GAME TWELVE, #Rivalry161, LEHIGH AT LAFAYETTE – One Rivalry Game For All The Marbles

BETHLEHEM, PA – It feels like a lifetime ago, but just about four years ago to the day, on November 19th, 2022, the 158th meeting of college football’s most played Rivalry, featured a 3-7 Lafayette Leopard team and a 2-8 Lehigh Mountain Hawk team.

Nothing was on the line in the game except pride – in effect a bowl game, a day to celebrate both Lafayette College and Lehigh University, celebrating two groups of students that had been through a lot.

On that field as true freshmen that day were student-athletes that are now seniors.

The seniors’ story is the one that will unfold this Saturday as both Lehigh (11-0, 6-0 Patriot) and Lafayette (8-3, 6-0 Patriot) will be playing for all the marbles in the 2025 regular season – Patriot League Championship, autobid to the FCS Playoffs, and – perhaps the most important of all – Valley bragging rights for the upcoming calendar year.

Four years ago, these freshmen were recruited to Lehigh at least in part because they wanted to be a part of college football history, the Lehigh/Lafayette Rivalry. The 2022 game, played right after the COVID pandemic, essentially, was not a sellout. This Saturday, four years later, Lafayette’s Fisher Stadium sold out easily. It’s the product of two college football programs that picked themselves up and have earned the hype and sellout this game has created.

Marquee Marquis

In 2022, Lafayette’s team that year was 3-7. In the prior four seasons to that one, they had not entered the Rivalry with more than three wins. The years of Frank Tavani and Jack Rizzo seemed very far away.

They did end one season with a winning record. On April 10th, 2021, they beat a severely-depleted Lehigh team in the last game of what is now called the 2020 college football season to finish 2-1.

COVID lockdowns had irrevocably altered the college campus experience for all students of that era, but there was considerable doubt as to whether the Rivalry were to even take place that year.

It was delayed a week after a COVID outbreak at Lafayette, and Lehigh very nearly didn’t have enough lineman to field a team the following week.

At Fisher Field, under a severely limited crowd in the spring of 2021, Lafayette won a nailbiter, 20-13, that came down to a missed Hail Mary on the last play of the game. Lehigh finished 0-3, and Lafayette TE Stephen Stillanos was named the MVP. The announced attendance at the game was 2,600 fans, most of whom were socially-distanced family and some friends in the Lafayette stands.

The next Rivalry game played in Fisher field was the one in 2022, the one in which today’s seniors were playing as true freshmen.

Due to a scheduling agreement to celebrate Lafayette College’s bicentennial celebration, Lehigh and Lafayette agreed to “flip” two home games. Lehigh would be the home team in 2023 and 2024, and Lafayette would be the home team in 2025 and 2026.

That means that 2022 was the last time any Rivalry game was played in Fisher field, and it was only a year and a half removed from the attendance-limited spring 2021 game.

It was not a sellout.

Whether it was due to the gradual reopening of FCS college football due to COVID, or the fact that both reams had losing records, it’s difficult to say. But 11,882 hearty fans bought tickets to the game at Fisher Field (capacity: 13,132 seats), and you could see those empty seats walking around the stadium that day.

It was head coach John Troxell‘s first-ever Rivalry game as head coach of Lafayette, although he was extremely familiar with The Game in his years as a former player and assistant coach under Frank Tavani. He was in Year One of building a winning football culture at Lafayette, and win over Lehigh would aid greatly in his quest.

Staring OL Brian Baucia, a true freshman started for Lafayette on that day, as did WR Elijah Steward. QB Dean DiNoble did not enter the game at quarterback that day, but was on the sidelines, as was DT Phillip Peiffer.

On the Lehigh side, Tom Gilmore, who recruited those freshmen playing this weekend, was nearing the end of a somewhat tumultuous time for the Mountain Hawks. After a 2-8 season, it was understood that in order to keep his job – possibly – probably? – he’d have to beat Lafayette.

The student athletes felt the pressure.

“It’s one of those games I don’t like to rewatch,” Lehigh WR Geoff Jamiel told me this week.

Like Baucia, Jamiel was a starter for the Mountain Hawk offense. CB D.J. Brown, LB Tyler Ochojski, DL T.J. Burke, DL Quentin Joyner and DL Matt Spatny also were on the field for that game as part of the defensive rotation and special teams.

As it turned out, it ended up being a thrilling, defensive game.

