Archive For February 24, 2015
Start getting used to the term “full cost of attendance”, or, as many who are obsessed about college sports are calling it, “FCOA”.
In January, the eighty schools of the “Power 5” FBS football conferences voted 79-1 to allow its members to offer additional money above the cost of a scholarship – up to the “full cost of attendance” of the school.
It’s been legislation that the “Power 5” schools have wanted to enact for years, surviving an embarrassing legislative loss when the rest of the NCAA’s membership voted in 2011 against the original proposal crafted by NCAA president Mark Emmert and many members of the Power 5 leadership.
It led to the Power 5 asking for autonomy over the rest of the NCAA’s membership to all them to enact their own legislation for themselves, without a vote by the rest of the membership.
Now, as the Power 5 wanted all along, FCOA is here.
Sadly, it’s still every bit as complicated – and unbalancing – as the many critics of FCOA feared. And at the FCS level, it seems like the strategy is to simply hope and pray that nobody decides to implement it for their own athletic departments.
It all started when I heard that the three-time defending FCS champions, North Dakota State, are looking for a new home opener in 2016.
“NDSU is back in the business of looking for a football game,” the post says. “That’s after the news we broke yesterday that Western Carolina had bought out of its 2016 date in Fargo, instead scheduling a game against East Carolina for September 3rd, 2016. NDSU was scheduled to host WCU on September 1st.”
Any good Lehigh fan might then ask: are the Mountain Hawks available for a game in Fargo on the first weekend of September in 2016?
The official answer is we don’t know, because Lehigh hasn’t officially posted a 2015 football schedule yet, let alone a 2016 schedule.
But that doesn’t stop us at Lehigh Football Nation from taking a peek at potential foes for a 2016 road opener – including some exciting names.
Read more »
What a day.
Signing Day has become an event across the nation, and for Lehigh it’s no less of a celebration than anywhere else in the country.
People dressed as Teletubbies, people brought their dogs, and there was even suspense. (And that was just on my Twitter timeline.)
Lehigh announced a mammoth-sized class – an eye-popping array of 31 names – with recruits coming from the Big Sky, California, the South, and our local area of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, too.
I tried to tell the story through the many links and pictures on my timeline via Storify.
Enjoy it all below the flip.
