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There’s always that risk, especially on the road in college football, that a highly-favored team comes out, makes a bunch of mistakes, and ends up in a rock fight that could go either way.
There is one game in all of FCS this week that features two undefeated teams, and it is taking place this Saturday at noon at Murray Goodman Stadium.
This weekend Lehigh (2-0, 1-0 Patriot) will go on the team’s first road trip of the season. They are heading across the state to Pittsburgh, PA to face off against Duquesne (1-1, 0-0 NEC) in an out-of-conference clash.
While Richmond will be looking for revenge, Lehigh will be looking for respectability – respectability in the sense of proving that last season was not a fluke.
For the first time since 2013, the game simply called “The Rivalry” – the most-played college football game in the world – will be a sellout.
This season’s matchup is a turnabout from last year, where Lehigh was playing out the next-to-last game in a rebuilding effort and Colgate was trying to secure a winning season and a puncher’s chance at a share of the Patriot League title.
The Mountain Hawks (5-3, 2-1 Patriot League) have three very important preseason goals to potentially achieve this week in their business trip to Worcester against Holy Cross (4-5, 3-0 Patriot League).
This Saturday’s clash featuring Lehigh (4-3, 1-1 Patriot) and Georgetown (5-3, 2-1 Patriot) will occur on the five year anniversary of a contest most of Lehigh Nation would rather forget – a 24-17 loss to Holy Cross on November 2nd, 2019.
As it stands, make no mistake, Lehigh’s 3-3 season is at a crossroads against a deceptively tricky Fordham squad that seems a lot better than their 0-7 record might seem at first.
Lehigh was never meant to have a double bye week in the middle of October. But they did.
This week, Lehigh (3-1, 0-0 Patriot) will be playing their first league game against Bucknell (2-2, 0-0 Patriot) with a unique dynamic.
This weekend, the Mountain Hawks return to Bethlehem with a strange, new feeling of “being back”, to face Princeton (0-0, 0-0 Ivy League), themselves back from their 5-5 Ivy League campaign last season.
For the Lehigh University Mountain Hawks (1-1, 0-0 Patriot League), playing the Long Island University Sharks (0-2, 0-0 NEC) at Bethpage FCU Stadium, everything about “Shark Week” is new. It’s the first time Lehigh has ever traveled to Brookville, Long Island to play a football game.
BETHLEHEM, PA – From the moment head coach Kevin Cahill stepped onto campus as Lehigh’s head football coach, he’s been talking about making Murray Goodman stadium a true home field advantage. He was right to broach the subject. The last time Lehigh had a winning record was in 2016, when the Mountain Hawks were 9-2,.
It is, indeed, one where you have to throw out the record books and it’s the game you absolutely have to win, if you’re a Lehigh or Lafayette head coach. It’s great theater every year, no matter what the records are, but this year the theater suddenly ends up on the national FCS stage.
The Mountain Hawks will be going in with an eye of being a spoiler to Colgate’s title and championship ambitions, which suit them just fine. To them, ruining the seasons of Colgate and Lafayette in consecutive weeks would constitute a successful season for a rebuilding Lehigh football team.
To the surprise of probably no one, head coach Kevin Cahill had plenty of good things to say bout Lehigh’s next opponent, the Holy Cross Crusaders.
A very young Lehigh football team finds itself taking a bus this week to Lewisburg, PA to find out about themselves.
Lehigh fans are in uncharted waters as “scary” Georgetown (3-3, 1-0 Patriot League), who recorded a win against Fordham, face off against Lehigh (1-5, 0-1 Patriot League), who recorded a loss against Fordham.
Ranked as high as 15 in some polls last week, it stands to reason that Fordham will approach their conference game with Lehigh with urgency, to put it mildly.
In an upset, in Easton, Lafayette hung on to beat Monmouth 28-20 in an outcome that really couldn’t have worked out much worse for the Brown and White.
This was going to be a tough, physical matchup before the untimely death of Buddy Teevens. Adding the fire and emotion from the moment will add a layer of complication to Lehigh’s task this week as well.
There were a lot of tough, disappointing weekends last year during the Mountain Hawks’ 2-9 season, but taking away the loss to Lafayette, Lehigh’s 19-15 loss to Cornell could have been the toughest one for Lehigh Nation to stomach.
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.
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.
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.
What might have happened to the Patriot League had the Presidents genuinely gave a fair hearing, and accepted, Monmouth as a member?
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.
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.
UTSA at Army West PointWhen: Saturday, September 10, 12:00 PM EDTWhere: Michie Stadium, West Point, N.Y.TV/Streaming: CBS Sports Network / CBS Sports Network Two teams that lost in Week 1 will try to get their first win in this game. Army lost on the road to Coastal Carolina 38-28, while UTSA lost at home to Houston 37-35 in three.
Incarnate Word’s offense is hard to stop – they’re scoring 39.6 points per game, which is 4th in the FCS.
It is the type of game only real fans understand.
If you weren’t following the key FCS Playoff matchups last week involving the playoffs, boy did you miss out!
“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.
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.
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.
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.
It took twenty-three years for Richmond to invite Lehigh back.
Lehigh will need all the home field advantage it can – Villanova is ranked 16th in the STATS FCS Top 25 and 15th in the FCS Coaches’ Poll.
The Big Sky and Mountain West Conference see their first action of the season when Southern Utah travels to San Jose State at 9pm PT.
644 days… That’s how long it will be between games for NCCU when the Eagles take the field on Saturday against Alcorn State in the Cricket MEAC/SWAC Challenge.
UCLA takes on Hawai’i in one of seven games Saturday involving FBS or FCS teams. For the Bruins, it makes the earliest season opener in the history of the Bruin program.
The Panthers and Sycamores began their rivalry in 1901 and Saturday’s game will be the 88th meeting between the two schools. Eastern Illinois holds a narrow 43-40-4 advantage in the series to date.
Jacksonville State, the No. 4 seed in this year’s playoffs, will play host to Davidson, the Pioneer League champion, in one of eight first-round games. It will be the first-ever meeting between the Gamecocks and Wildcats.
In a way it’s fitting during this strange season that two of the teams playing this weekend are in their season openers, while their opponents are coming off of two weeks off after winning their openers. It is a byproduct of this crazy Patriot League spring, and results in two fascinating games that are basically playoff games. And with no game film on Bucknell or Fordham, it feels like anything can happen.
It is uncharted waters for both teams, with plenty of questions to answer playing an unprecedented Patriot League spring football season. But many of the principal contributors in that 24-17 game more than a year ago in Bethlehem will be suiting up tomorrow.
Two games involving MEAC and SWAC teams remain on the schedule for this week.
The Southern Conference is playing an eight game conference only schedule this spring, meaning there are games every week with little room for error. Last week the two teams that everyone expects to battle it out for the conference title, Wofford and Furman, cruised to victory.