Down 14-9, QB Dante Perri, along with Jamiel, led a drive down the field to the Lafayette 15 yard line to try to take the lead. On fourth down, Perri’s pass fell incomplete, and a later Hail Mary heave was not enough. It was Troxell’s Leopards that won the game 14-11, after the Leopards took a late safety with 14 seconds left – Rivalry Scorigami, if you will – and that’s where Lafayette’s rise began.

From there, Lafayette burst onto the national scene in 2023, a surprise winner of the Patriot League, obliterating Lehigh 49-21 the following year on the road at Murray Goodman Stadium, and coming a whisker away from kicking Delaware out of their final FCS Playoff appearance before their migration to FBS.

“It has been an experience going through the ups and downs,” Stewart said this week. “I wouldn’t change anything. The culture we have built is special and the next guys coming up take a little bit of what they have learned from you and they build their own culture. I am just excited to leave behind what I believe is a special legacy. But there is more work to do.”

Stewart will be a huge part of Lafayette’s explosive offense this weekend. Behind a massive offensive line, anchored by Baucia, DeNobile and RB Kenta Edwards have run roughshod over most of their opponents, with Edwards one of the top FCS running backs in the nation with 1,297 yards and 17 touchdowns.

The 2022 game was the catalyst that started Lafayette’s big run in 2023, and despite a .500 season in 2024 (6-6), the Leopards will be hoping to push through on Saturday to win their second Patriot League title in three years, their first outright title, and fulfill the work that was put in from their freshman season.

Denobile emerged as the starting QB his sophomore year in 2023, becoming the championship QB that the Leopards needed.

“I’ve worked all four years to be in this position,” DeNobile said this week, “and we work all summer, all winter to be able to be put in this situation where both teams are undefeated and we get to play on our bicentennial at our home field my senior year. And I mean that’s just special. I need to take the most advantage of that.”

Lossless Lehigh

“You can call back to those things, you never forget them, you never forget those losses, or any loss, for that matter.” Ochojski told me this week about the 2022 game, “but things are a lot different now, so we’re going to progress, not look back.”

If you think of the 2022 game as the inflection point, the outcome of that game, ironically, set both Lehigh and Lafayette on the paths which lead them to the Rivalry game this weekend.

Lehigh’s culture shift would start about a month after that 2022 loss, when coach Gilmore would resign and an offensive coordinator from Yale, Kevin Cahill, was hired to turn things around.

Understandably, Jamiel and the rest of the freshman class were concerned about the switch in coaching regimes.

“When you look back at it, as weird as it sounds, I’m grateful for that first year,” he told me. “We were 2-9, we lost to the Rival, all those things you think are so bad, but when you look back at it, I wouldn’t trade anything that happened, because it brought us to where we are now.”

When the coaching change happened, Jamiel and other leaders of that class got whole freshman class that year got together and talked about it as a unit.

“We knew how special we were,” Jamiel said, looking back at that meeting. “We said if we can stay together through all of this thing, we can be special. We had no expectations, we were coming off of a 2-9 season, and there was a head coaching change. We’re just freshman. I’ll never forget that meeting we had that day. It brought us closer.”

All season one of the sayings of this team week to week has been “brotherhood”, and it’s very clear that the connection of these players and this overall group runs extremely deep.

“We’re so tight-knit and together,” sophomore DB Ignatious Williams told me. “We spend most of the time with each other, so it’s just football and the brotherhood. Sometimes we all eat at the on-campus pub and eat dinner together. We might go try a new restaurant. We spend a lot of time with each other. It keeps from getting distracted about everything that’s going around with the Rivalry.”

Lehigh’s campus buzzes with activity during Rivalry Week. Bedsheets with Lafayette burns dot the campus, more so this year than other years. Bed races go through campus, with campus clubs and fraternities with their own rolling beds going down the hill. Parties, the Marching 97 playing randomly throughout campus, the Rivalry is impossible to miss in the week running up to the game.

This week, though, it’s not only about bedsheets, bed races, school pride and college football history, like it was in 2022.

As amazing as the ascent of Lafayette football has been, Lehigh’s football ascent was equally as quick and astounding.

After a 2-9 campaign, Lehigh in 2024 entered the season with no expectations, picked to finish sixth out of seven teams. If the Rivalry was on anyone’s minds back in August, it was in the context of whether a scrappy Lehigh team could muster enough pride to knock off a potential title contender in Lafayette.

Instead – in a major surprise – Lehigh left the field after their November game against Colgate discovering only later that Holy Cross’ overtime win over Bucknell resulted in The Rivalry next week being not only for pride or a shot at the title, but something even simpler – if they win, they’re in the FCS Playoffs as the Patriot League’s autobid.

