Archive For July 29, 2017
(Photo Credit: Brown and White)
With this year’s Patriot League Media Day being a Patriot League Media Conference call instead, the opportunity is there for media folks to tweet out things like preseason all-Conference lists and the preseason polls.
When the league posted their preseason all-Patriot League team, unsurprisingly there were seven Lehigh football players on it, one of whom was senior OL Zach Duffy.
I sent out a tweet congratulating the seven – Duffy, junior RB Dom Bragalone, junior P/K Ed Mish, senior OL Tim O’Hara, senior WR Gatlin Casey, senior WR Troy Pelletier, and senior DE Tyler Cavenas – and almost immediately Zach responded.
No congratulations are needed since we haven’t accomplished a single thing yet. Sorry if that sounds sour. We appreciate the recognition.— Zachary John Duffy (@ZachDuffy72) July 27, 2017
In the span of a tweet, Zach established immediately that re-reading one’s press clippings from the 2016 season is not something this 2017 edition of the Lehigh football team will be doing. They’ll be judged on accomplishments, not preseason all-Conference teams.
Frank Tavani always made sure the Patsies were celebrated in downtown Easton.
Perhaps it was the Bourger Field House needing an event to host in February when the men’s wrestling team was out of town, or that field hockey practice was finishing up – the shindigs that Bourger fielded back in those days were great.
All that steak, not overcooked, was barbecued outside, filling the Eastonian air with charred meats usually only present during Lafayette/Lehigh week. Many students would come up – giving up their vegan diets, maybe just this one time – to eat beautiful steak sandwiches, and to sip delicious Coke under huge cardboard cutouts of their beloved head coach.
Today, Lafayette has a new head football coach, and so far there’s no Coke billboards with head coach John Garrett on them. And there was no smell of steak as the Committee got the folder filled with the printouts of Lafayette’s Patsy Ratings class.
Where were you during the last Patsy Party at Lehigh?
It coincided with morning cocktails, I think – the actual memory is hazy, a gauzy film hanging over the proceedings like Vaseline over the eyelids.
It involved neon – a very large amount of neon, as Lehigh’s incoming class was announced in the morning, lights on Murray Goodman’s video scoreboard. (The neon light, I think, came from the generator trucked into the stadium to fuel the temporary lights and scoreboard, of course.)
The actual party I was actually able to recreate through my Flickr feed on my phone. Somewhere, there was a printout of several “LFN Drinks of the week” and a 1962 Freshman Dink dyed neon purple, probably because the undergrads at the time didn’t think Brown and White was an appropriate color for the party. And there was the blue curacao, of course, which made one of the concoctions that I don’t exactly remember.
Today, there is no blue curacao as the thin, typewritten letter with the “Lehigh” letterhead came to the Committee’s door. Somewhere, a microwave rang out as the steel-cut oatmeal reheated from yesterday was complete.
Today, without an official release, Lehigh added some broadcast information to their 2017 football schedule. It details the TV, radio, and streaming information for every game this season.
Like last year, every Lehigh broadcast in 2017 will have a the live broadcast on ESPN Radio of the Lehigh Valley. If you’re in Bethlehem, the broadcasts can be heard on AM 1160, AM 1230 and AM 1320, and from their website, you can always access a live stream of their broadcasts anywhere in the world.
And like last year, Service Electric Channel 2 will be carrying all of Lehigh’s home games with the exception of the 153rd meeting of The Rivalry vs. Lafayette. That game will be carried on WFMZ Channel 69.
Following college football teams in the current media landscape can sometimes feel like a maze of different providers and sources, and in the 2017 season, getting the whole picture is sometimes a bit tricky. Below the flip, I’ll try to offer some clarity.
I remembered the time when I ate the linguine at Dominick’s.
It was back when the Yankees were good. Before we knew that Alex Rodriguez was Alex Rodriguez, and when Fordham blew away all comers to have one of the best classes of the year.
It wasn’t a party with a lot of music – just a huge, family style table with a bunch of Committee members and a really nice Chianti.
We thought we saw Jeter come in, though we weren’t certain. Maybe it was Kevin Eakin, we weren’t sure. But we were knee-deep in the pasta and four glasses in, so it was really all a sort-of blur. Jokes about the Jumbo Points we just earned kept everyone laughing.
The enjoyment of that meal seemed a bit far away after seeing Fordham’s report show up in a manila envelope marked “Fordham”. There seemed to be an effort to have the envelope be neat and crisp, at least.
