Archive For The “Navy” Category
I’ve never done one of these before after Lehigh’s played an FBS opponent.
That’s because the last FBS opponent Lehigh played was in 2003, when the Mountain Hawks lost to UConn 35-17.
The Lehigh Football Nation blog was in its first year of existence back in 2003, and undoubtedly I wrote about it – but it’s not currently in the archives here at Blogger, because I archived those first two years offline.
What I can tell you about that UConn game was that Lehigh faced off against a future NFL player in QB Dan Orlovsky and that QB Chad Schwenk got hurt late in that game, which made it his final game in a Mountain Hawks uniform and effectively threw the rest of that season in some turmoil.
Fortunately turmoil doesn’t seem to be a part of the report card today.
(Photo Credit: Capital-Gazette)
It’s time to go full nerd and do a full-blown breakdown of the Navy Midshipmen.
I can’t tell you how many of these previews I’ve done where I get game notes late Friday evening, had to play games with Ivy League depth charts to try to divine game plans, and the like.
Some schools Lehigh plays don’t have any local media anymore, so finding out more about the starting players and the like is extremely difficult.
Not so this week. For the first time in 15 years, Lehigh plays an FBS team, but not just a regional school, say, from the Midwest – they play Navy, a school with national and international reach.
Game notes were out early and were detailed.
The coverage of Navy football isn’t just from the local Capital-Gazette – which continues, through tragedy, to be stellar – but from national media, too. In fact their last two games – against Hawai’i and Memphis – were big-time affairs in the national world of college football.
There is no shortage of media about Navy football or Navy football players. In that way specifically, it’s like a breath of fresh air.
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Even at the time, legendary Lehigh QB Pat Pazzetti had a reputation for doing it all.
The Brown and White’s dynamic playmaker did a little of everything for the team.
Back in the days when players went both ways and there weren’t designated specialists, Pazzetti not only was the quarterback, but he also kicked punts and returned kicks as well.
In 1912, after a 35-0 thrashing by national powerhouse Princeton and facing the prospect of playing Navy – who had gone 9-0-1 against Lehigh in their last ten games – things had to be looking bleak for the Brown and White’s season, even with a team with some national ambitions.
After all, Navy hadn’t lost a football game in three years’ time.
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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.
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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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When college football fans think of the word “shutdown”, the word “corner” generally follows, followed by a debate on whether their particular members of the secondary could be considered “shutdown corners”.
Today, though, the word “shutdown” had a different meaning – a federal government shutdown, and one that ended up involving the two service academies of the Patriot League, Army and Navy.
As the food fight raged between the House’s attempt to defund, delay, or dissect Obamacare and the Senate’s efforts to roll back these attempts, midnight passed on the Congressional deadline to fund the federal government, thus causing “non-essential” government workers to be furloughed.
Though some might consider the athletic directors of the U.S. Military Academy (Boo Corrigan) and the U.S. Naval Academy (Chet Gladchuk) and their athletic department staffs “non-essential”, the decision of the Pentagon to furlough these people have a deep effect on a whole lot of athletic contests – and their opponents.
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In football, there is BYU, Notre Dame, Army and Navy, the last independents in an FBS world of conferences and the payouts they generate for their members.
In men’s lacrosse, there is Johns Hopkins, High Point, Marquette and Mercer – not exactly the same cavalcade of stars as in bowl football.
But one of those four, Johns Hopkins, the nine-time NCAA champions of the modern era, are superstars of the lacrosse world. Founded in 1883, they are one of the founding fathers of the sport of lacrosse and have been involved in its play essentially since the founding of the university in 1876.
What the people say around this 130 year old lacrosse program matters – and they’ve said that finally, after 130 years of competing as an independent, they are finally joining a conference in men’s lacrosse.
“In a letter to the Johns Hopkins community on Friday, May 17, President Ronald J. Daniels announced that he has accepted the recommendation of a special committee that the Blue Jay men’s lacrosse program seek conference affiliation,” the official release booms, effectively declaring the end of an era.
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