Archive For The “Rivalry150” Category
In the run-up to the big game at Yankee Stadium I had an opportunity to talk with Lehigh football alum OL Dan Mulholland.
One of the great diehard fans, Mulholland runs the “Kings of Tailgates” at Lehigh home games, partially in tribute to his teammate Roger McFillan, who died unexpectedly at the age of 50. The tailgates in Roger’s honor, run by Dan, his twin brother Bob Mulholland and fellow teammate Gus Gustafson, are a Mountain Hawk gameday fixture right next to the Rust Pavillion, and every home game they “grill the opponent’s mascot.”
It so happened I talked with Mulholland about his best work, his blocking for RB Jack Rizzo‘s record-breaking rushing performance against Lafayette in 1971. Rizzo ran for 313 yards, a Lehigh single-game record that still stands today.
“Yeah, we’ll never see any sort of rushing performance like that ever again in a Rivalry game,” I told him mere days before Lafayette RB Ross Scheuerman would drive his SUV all over the Lehigh defense for 304 rushing yards and 357 all-purpose yards and 3 touchdowns.
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There is but one football game in this college football season tomorrow, and it’s in New York City at Yankee Stadium. That means there’s but one football game to break down, and it’s #Rivalrly150, which will be done below the flip.
It’s hard to believe that the season is already coming to an end, and that the game that was years in the making is about to happen tomorrow.
It made for a weird vibe on campus today, where I went to get my tickets and buy my Rivalry scarves for tomorrow. I’m used to the Rivalry being in the air on campus, but campus mostly had serious students there, the football-crazed of whom are probably in Manhattan right now, fresh from watching Lehigh’s president John D. Simon ring the final bell of the New York Stock Exchange, or attending the sold-out Lehigh/Lafayette swim and dive meet, or listening to Lehigh Choral Arts at Carnegie Hall, or attending the gala with Earth, Wind and Fire.
With all the hoopla, it can be forgotten there’s an actual football game tomorrow – essentially a bowl game. Let’s see how Lehigh can come out of the Bronx with a win.
I know it’s been several years in the making. I know we are almost at the eve of the biggest edition of the Lehigh/Lafayette Rivalry yet, the one in Yankee Stadium, the 150th meeting, the one I’ve been waiting for years to arrive.
Yet it’s one play, one play, that I keep thinking about in the run-up to this game.
Bubble screen.
I keep seeing that bubble screen in the 149th meeting of Lehigh and Lafayette, the one that put the game out of reach, the one that turned Lehigh’s bid for a championship last season become one that fell just short of a championship.
The Lehigh football team is lucky.
For most football programs and a whole lot of Division I football players, the end of the season is visible. Many seniors see their final games at home, “senior day”, and maybe a road game or two to play their final games as seniors – that is, if the coaching staffs haven’t already started looking forward to the 2015 season and figuring out who is likely to start next season.
But with the Mountain Hawks, who essentially are eliminated from any Patriot League championship consideration with their loss to Fordham last weekend, there is always the week before Thanksgiving.
Because for Lehigh players, there are three championships every year.
The first two, the FCS National Championship and the Patriot League championship, are not in the cards this year.
But the third championship most certainly is.
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