Reply To: Time for Andy to go

Forum Forum Lehigh Sports Lehigh Football Time for Andy to go Reply To: Time for Andy to go

#22377
ngineer
ngineer
Participant

[quote=22360]I guess I don’t understand the athletic mission. I believe everyone on this board understands that the PL is not the SEC or Big 10. However, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that we are competitive with the CAA and dominate the Ivies and NEC. We certainly were and did prior to scholarships. If the “purpose of football at PL schools is to provide a nice compliment as a great education and leadership experience”, what was the purpose of going to scholarships? This could have been accomplished with need based grants. Why not just follow the Georgetown model?

I thought the purpose of schollies was to take the program to the next level and be competitive nationally at the FCS level (not the FBS level!!!!!!).If the mission is not to do this, then the athletic partnership has seen my last dollar going to football, because I believe I was mislead.

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Since when have we ever been competitive with the CAA and dominate the IL? We’ve a few ‘moments’ but nothing that I would call dominating. Further the IL has upgraded their athletic recruiting by lowering academic bands (Penn has accepted a number of players our admissions office nixed), and throwing a lot of money. All students who come from homes with joint income of $150K or less go for free. That is a scholarship regardless the label you place on it. Yes, the PL has upped the ante by going scholarship in order to compete with the national FCS scene, but others continue to upgrade as well. After another couple years, we might be more competitive. It’s taken Fordham about 5-6 years of scholarships to get where they are. I see us being competitive down the road, but we won’t be dominating. One problem is that we all got spoiled by the run from 1998-2004 and a nice burst from 2010-13. Cycles come and go. Look through the Lehigh record book, regardless of coach, everyone suffered through some doldrums. Key is whether the coach makes the needed changes to come out of the doldrums.