Archive For The “MAC” Category
Still bummed that Lehigh’s Patriot League Championship season is over? Yeah, me too.
That doesn’t mean that I’ve totally tuned out the college football landscape, though.
Starting tonight, there’s some terrific games on TV and online streaming that I’ll be watching, both at the FCS and the FBS level. Happily, the FCS Round of 16 games are not all going up against each other like last week, so the opportunity is there to catch one or more of those games – and you can bet that I will be.
Below the flip, starting with the MAC championship game tonight, are my picks for games to watch, and – why not? – some picks as to who I think will win.
(Yes, it includes Penn State. Stop asking.)
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(Photo Credit: The Republican)
I’ll admit it: UMass has hit pretty much all my sore spots over the years.
Perhaps it was being in the crowd of that 1998 playoff game, where the Mountain Hawks were a horrible pass interference call away from advancing to the I-AA semifinals, complete with the “Lehigh: We’re Just Better” sign. (UMass would go on to become I-AA national champions that year, surprising Georgia Southern in the championship game.)
Perhaps it was the move to the MAC in order to play FBS football, after years of moaning from the powers-that-be at UMass that football was a money loser. If you’re losing money in FCS, a move to the MAC is the equivalent of selling your underwater mortgage for an even larger mortgage, because this time, things will be completely different.
Perhaps it was playing at the home of the New England Patriots, 100 miles away from Amherst and home to the NFL franchise that broke my Eagles-loving wife’s heart.
But in the last few weeks – after a barrage of terrible news over the last few months about UMass’ “unexpected” extra loss of money in FBS, lost local revenue and fraying relations with faculty – things are, honestly, starting to look up in Amherst.
I mean it. Really. Things are looking up.
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I understand that most Lehigh fans (and, for that matter, Patriot League football fans) don’t get into the constant, 365-day-a-year ebb and flow of the goings-on in college athletics, let alone stuff on the divide between the FCS and the FBS.
However, I do. Probably because I’m insane, but I do.
When the commissioner of the Big Sky Conference Doug Fullerton posted a Q&A session, and followed it up with a Twitter Q&A, though, I paid very close attention.
These types of events are generally of the hit-or-miss variety – sometimes it’s a weak effort to highlight, say, the fact that a “conversation” was held about “membership”, or some other amorphous, read-anything-into-it-you-want statement.
Not so, however, this time around.
What made this particular interchange so extraordinary was its candidness, and Doug’s overall vision of collegiate athletics. Mr. Fullerton laid it all out there – and, in the process, gave a vision of what may be the future of FCS, FBS, Division I – everything.
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