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BETHLEHEM, PA – “This was a statement game for us,” Lehigh (3-1, 0-0 Patriot) head coach Kevin Cahill said after a hard-fought but clear-cut 35-20 win over Princeton (0-1, 0-0 Ivy) this Saturday at Murray Goodman Stadium. Looking back on a game in front of a big, raucous family weekend of 6,217 fans, it seemed.
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.
Richmond, and their Rivals, William & Mary, were medium sized schools in medium sized markets with successful programs for their size and ambitions. Thanks to an entity called the “College Football Association”, or CFA, Richmond and William & Mary’s world was about to tear apart.
The green Powerade covered Dartmouth head coach Sammy McCorkle after the Big Green pushed around Lehigh 34-17 Saturday afternoon at Memorial Stadium.
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.
Cornell (1-0, 0-0 Ivy League) instead would be the team to jump up by three scores to a 17-0 lead on Lehigh (1-2, 0-0 Patriot League), and would be efficient enough to hold onto a 23-20 victory in front of 4,087 fans at Murray Goodman Stadium.
Since I can’t do anything half-assed, here’s a detailed Lehigh fan’s guide to the Mountain Hawks’ 2023 non-conference opponents. There’s no easy win penciled in here, as you will see.
Whatever Griffith and her staff put together during practice after learning the Lions had been left out of the NCAA Tournament played out near-perfectly as Columbia rolled past Fairleigh Dickinson 69-53 on March 17 at Levien Gymnasium on the Columbia campus.
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.
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.
In the concrete jungle of New York City, and not far from the noisy subway system that transits millions of patrons to points throughout the city each day, from the standard continued to be raised as Columbia achieved another milestone in the history of the women’s basketball program.
On a night when Columbia University honored its senior class, it was easy to see the future looks bright for the Lions on the wrestling mat.
Harvard rolled up the yards and added more points to the scoreboard, and whatever hopes Columbia had of winning an Ivy League championship went in the other direction as the Crimson scored the first 42 points of the game on the way to a 49-21 win over the Lions on Nov. 6 at Robert K. Kraft Field at Lawrence A. Wien Stadium in Manhattan.
It took some time, but Dante Miller infused electricity into the air and that proved to be the tonic as Columbia picked up a milestone win in the long history of the program.
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.
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 2006, I wrote two pieces for the website I-AA.org about a Fordham/Columbia game I attended. The two crosstown Rivals competed for an actual cup, the “Liberty Cup”, and it was a 9/11 themed rivalry game for a time.
1920 saw the game regain some of its stronghold across the nation as the game continued making its way back on college campuses across the nation.
Despite the bungling and mismanagement of the NCAA, President Mark Emmert and the Board of Governors, they still have one final chance to get on the right side of history and submit to reality.
On July 21st, 2020, when David Pollack went on air to suggest that FCS football should permanently become spring football, I cringed.
The Patriot League’s dilemmas, whether the rest of FCS admits it or not, is the FCS’ dilemmas. And as we inch closer to an alleged 2020 college football season, the NCAA needs to make some things very clear before a huge mess happens.
If these are the only two plans that are actively being considered by the Ivy League, it means that, effectively, all out-of-conference games involving Ivy League opponents are cancelled for the fall.
Sixty student-athletes in the NCAA Division I Football’s Championship Subdivision have been named to the 2020 College Sports Journal Preseason FCS All-America Team.
Just like that, we are down to the last week of the regular season. Selection Sunday comes to your airwaves thus Sunday November 24th at 11:30 AM on ESPNU. This past week, six of the ten automatic bids were sewn up. Those bids went to Monmouth (Big South), James Madison (CAA), North Dakota State (MVFC), Central Connecticut State (NEC), San Diego (Pioneer), Wofford (Southern). The Southland will be decided on Thursday night, while the Big Sky, Patriot and Ohio Valley will be decided on Saturday. The top 25 this week will look at each team from the prism of the playoffs.
It’s somewhat serendipitous, according to John Feinstein of The Washington Post, that this week’s battle of undefeated teams between Dartmouth and Princeton came to be.
Undefeated Princeton and Dartmouth look to not slip up going into a potentially enormous matchup of undefeated teams in the Bronx.
This week, two of the nation’s unbeaten teams play tricky challengers: one in prime time on Friday night, and the other takes on a rival in one of the marquee games of Saturday.
