Archive For December 29, 2017
We’re approaching the end of 2017, and it’s been an interesting year where Lehigh football fans have experienced a multitude of emotions: anger; sadness; redemption, and, finally, joy.
As you all know, the Mountain Hawks came back from the precipice of a disastrous season to come back and win back-to-back Patriot League championships and back-to-back FCS Playoff appearances.
In that vein, I thought I’d share the best and most-read LFN pieces from last season, from No. 10 to No. 1.
Going through all my stuff from the past year, these were the pieces that really stood out to me.
Read more »
We’re approaching the end of 2017, and it’s been an interesting year where Lehigh football fans have experienced a multitude of emotions: anger; sadness; redemption, and, finally, joy.
As you all know, the Mountain Hawks came back from the precipice of a disastrous season to come back and win back-to-back Patriot League championships and back-to-back FCS Playoff appearances.
In that vein, I thought I’d share the best and most-read LFN pieces from last season, from No. 10 to No. 1.
Going through all my stuff from the past year, these were the pieces that really stood out to me.
Read more »
(Photo Credit: Steve Hockstein/NJ Advance Media)
Yesterday, Lehigh announced the signing of 12 football student-athletes to National Letters of Intent, or NLI’s.
Nobody knew exactly what was going to happen in regards to student-athletes, whether they would sign national letters of intent, or not.
What ended up happening was a floodgate of signings, not just at Lehigh but across college football.
I entered Wednesday thinking that a good target for announced Lehigh football recruits was six, based on little other than my history of observing this stuff. As it stood, I saw schools like Delaware announcing six football recruits signed before breakfast, and Lehigh had inked their sixth recruit well before I had my leftover General Tso’s chicken for lunch.
It wasn’t just amongst Patriot League or FCS schools, either. Penn State signed 21 recruits, including one of the top athletes of the Lehigh Valley, who flipped to the Nittany Lions from UCLA. Some estimates speculate that when the dust settles on this early signing period, over half of eligible football recruits will have signed with their schools.
For the student-athletes and their families, committing during this time offers some great benefits. It binds the schools’ scholarship offers to the student-athletes, and can pull the plug on some of the signing-day circuses that have sprung up in years past. It also moves much of the pomp and circumstance to the end of the second marking period, an academic lull where tests are complete and there is time to have a celebratory signing ceremony in the library.
Overall, early signing day seems to be a major win for the student-athletes, who get to commit earlier, get to worry less, and get to experience the celebration for their collegiate signings that is becoming more and more the norm at a time when it suits them better. Whether you love the process or hate it, this way of doing it seems to have a lot of benefits, and it’s here to stay.
Read more »
(Photo Credit: Steve Hockstein/NJ Advance Media)
Yesterday, Lehigh announced the signing of 12 football student-athletes to National Letters of Intent, or NLI’s.
Nobody knew exactly what was going to happen in regards to student-athletes, whether they would sign national letters of intent, or not.
What ended up happening was a floodgate of signings, not just at Lehigh but across college football.
I entered Wednesday thinking that a good target for announced Lehigh football recruits was six, based on little other than my history of observing this stuff. As it stood, I saw schools like Delaware announcing six football recruits signed before breakfast, and Lehigh had inked their sixth recruit well before I had my leftover General Tso’s chicken for lunch.
It wasn’t just amongst Patriot League or FCS schools, either. Penn State signed 21 recruits, including one of the top athletes of the Lehigh Valley, who flipped to the Nittany Lions from UCLA. Some estimates speculate that when the dust settles on this early signing period, over half of eligible football recruits will have signed with their schools.
For the student-athletes and their families, committing during this time offers some great benefits. It binds the schools’ scholarship offers to the student-athletes, and can pull the plug on some of the signing-day circuses that have sprung up in years past. It also moves much of the pomp and circumstance to the end of the second marking period, an academic lull where tests are complete and there is time to have a celebratory signing ceremony in the library.
Overall, early signing day seems to be a major win for the student-athletes, who get to commit earlier, get to worry less, and get to experience the celebration for their collegiate signings that is becoming more and more the norm at a time when it suits them better. Whether you love the process or hate it, this way of doing it seems to have a lot of benefits, and it’s here to stay.
Read more »
(Photo Credit: Steve Hockstein/NJ Advance Media)
With this year’s early signing period in December, along with traditional signing day in February and additional signing of recruits up until May, it felt like the right time to resurrect the Patriot League Commit Tracker for the class of 2022.
This is intended to be a rolling list, updated as we go, as student-athletes going to any Patriot League school sign National Letters of Intent.
We don’t know the whole story yet behind each school’s recruiting class. But this post is intended to put in one place what we know so far.
As I learn more, I will add more names to each list.
Read more »
(Photo Credit: Steve Hockstein/NJ Advance Media)
With this year’s early signing period in December, along with traditional signing day in February and additional signing of recruits up until May, it felt like the right time to resurrect the Patriot League Commit Tracker for the class of 2022.
This is intended to be a rolling list, updated as we go, as student-athletes going to any Patriot League school sign National Letters of Intent.
We don’t know the whole story yet behind each school’s recruiting class. But this post is intended to put in one place what we know so far.
As I learn more, I will add more names to each list.
Read more »
You may not be aware that this year the NCAA has not one, but two, signing day periods this year.Coined "Show Your Cards Day" by Arizona director of personnel Matt Dudek, Sports Illustrated calls it this "because programs and recruits no…
You may not be aware that this year the NCAA has not one, but two, signing day periods this year.Coined "Show Your Cards Day" by Arizona director of personnel Matt Dudek, Sports Illustrated calls it this "because programs and recruits no…
(Photo Credits: Delaware Online)
When I heard the news Tubby Raymond, legendary Delaware head football coach, died last week at the age of 92, two immediate memories came rushing back to me.
