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[quote quote=27317]Lehigh’s overall list of historical opponents if honestly pretty weak. There’s never been a lot of imagination Ever….[/quote]
I don’t think that’s a fair assessment at all.
The Rutgers Lehigh played so often in the mid-20th century was much more of a peer institution than the “Big 10” school they are today. Even so, I think Penn State and Rutgers would be very high on Lehigh’s lists for an FBS game. Eventually the Big 10 will figure out Penn State and Rutgers scheduling Lehigh is no different “schedule strength”-wise than Penn State and Rutgers scheduling Eastern Michigan, they’ll get guaranteed home games every year, and 99.9% of the time they’ll get a win.
Lehigh nonwithstanding, the other PL schools more had historic rivalries vs. FBS schools more by chance rather than by design. Colgate/Syracuse, Holy Cross/BC, those were established way before the modern era. G’Town/Fordham’s championship contending years were in the 1920s and 30s, an era when Jesuit schools were able to compete with the biggest names in the country.
We can criticize Lehigh’s foot-dragging when it comes to today, but calling the overall historical opponents as “weak”… I disagree. In the 1970s in the brief D-II era, Lehigh scheduled Delaware all the time, which was the biggest school at their level at the time. In the mid-20th century, Lehigh scheduled middle-college opponents like Rutgers, which was common at the time. And when the Patriot League was formed as “non-scholarship”, there were still games vs. Delaware I-A UConn and I-A Buffalo, too.
