM/1230AM): PxP – Matt Kerr; Analyst – Mike Yadush; Sideline – Connor Brown
RADIO BROADCAST (92.3 The Tide): PxP – Jay Colley; Analyst – Shawn Knight

Post Views: 3