One occurred on October 16th, 1999, when Tubby had made a complaint to the local paper or radio in the run-up to Kevin Higgins‘ Mountain Hawks beating his Blue Hens on Delaware’s homecoming, 42-35.
I have no idea if the quote even actually happened, but my recollection is that Tubby said that Lehigh had “St. Bartholomew’s” on their schedule, and hadn’t played anybody. It was a verbal jab that many Delaware fans took with them to the stands to heckle the Mountain Hawk fans that made the short trip to Newark.
Up until that point, I had watched a bunch of Lehigh football games over the years. I experienced their rise in the 1990s. I enjoyed wins, and championships, and playoff victories.
But never had I felt a win so viscerally vindicating than the one over Tubby Raymond’s team – a win that might have kept the Blue Hens out of the playoffs that year, and might have allowed Lehigh to squeeze into the playoffs at 10-1 with a precious at-large bid. (And they did it on homecoming! Homecoming! “It was one of the most enjoyable wins I’ve ever had,” Higgins said years afterwards.)
The other memory that came rushing back was the run-up to Delaware’s home I-AA playoff football game a year later. I remember the visceral excitement that I had that Lehigh was going to have a chance to beat Delaware twice in two years at their place. And I was looking in the newspaper for what Tubby Raymond had to say about Lehigh. Nothing.
And Tubby’s 2001 team simply shut up, and hit Lehigh in the mouth repeatedly in a 47-22 rout that wasn’t as close as the final score might indicate. When RB Antawn Jenkins dove over a Lehigh player into the end zone to punctuate Delaware’s 33rd unanswered point after Lehigh briefly went up 10-7, I felt like I was smashed in the mouth, and I wasn’t even suited up.
After the game, Tubby was hugely respectful to the Mountain Hawks, turning from Disney villain to charmer in a single stroke. “We ought to play Lehigh every year,” he said, favorably comparing the Mountain Hawks to any team on their Atlantic 10 schedule. “It’s a great game and a great national rivalry.”
And that was Tubby Raymond, in a nutshell to Lehigh players, coaches and fans – a mixture of competitive verbal needling (that sometimes cut close to the bone), enough so that you wanted to see him beat more than any head football coach in America. He tended to back up the talk with excellent teams – when Lehigh teams beat Delaware, these were not ordinary wins – they were gems, and when the Mountain Hawks lost to his teams, they were crushing. And then, when the clock read 0:00, win or lose, Tubby would say something that made it hurt just a little bit less, allow you to regroup, and make you want to circle Delaware on the schedule for next year.
I never had the honor of meeting Tubby Raymond, but he had an awful lot to do with my passion for Lehigh football, and for that I am grateful for him.
Read more »
(Photo Credits: Delaware Online)
When I heard the news Tubby Raymond, legendary Delaware head football coach, died last week at the age of 92, two immediate memories came rushing back to me.
One occurred on October 16th, 1999, when Tubby had made a complaint to the local paper or radio in the run-up to Kevin Higgins‘ Mountain Hawks beating his Blue Hens on Delaware’s homecoming, 42-35.
I have no idea if the quote even actually happened, but my recollection is that Tubby said that Lehigh had “St. Bartholomew’s” on their schedule, and hadn’t played anybody. It was a verbal jab that many Delaware fans took with them to the stands to heckle the Mountain Hawk fans that made the short trip to Newark.
Up until that point, I had watched a bunch of Lehigh football games over the years. I experienced their rise in the 1990s. I enjoyed wins, and championships, and playoff victories.
But never had I felt a win so viscerally vindicating than the one over Tubby Raymond’s team – a win that might have kept the Blue Hens out of the playoffs that year, and might have allowed Lehigh to squeeze into the playoffs at 10-1 with a precious at-large bid. (And they did it on homecoming! Homecoming! “It was one of the most enjoyable wins I’ve ever had,” Higgins said years afterwards.)
The other memory that came rushing back was the run-up to Delaware’s home I-AA playoff football game a year later. I remember the visceral excitement that I had that Lehigh was going to have a chance to beat Delaware twice in two years at their place. And I was looking in the newspaper for what Tubby Raymond had to say about Lehigh. Nothing.
And Tubby’s 2001 team simply shut up, and hit Lehigh in the mouth repeatedly in a 47-22 rout that wasn’t as close as the final score might indicate. When RB Antawn Jenkins dove over a Lehigh player into the end zone to punctuate Delaware’s 33rd unanswered point after Lehigh briefly went up 10-7, I felt like I was smashed in the mouth, and I wasn’t even suited up.
After the game, Tubby was hugely respectful to the Mountain Hawks, turning from Disney villain to charmer in a single stroke. “We ought to play Lehigh every year,” he said, favorably comparing the Mountain Hawks to any team on their Atlantic 10 schedule. “It’s a great game and a great national rivalry.”
And that was Tubby Raymond, in a nutshell to Lehigh players, coaches and fans – a mixture of competitive verbal needling (that sometimes cut close to the bone), enough so that you wanted to see him beat more than any head football coach in America. He tended to back up the talk with excellent teams – when Lehigh teams beat Delaware, these were not ordinary wins – they were gems, and when the Mountain Hawks lost to his teams, they were crushing. And then, when the clock read 0:00, win or lose, Tubby would say something that made it hurt just a little bit less, allow you to regroup, and make you want to circle Delaware on the schedule for next year.
I never had the honor of meeting Tubby Raymond, but he had an awful lot to do with my passion for Lehigh football, and for that I am grateful for him.
Read more »
