Covering All College Sports Since 2012
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.
Only one of four games scheduled to kick off the 2021 spring season in the Ohio Valley Conference was actually played out last weekend, thanks to storms that hit a big part of the Mid-South. With any luck things will return to a semblance of normalcy as four games are slated to be played Sunday.
Louisiana at Appalachian StateWhen: Friday, Dec. 4th, 8:30 PM ESTWhere: Kidd Brewer Stadium, Boone, N.C.TV/Streaming: ESPN/WatchESPN (subscription req’d) This was the game that before the season started was what I had predicted to be again for the Sun Belt Conference championship for the third straight season. The original Sun Belt Conference title game was slated for Dec. 4th.
Louisiana at UABWhen: Friday, Oct. 23rd 8:00 PM EDTWhere: Legion Field, Birmingham, Ala.TV/Streaming: CBS Sports Network/Watch CBS Sports Network This late non-conference game pits to preseason favorites in their respective conferences and both come into this game with one loss. And is a fitting game to be set in historic Legion Field in Birmingham (the last season.
The college football season continues to get underway as UAB travels to south Florida on Thursday to take on Miami.
South Alabama at Southern Miss When: Thursday, Sept. 3rd 9:00 PM EDTWhere: M.M. Roberts Stadium, Hattiesburg, Miss. TV/Streaming: CBS Sports Network/Watch CBS Sports Network Ironically, these two neighoring state schools have never played before this meeting. This will change as these two southern ‘South’ teams will kickoff the first all FBS game of the season..
This game between Austin Peay and Central Arkansas was supposed to kick off another exciting season of FCS football. These are two teams who won their conferences in 2019.
“The only thing that is fun about this game is winning it,” Army head coach Jeff Monken said this week.
Most games between head coaches in their first years at a school are ones where the opponents need to feel themselves out, thanks to unfamiliarity. That will not be the case this weekend, as Cecchini and Gilmore have more than two decades of awareness of one another and their tendencies. It should have the feel of a brotherly fight.
Both teams find themselves sitting tied atop the Patriot League standings, playing for first place, and unlike last year, there will be no shortage of passion on the field at Jack Coffey Field at 1:00 PM this Saturday.
In the end, the matchup this weekend will be a show-me type of game, one that might set the trajectory for both programs.
Friday typically only has a game or two in all of college football but on this opening weekend, there are two great Mountain West versus Power Five match-ups with Utah State visiting the ACC’s Wake Forest and the Rocky Mountain Showdown with Colorado State paying the Pac-12’s Colorado. Game 1 of the Night: Utah State.
The FBS Group of Five starts with a couple of heavy weights playing some Power Five squads that will go a long way towards which G5 team will be playing in a New Year’s Six Bowl game. This will be a preview of the two heavy hitter games that I will have my eyes on.
Its hard to replace a Walter Payton Award winner like Samford has to do with Devlin Hodges. Hodges finished his career at Samford by breaking Steve McNairs 24 year old passing record. A large part of that success was wide receiver Kelvin McKnight.
Colgate’s 2018 defense was one of the most suffocating defenses in recent memory. The Raiders allowed a total of three touchdowns in conference play, two of which were scored by Holy Cross in the first week of the season.
