Archive For The “Playoffs” Category

Agony and One Regret After Watching My Team Lose a Huge Game

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Agony and One Regret After Watching My Team Lose a Huge Game

I grew up in a family where the men didn’t easily show their emotions, a character trait that extended itself to sports.

It certainly didn’t help that one grandfather, a proud military man that stormed the beach in Normandy, had seen and experienced things that were a whole lot bigger than sports, though he enjoyed watching Major League Baseball’s “Game of the Week” as well as college football.  It also didn’t help that another grandfather, though a loyal corporate employee and Boston Red Sox fan, lived through a period of such baseball and pro football angst that there was little to truly celebrate except the Sox’s latest collapse or broken dreams.  (And the Pats were the definition of mediocre.)
My father, too, has always been a sports fan but also didn’t do things like swear under his breath at the TV, stand up watching the game because “sitting down ruins the luck”, or speak in tongues because his favorite team snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.  
As I watched New Orleans lose tonight on an utterly devastating play – whether it was THE most devastating play in NFL postseason history will have to be debated by historians – I sat down in my chair for the first time in over an hour.  My son, not always one to watch football games but was caught up in this one, was next to me, and I gave my son a warning.
“Never root for a team,” I told him, almost immediately regretting in afterwards.

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Agony and One Regret After Watching My Team Lose a Huge Game

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Agony and One Regret After Watching My Team Lose a Huge Game

I grew up in a family where the men didn’t easily show their emotions, a character trait that extended itself to sports.

It certainly didn’t help that one grandfather, a proud military man that stormed the beach in Normandy, had seen and experienced things that were a whole lot bigger than sports, though he enjoyed watching Major League Baseball’s “Game of the Week” as well as college football.  It also didn’t help that another grandfather, though a loyal corporate employee and Boston Red Sox fan, lived through a period of such baseball and pro football angst that there was little to truly celebrate except the Sox’s latest collapse or broken dreams.  (And the Pats were the definition of mediocre.)
My father, too, has always been a sports fan but also didn’t do things like swear under his breath at the TV, stand up watching the game because “sitting down ruins the luck”, or speak in tongues because his favorite team snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.  
As I watched New Orleans lose tonight on an utterly devastating play – whether it was THE most devastating play in NFL postseason history will have to be debated by historians – I sat down in my chair for the first time in over an hour.  My son, not always one to watch football games but was caught up in this one, was next to me, and I gave my son a warning.
“Never root for a team,” I told him, almost immediately regretting in afterwards.

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Not A Bad Feast Of FBS and FCS College Football This Weekend

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Not A Bad Feast Of FBS and FCS College Football This Weekend

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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Hints, And Only Hints, Of A Championship Lehigh Football Team In Big Loss to UNH, 64-21

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Hints, And Only Hints, Of A Championship Lehigh Football Team In Big Loss to UNH, 64-21

It would be all so easy if football were a video game.

If the players were pixels, with easy-to-read sliders with their statistics on them.

ESCAPABILITY: 72
TOUGHNESS: 91

Then the FCS playoffs would be easy.  You’d plug in the teams, they’d hit each other virtually on the screen, and there would be a result, quantifying the relative strengths and weaknesses of each team.  A representative score would come out, and there would be one side bursting with victory, and the other in agony in defeat.

There would be bitterness, some teeth-gnashing, but at least you’d have figured out that the teams gave it their best shot.

But real life is not a video game.  Sometimes, star players go hunting, and come down with an illness.  It keeps them out of practice, and on the day of the big game, they’re not 100%, or even 75%.  Sometimes, foot injuries do not heal, as much as you wish that they would.

And then a team like Lehigh travels up to New Hampshire, not able to put their absolute best foot forward.

Not that it’s an excuse – injuries, and all sorts of other things, happen during a football season.  New Hampshire exposed what may have actually been weaknesses hiding in plain sight for this Lehigh team, exposing the soft white underbelly of the Mountain Hawks – the ability to stop an elite running game.

But it was heartbreaking to have Lehigh not be able to put their absolute best foot forward, to not be able to go down with two of their four team captains at full strength.

Instead, all that Lehigh fans got to see were tiny glimpses of the team they had gotten to know so well over the last couple of months, sandwiched around a lot of evidence on how much better the Mountain Hawks need to be in order to compete for a national championship.
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QUICK RECAP: Lehigh’s Season Comes To Close After Dominating 64-21 Defeat To UNH

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QUICK RECAP: Lehigh’s Season Comes To Close After Dominating 64-21 Defeat To UNH

Right from the opening drive it didn’t feel like it was going to be Lehigh’s day.

With sophomore QB Brad Mayes in for senior QB Nick Shafnisky, who was unable to start due to an undisclosed illness, a pass that bounced off the hands of senior WR Derek Knott instead bounced into the hands of New Hampshire’s first team all-CAA CB Casey DeAndrade.

Six plays later, the New Hampshire offense converted that turnover into the very first touchdown of the day for the Wildcats, the first of many on a defense that clearly missed senior LB Colton Caslow, who got hurt in the second half against Lafayette last weekend.

Four different New Hampshire players scored a grand total of six rushing touchdowns, two coming from RB Dalton Crossan, two coming from his backup, RB Trevon Bryant, one from the third-string, RB Evan Gray, and one on a scramble from QB Adam Riese.