After Lafayette blew Lehigh out of the water in 2023, the Mountain Hawks repaid the favor in 2024.

The turnaround was stunning. The 38-14 win had completed one of the most incredible Lehigh seasons in memory. As the goalposts came down in Murray Goodman Stadium for the first (and only other time) since 1989, most stood around in disbelief, but not the Lehigh football players, who believed in the brotherhood and the mission set back after that freshman meeting in October.

They didn’t stop there.

The 2025 Lehigh Mountain Hawks then entered a new season with new goals and new expectations. When they started the season, they were undefeated, just like every other FCS football program. Now Lehigh is one of only four FCS football programs without a loss, joining them with FCS football royalty, for the moment: North Dakota State, Montana, and Harvard.

They won their first game in August against Richmond, then never stopped.

They have done so through great accomplishments, like RB Luke Yoder‘s 1,095 yards rushing and 12 touchdowns, or Geoff Jamiel’s 1,000 yards receiving and 9 touchdowns, including one where he flawlessly executed a fake field goal and ran it in for six.

But it’s collectively as a defense that Lehigh has truly become a national force.

In a way, it’s a no-name defense because you won’t see any Lehigh individuals leading the league in tackles, though the front line of Tyler Ochojski, Matt Spatny and T.J. Burke – all of whom last set foot inside Fisher Field back in 2022 – have combined for a whopping 30 1/2 tackles for loss and 21 sacks on the season.

All season every Lehigh defensive back in the interview room gave credit to the front six as a critical part of their success. It seems like a small thing, but it does seem to go back to the small things like brotherhood and being together as a unit. Coach Cahill has said in the past, “I’m in awe of these guys. I’m just glad I’m around for the ride.”

Jamiel credited an extremely high standard the players set for themselves.

“How this program has evolved, I can’t even put into words,” Jamiel told me. “I remember in 2024, after beating Merrimack for one of our two wins, and we were yelling and celebrating. After the Sacred Heart game [won 28-10], at the time we said, damn, we didn’t play our best football.”

The final score didn’t reflect it, but the mistakes and lack of execution at times clearly got under teh skin of the players. It was no act.

“Our focus doesn’t change,” Ochojski said after that game. “We’ve got to play our brand of football every time we step on the field, which, to be honest, we didn’t do today. On the defensive side of the ball, you see the stats, and they look great, but we know we didn’t play up to our standard today. We’re ready to move forward and get back to work this week.”

This week that standard came up a lot, as well as heaping amounts of respect towards DeNobile, Edwards and the rest of the Leopards. But inevitably it came back to their focus on themselves.

“When you care about the team, you care about the program, you care about your teammates,” Ochojski told me. “You’re going to have emotions that run high [during the Rivalry]. You’re human. It’s going to happen. The key will be getting the younger guys reeled back in, focused on the mission at hand.”

Ochojski credited the mindset of the team to their incredible success this year.

“I think it’s good to have a constant reminder of what the most important thing is,” he told me, calmly. “You have to keep focus on what’s important. We have the mentality that we’re focused on us. Outside rankings, record, none of it matters. The most important thing is us and being the best version of us week in and week out. That doesn’t change during Rivalry Week. It’s still a football game, we line up on the same side of the field. It’s another opportunity to put the best brand of Lehigh football out there.”

This Saturday, Ochojski and the Lehigh Mountain Hawks will head back to Fisher Stadium.

In the spring of 2021, The Rivalry was not a sellout.

In November, 2022, it was not a sellout.

In 2024, not only will it be a sellout, but eyes all over America will be on Fisher Field to see what happens in this game because four years ago, two football programs set on a path to make people care. It has always been very meaningful, it has always been historic, and it has been a huge source of pride and importance to football and non-football alumni alike. But this Saturday, the rising national ambitions of both schools will face off head to head in a place where it hasn’t always felt that way. This one, as they say, is for all the marbles.

LEHIGH MOUNTAIN HAWKS (11-0, 6-0 Patriot) AT LAFAYETTE LEOPARDS (8-3, 6-0 Patriot)
WHERE: Fisher Stadium, Easton, PA, Saturday, November 22nd, 12:30 PM
TV: Lafayette Sports Network
STREAMING: ESPN+
TV CREW: PxP – Gary Laubach; Analysts – Mike Joseph, Meghan Capanna
RADIO: BROADCAST (Fox Sports Lehigh Valley 94.7 FM/1230 AM; LVFoxSports.com):
RADIO CREW: PxP – Matt Kerr; Analysts – Mike Yadush, Connor Brown