Last week’s battle of unbeatens ended up not much of a battle – 4-0 Dartmouth jumped all over Yale early and never looked back, crushing the Bulldogs 42-10 and established themselves every bit the frontrunners for the Ivy League title. As we sit and wait for the inevitable clash of titans between Dartmouth and Princeton later in the season, let’s take a look at this week’s games.
Call it “Conference Carnage Week”.
High-profile conference games ended upending conference championship races, and further cementing others on top of the standings.
After the Big Green took it to Penn last weekend on Friday night, Dartmouth returns home for Homecoming in a huge battle between undefeated teams as they take on Yale.
It was a week of thrilling conference rivalries, and it’s the “Military Classic of the South” that yielded the best story of them all.
This week we see a primetime Ivy League matchup in actual prime time, as undefeated Dartmouth and undefeated Penn face off under Franklin Field’s lights.
The Ivy League had a hugely successful opening weekend, as many expected. As a whole the Ancient Eight went 6-2, the only losses coming from a missed two-point conversion attempt by Penn at Delaware, and a furious Harvard rally falling short to San Diego. This week the Ivy League seems poised to have another great week, and additionally league play is starting with two early-season conference tilts.
Without question the top FCS game of the week was the battle of FCS powerhouses in the Fargodome.Returning home after 47-22 victory the week before against Delaware, the heavily-favored Bison had a very tough battle against visiting UC Davis, ultimately winning 27-16 after scoring a late touchdown to finally put the game in the win column for North Dakota State.
Finally the wait is over – the Ivy League awakens from their annual football slumber and rejoins the college football universe almost a full month after the rest of college football has started their season. Top 25-caliber powerhouses Princeton, Dartmouth and Yale finally will be able to prove where they stand in the national picture.
Last season was one for the ages in the Ivy League, with Princeton going 10-0. It was the fourth outright Ivy League title in Princeton history, and the first since 1995. It was also the program’s second 7-0 Ivy season since league play officially began in 1956, and the 13th 7-0 season in Ivy League history, and the first since 2014. 9-1 Dartmouth was a heartbreaking second place to the Tigers, their only loss a 14-9 instant classic at Princeton. This season, will it come down to another battle of unbeatens?
10-0 Princeton had a year to remember in 2018, clinching the fourth outright Ivy League title in program history, and the first since 1995. It was also the program’s second 7-0 Ivy season since league play officially began in 1956, and the 13th 7-0 season in Ivy League history, and the first since 2014.
A wild 5-5 year saw Yale beat both Mercer of the SoCon and an FCS Playoff semifinalist in Maine, but lose a wild game in overtime to Holy Cross and an inexplicable 17-10 defeat to Columbia. A loss to Harvard in “The Game” to close the year left Eli fans wondering what could have been.
A season that seemed like it was going off the rails in October was righted in November, with a three game winning streak and a sweet 45-27 win over their hated Rival Yale at Fenway Park clinching a winning campaign. It was the 135th meeting between the two bitter rivals.
The Quakers remained in the upper echelon of the Ivy League with a 6-4 record and a perfect 3-0 out-of-conference record. They couldn’t get over the hump, however, when it came to challenging the top teams for the title.
It was an epic battle of unbeatens when Dartmouth headed to play longtime rival Princeton in late October. The Big Green’s 14-9 loss in that game would be Dartmouth’s only blemish on the year – a terrific 9-1 season that unfortunately didn’t result in an Ivy League title.
The good news was that head coach Al Bagnoli guided the Lions to their second consecutive winning season. The bad news is that they weren’t able to take that next step towards to becoming Ivy League title contenders, going 3-4 in league play and losing to Harvard and Yale by a combined score of 97-28.
After a trip to Brown and securing a 3-3 record, things were looking bright for the Big Red to finally get back to .500 on the season. Then Cornell fell 66-0 to Princeton, and David Archer’s team would then drop their next three games to fall into the cellar of the Ivy League.
After a 1-9 season, longtime head football coach Phil Estes stepped down as Bears head football coach after an illustrious 21 year career.
It’s May. Spring football is over, and the preseason camps don’t start for a couple months. We are in the doldrums of the FCS offseason. But at this point, everyone is 0-0 and hope springs eternal. 127 schools think they have a shot to make the playoffs and compete for an FCS Championship in Frisco..
The word that stands out after watching Princeton out-grind Dartmouth here at Princeton Stadium is “meat”. It was a game a lineman could love – a constant struggle in the trenches between offensive and defensive lines a day when the guys with the numerals in the 60s were the true stars. Sure, it would be.