All in all, the Wildcats racked up 364 yards rushing on the Brown and White, rushing to a 36-7 lead on the Mountain Hawks and coasting to a 64-21 victory.  In the ultimate twist of irony, Lehigh got beat in the way they had beaten so many opponents in their nine game regular-season winning streak – with UNH jumping to a big lead and never really taking their foot off the gas.
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Watching the Lehigh/New Hampshire Game Today (ESPN3)

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Watching the Lehigh/New Hampshire Game Today (ESPN3)


For whatever reason, you didn’t make the trip to Durham, New Hampshire.  You’ve popped your popcorn, iced your Yuenglings, and put the meatballs in the crockpot – and then you panic.

How do I watch the game?  What is ESPN3?  Can I watch it on my TV?  Do I need to subscribe to something?  WHAT DO I DO???

Never fear.  LFN’s here to help.

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Lehigh at UNH Game Breakdown And Fearless Prediction: FCS Game of the Week

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Lehigh at UNH Game Breakdown And Fearless Prediction: FCS Game of the Week

We break down the FCS Playoffs Game of the Week below the flip.

You heard right.

One of my FCS Playoff pet peeves (especially in the first round) is that, for some reason, ESPN (who owns the TV contract for all rounds of the FCS playoffs) and the NCAA do not space out all the games in fixed time slots.

If ESPN and the NCAA wanted to generate excitement about the playoffs, it would be fairly easy to space out every game with a kickoff every hour (Noon, 1:00 PM, 2:00 PM, etc.) all the way up to 8:00 PM.  That way, hardcore FCS football fans can watch part of every single game, with at least one game getting to crunch time every hour from about 2:30 PM on.  It would be compelling theater.

But ESPN and the NCAA, for some reason, choose not to do this, and indeed this year, ESPN has five FCS playoff games kicking off at 2:00 PM, one kicking off at 3:00 PM, and a couple of stragglers kicking off at 5:00 PM and 7:00 PM, respectively.

Why?  There is literally no good reason for this.  ESPN is causing hardcore FCS football fans to watch less FCS football.  I’d love to be able to catch Weber State/Chattanooga, but it’s on at the exact same time as Lehigh/UNH, so my chance of catching that game live is below zero.

Had Lehigh/UNH kicked off at Noon, and had Weber State/Chattanooga kicked off at 3:00 PM, suddenly I would have watched more ESPN3.  Foolishly, I thought that was also in ESPN’s (and the NCAA’s) best interest that I am writing about and talking about more FCS playoff games all day.
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Lehigh At New Hampshire Game Narrative Street: UNH Remembers Last Year’s Loss To Colgate

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Lehigh At New Hampshire Game Narrative Street: UNH Remembers Last Year’s Loss To Colgate

In order to understand how UNH will be looking at this weekend’s game against Lehigh, you need to go back to the narrative of last week.

And then, you need to go back to the narrative from last year.

But first, let’s start with last week, where the Wildcats were not only battling their Rival Maine in the “Battle for the Brice/Cowell Musket”, they were battling to keep their playoff dreams alive.

The Wildcats, who had qualified for the FCS playoffs for twelve consecutive years, had fallen behind their bitter Rivals Maine, 14-7 at halftime.

With both teams at 6-4. it must have had the feel of a playoff game as well as a Rivalry game.  The winner would likely have a good shot at a playoff game; the loser would likely be out.

And the starter, sophomore QB Trevor Knight, was out of the game with a foot injury.  The backup, senior QB Adam Riese, would have to be the trigger guy to rally the Wildcats to the win.
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Lehigh at New Hampshire Playoff Preview: The Granite State’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams

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Lehigh at New Hampshire Playoff Preview: The Granite State’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams

“The Engineer football team once again showed their supremacy over the Yankee Conference leaders by defeating the University of New Hampshire (UNH) Wildcats, 16-3,” read the October 26th edition of The Brown and White in 1979.

LB Jim McCormick intercepted a UNH pass early in the game, and returned it to the Wildcat 4, setting up an early touchdown.  After that, the Engineer defense would take over, crushing UNH’s offense the rest of the way.

That would be the last time Lehigh has won at Cowell Stadium – 1979, a year where Lehigh was one of four teams in the I-AA playoffs and made it to the championship, ultimately falling to Eastern Kentucky in the finals.

So much has changed since then.  The I-AA playoffs have been renamed the FCS playoffs, and not have 24 teams instead of 4.  The Yankee Conference essentially was renamed to the Atlantic 10 Football Conference and now the CAA football conference, morphing from a Northeastern-based conference to one whose center of gravity is Virginia.  New Hampshire went from a championship contender to a perennial FCS playoff powerhouse, seemingly guaranteed a slot in the playoffs every year.

But what hasn’t changed much for Lehigh over the course of these last thirty-plus years is that Cowell Stadium has been Lehigh’s boulevard of broken dreams.  The Mountain Hawks beat UNH in Bethlehem in 2013, it is true.  But up in the Granite State, it’s been a different story.  Since that epic 1979 win, Lehigh has been 0-7 up there, and not one of the games have been close.
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Why Didn’t Lehigh Host? And Other FCS Playoff Thoughts

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Why Didn’t Lehigh Host?  And Other FCS Playoff Thoughts

By now you probably know that Lehigh is headed to New Hampshire on Saturday to face off against the Wildcats in the first round of the FCS Playoffs.

About this, some of you are scratching your heads.  Lehigh is 9-2, you say.  Every single computer rating system has them ranked ahead of New Hampshire, every single human voter poll has them ranked against New Hampshire.  Lehigh won the Patriot League outright; New Hampshire weren’t even co-champions of the CAA.  Why is New Hampshire hosting us?

The answer resides in the bidding process and some NCAA rules, both of which explain why it happened.

I’ll talk about this, and my other thoughts on the bracket, below.
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