I remembered the time when I ate the linguine at Dominick’s.
It was back when the Yankees were good. Before we knew that Alex Rodriguez was Alex Rodriguez, and when Fordham blew away all comers to have one of the best classes of the year.
It wasn’t a party with a lot of music – just a huge, family style table with a bunch of Committee members and a really nice Chianti.
We thought we saw Jeter come in, though we weren’t certain. Maybe it was Kevin Eakin, we weren’t sure. But we were knee-deep in the pasta and four glasses in, so it was really all a sort-of blur. Jokes about the Jumbo Points we just earned kept everyone laughing.
The enjoyment of that meal seemed a bit far away after seeing Fordham’s report show up in a manila envelope marked “Fordham”. There seemed to be an effort to have the envelope be neat and crisp, at least.
I remembered the Patsy Parties around Blues Alley.
The Hoyas, who have never won a Patriot League championship in football, have had more of an up-and-down record in the history of the Patsies. And during one of those wins, Blues Alley was the place to be.
Rounds of Seafood Gumbo for all, along with a huge platter of red beans and rice. Earth Wind and Fire – crashing Blues Alley during the Patsies – belting out “September” in front of a packed club. They were treasured memories for all.
And then there was today, when some paper-clipped printouts were slid under the door in the Committee’s offices. Earth, Wind and Fire never seemed so far away.
The smell of aged buffalo meat wafted through his imagination.
It was some prior incarnation of the Patsies, and it was Burger Day. Flown in from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, they were the best bison burger meat the Big Sky had to offer, along with bonus buffalo milk cheddar slices. The silky-tasting burgers, with the melted buffalo cheddar on fresh brioche, was a treasured memory. Even the grilled mushrooms on the top seemed opulent in some way.
He also remembered the Bison’s mascot, sitting down on the bench, awaiting the announcement of Bucknell’s recruiting classes, Bucknell students waiting with baited breath hearing each name.
(Or perhaps they were in Sojka Pavillion for Midnight Madness, or a midweek game versus Loyola. It’s all a bit hazy.)
Nonetheless, it was still jarring to see a folder with coffee cup rings on it, “BUCKNELL” written on it in Sharpie and some numbers crossed out on it. What happened? Where were the burgers?
I had grown accustomed to the fanfare around the Patsy ratings.
I remembered that year when the Committee had Pitbull perform right by the pool, announcing the winner of that year’s Patsies – the Colgate Red Raiders, he erroneously said (by then, they had rebranded to just “Raiders”. )
The Walking Dead-colored mascot clad in Maroon embraced Pitbull as the fireworks exploded all around the pool. The champagne flowed. Caviar was consumed. Shoe pastry was eaten. “Colgate, we were born to be free,” Pitbull ad-libbed.
What a difference compared to this year.
The Patsies came in a brown paper bag, thrown under the door of the Committee’s offices. Granted, the bag was thick – it appeared that they indeed did research, more so than the Pitbull years, it seems. But the fanfare was gone. All that was left were the numbers.
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In this post, I figured I’d create the complete definition of the Patsy Ratings, which are scheduled to be released any minute now.
What are the Patsy Ratings, you ask?
The Patsy Ratings are the methodology Lafayette superfan Carney once created in an attempt to determine who had the “best” incoming class.
“At the outset let me say that this is one big heap of crapola. If anyone thinks that he or she can rate 18 and 19 year old high school football players or declare one group of these kids superior to another is delusional. This, however, is an attempt to do just that, so what does it say about me? Many of you will take issue with the methodology or will rail against the outcome because you “know” that [fill in the name of your favorite school] had its best recruiting year ever. I invite you to post your criticism. Even more, I invite you to give us something better. It’s easy to say “you’re wrong.” It is much more difficult to find a better way and actually create the results.”
It was Carney that first got the mysterious Committee together, to agree on the common system that is the Patsy Ratings. In my reading of it, the Committee came up with this rules in an old, walnut wood-adorned conference room. You could smell the cigar smoke as you take the original rules out of the desk in the corner.
The paper is very difficult to read, with many sentences crossed out and redacted with black ink. Scrawls saying “Scout? Yes” and “Long snapper doesn’t count” and “Schollies!!!!” appear, sometimes with little star stickers on the parts that were particularly contentious.
Deciphering these scrolls of (some might say) wisdom resulted in this definition below of what the Patsy Ratings are. The best part of this system is that it is reproducible – though there are a few subjective pieces, most of the Rating can be recalculated at home.
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