Archive For The “2018” Category
One of the great things about being a student of Lehigh history is, no matter how dark your current timeline is, there is probably a time when the school had encountered something even darker.That is where I found myself this weekend, in a deep funk af…
After a long, long weekend without Lehigh football, the Mountain Hawks this Saturday head to Princeton, New Jersey for a 1:00 PM date to play the Princeton Tigers.
If you can’t make it to the game, the game is available in two ways.
If through your cable service you subscribe to NBC Sports Philadelphia, you can watch the game live on that station. Additionally, you can stream the game through the NBC Sports Live App.
If you don’t subscribe to NBC Sports Philadelphia, the game will also be streamed though the pay streaming service ESPN+.
ESPN+ requires a monthly subscription of $4.99/month also carries a lot of college football games during the course of the season (including all the Ivy League home games), so it might be worth your while.
With a subscription, if you have a Roku box in your home, you can stream ESPN+ directly to your TV from there. If you have the ESPN App on your phone and Chromecast, you can bring it up on your phone and push the “Cast” button to have it stream directly on your TV. Or you can navigate here on your desktop in a Chrome browser and use the “Cast” button from there.
Of course that solution works even better when you pair it with the local radio broadcast, either off your old-fashioned radio, streamed through TuneIn or just simply going to the LVFoxSports.com webpage and listening that way. Matt Kerr, Lance Haynes and Matt Markus are on the call this Saturday.
By now you’ve seen the results. In 2018, the Ivy League has taken the FCS by storm.
Perhaps it was Penn’s 30-10 defeat of Lehigh a couple of weeks ago. Or maybe it was Princeton’s 50-9 drubbing of another team that made the FCS Playoffs last year, Monmouth. Or maybe it was Yale’s shockingly dominant 35-14 win over nationally-ranked Maine last weekend.
The Ivy League has gone an astounding 12-4 so far in out-of-conference play, many of those wins coming against the Patriot League.
But it’s not just against the Patriot League where the Ivy League has excelled.
Every Ivy League school has at least one out-of-conference victory, which is remarkable since it is only three games into their football season.
The four losses – Rhode Island over Harvard, Holy Cross over Yale, Delaware over Cornell, and Cal Poly over Brown – were either close losses that could have gone either way or expected blowouts of teams picked to be at the bottom of the Ivy League.
Why the Ivy League, and why now? How has the Ivy League turned things around, completely, as a league?
The answer appears to lie with three converging trends that every Ivy is starting to exploit to their advantage – increasing the overall number of athletic admits, using their so-called non-scholarship status to make a mockery of the scholarship limits of FCS football, and allowing essentially an unlimited roster size for home games.
By now you’ve seen the results. In 2018, the Ivy League has taken the FCS by storm.
Perhaps it was Penn’s 30-10 defeat of Lehigh a couple of weeks ago. Or maybe it was Princeton’s 50-9 drubbing of another team that made the FCS Playoffs last year, Monmouth. Or maybe it was Yale’s shockingly dominant 35-14 win over nationally-ranked Maine last weekend.
The Ivy League has gone an astounding 12-4 so far in out-of-conference play, many of those wins coming against the Patriot League.
But it’s not just against the Patriot League where the Ivy League has excelled.
Every Ivy League school has at least one out-of-conference victory, which is remarkable since it is only three games into their football season.
The four losses – Rhode Island over Harvard, Holy Cross over Yale, Delaware over Cornell, and Cal Poly over Brown – were either close losses that could have gone either way or expected blowouts of teams picked to be at the bottom of the Ivy League.
Why the Ivy League, and why now? How has the Ivy League turned things around, completely, as a league?
The answer appears to lie with three converging trends that every Ivy is starting to exploit to their advantage – increasing the overall number of athletic admits, using their so-called non-scholarship status to make a mockery of the scholarship limits of FCS football, and allowing essentially an unlimited roster size for home games.
Can you tell that I haven’t really wanted to finish this report card for last week’s game?
Like a teacher a hour before pacing break, I didn’t want to go through the film, the grades, and the play-by-play of the Penn game, but eventually, I did, even though it wasn’t exactly pretty.
The true hope with this report card, more than usual weeks, is that it’s seen as a springboard to getting to the season that all folks associated with Lehigh will want. With nationally-ranked Princeton looming ahead this week, it takes on added importance.
Are you like me – not all that sure of what to do this weekend now that there’s no Lehigh football to watch?
Fortunately, there’s loads of college football game to watch – there are games on Friday and Saturday to enjoy to scout out Lehigh’s upcoming opponents – and they don’t even impinge on College Football Gameday at Happy Valley, either.
(Photo Credit: Philadelphia Inquirer)
It’s time to go full nerd and do a full-blown breakdown of the Penn Quakers.
Penn’s game notes were out in good time, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, thankfully, still does a pretty good job in covering the Quakers in an independent way. Both were invaluable for my analysis.
Unusually, Lehigh faces Penn this time around in a game that is not the Quakers’ season opener. In prior years that made it tricky for the Mountain Hawks to sometimes get a full sense of what head coach Ray Priore might be doing, because there would be no true game film to study, only practice film and, if they’re lucky, an accurate two-deep.
This year, though, Penn has already had their first game, playing Bucknell in a game which they won 34-17. It was a strange contest, basically won in the first five minutes thanks to 17 points donated to the Quakers via two Bison turnovers and a blocked punt. Both teams would only put up 17 points the rest of the way each.
This week, Lehigh makes the short trip down to Franklin Field in Pennsylvania to take on the Quakers of Penn.
Kickoff time is at 3:00 PM and if you can’t make it to the game, the game is available though a pay service called ESPN+.
This isn’t the exact same thing as ESPN the station.
It works basically the way ESPN3 does, except that it requires a monthly subscription of $4.99 per month (though last I heard there was the availability of a free trial subscription available). ESPN+ also carries a lot of college football games during the course of the season (including all the Ivy League home games), so it might be worth your while. (Replays of the game I believe are available on ESPN3 for free later.)
With a subscription, if you have a Roku box in your home, you can stream ESPN+ directly to your TV from there. If you have the ESPN App on your phone and Chromecast, you can bring it up on your phone and push the “Cast” button to have it stream directly on your TV. Or you can navigate here on your desktop in a Chrome browser and use the “Cast” button from there.
Of course that solution works even better when you pair it with the local radio broadcast, either off your old-fashioned radio, streamed through TuneIn or just simply going to the LVFoxSports.com webpage and listening that way. Matt Kerr, Mike Yadush and Matt Markus are on the call this Saturday.
Game on.
Like me, you probably heard that Hurricane Florence was barreling down on the North Carolina coastline, and earlier in the week it looked like a historic rain event could have possibly caused Lehigh’s first meeting against an FBS opponent in 15 years to be delayed, or even cancelled.
Meetings were had, and the situation monitored, but over the last 24 hours it looks like, at least for Annapolis and the Maryland area, it will be spared the worst of the storm.
According to the Capital-Gazette, “if the latest forecast holds Hurricane Florence won’t present any problems for Anne Arundel County, but officials warn residents should remain vigilant for any changes in the storm’s track.”
The shorter version, for Lehigh fans, anyway: Game. On.
Read more »
It’s a lot less fun to go through the “Players of the Week” and report card after a loss, but it’s still got to be done.
Last week’s somewhat humbling 31-9 defeat comes at a point of the season where it’s more of a learning experience than a death blow to the season, and also came against one of the very best teams in all of FCS.
It wouldn’t surprise me to see Villanova win the CAA this season.
In any event, here we go.
Read more »
