RIVALRY

[LUFAN]

Let's keep in perspective that Lafayette is a horrible team. On offense they are horrible. QB is as bad as all the other Patriot league QB's. How they won was exactly what has happened all year. The defense all though improved cannot get a stop when needed. Lafayette on defense decided not to blitz allowing our QB all day to throw. We eeked out an ok offensive day with no pressure. A lot of picks and fumbles against a very very bad coached team. Lehigh is happy with Patriot league titles which is like winning the losers bracket in youth football. Lehigh fans are conditioned to expect mediocrity and they love it!!! Bucknell destroyed almost 3 qb's when they played us. Sacred Heart was very average and Lafayette was awful. Lehigh tries to put pretty make-up on an ugly face. This scholarship thing is concerning. Somebody mentioned we need to recruit kids who want to be here...huh??? How do you identify that kid? Nobody comes to Lehigh to play football. They come for an education, right? Well, these are the kids who are now on that field. These are good kids that try hard. We cannot get great football players and great students. Patriot league football is reflecting its own rules every saturday on the field and we are supposed to expect more? If we keep weakening our schedule we will get to 8-3 and everybody will be happy. Take Villanova off the schedule and its pretty lame next year. Any o-line commits yet? Lets accept that Patriot league football is the amateur league for the FCS. We will compete with the Pioneer league soon. Things must change or continue to weaken the schedule and the Lehigh facade (that we are a legit program) will stay alive.

Conditioned to expect mediocrity ?? Huh. The issue is the exact opposite. Right now its disappointed expectations for now and the last few years of Andy. We expect to be at the top of the PL every year. And most of us want to get back to national relevance. Hence the constant bitching about PL rules and mediocre years. At no point during my 50+ years has Lehigh accepted mediocrity in football. We've had our rebuilding years which have always resulted in streaks of winning years. While I have doubts about the longevity of TG's style here, I have no doubt he will rebuild the program.
I agree Lehigh has college students playing football not just players coming for a uniform. Cannot get great players and great students? We have gotten quite a few over the years. No we dont beat the Ivies often but we do a bit more now with schollies. Our competition for recruits now centers more on MAC CAA and the Academies than the Ivies.
I thought owl had the most negative post mortem post. You are really giving him a run for the title.

+1,000,000,000

[Hawktalker]

I know that injuries are part of football and not an excuse, but Rosen was knocked out for the season in the opener, Burbage goes out for the season in game 5, Monaco in game 9. A DB and an RB leave the team during the season. Starters on the OL missed games as did Hill. Maybe we were lucky to win 4 games

[HFO]

1. Patriot League has very good Head Coaches. No slouches at Fordham, Holy Cross, Colgate, Lafayette, Bucknell. You better have a good game plan.

2. Good athletes will come. USNA, USMA, Duke, Wake Forest, Stanford, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Ivies prove that. LEHIGH has to win these head to head recruiting contests. There is a right place for every scholar-athlete.

3. Extreme accountability. Starts at the top. Gilmore has to own all the performance below him. Then plan, train and execute for wins. #2s have to be just as good as #1 by sophomore year. SPRING BALL and off season must be learning to be better coaches and better players, mentally and physically.

LEHIGH has a team of about 90 players of which half are not FCS talent. To win deep in FCS, it needs a team of 99 players ALL with FCS level talent. LEHIGH has to land 1/2 star players every class and hope that a few preferred walkons emerge also.

[Bison_137]

I know it's easy to say that "Lehigh is on the upswing" and that maybe be true but you have factor in other teams trends. Holy Cross is definitely on the upswing so long as Chensey is there. He inherited a program in the dumps following Gilmore's ugly last few seasons and won a title in his second year. Granted he did it with a mediocre team but he still won the league. I think he's easily the best coach in the league. He's been a head coach for 10 years and his team's posted winning seasons in 9 of them. This is the 4th time in the last 5 years ('15, '16, '17 D2 Playoffs with Assumption) he's coaching in the NCAA playoffs.

I think Colgate finally started to play better once Breneman was healthy. I'd bet the house that they return to at least respectability. I think they've only had one back-2-back losing seasons once ('13 Biddles last season/'14 Hunt's first) since Sweeney's last two years in '94 and '95.

Lafayette finished alone in second in the PL and will return a ton of experience from this year's team. They haven't had a winning season since 2009. Maybe next year they get over that hump?

I think Bucknell will also be better in two year under Cecchini. With that said, I still think Bucknell's ceiling is only so high as program. Not sure if they can win the PL even in its current state.

Fordham is a complete enigma under Conlin. He might be coaching for his job next year. Georgetown collapsed this year and lose a lot of experience. Sgarlatta might be a good coach but the results just aren't there. This year was a huge disappointment for the Hoyas. Something has to give in DC. Going 1-5 in the PL with what they had returning is brutal. Still only one winning season, 2011, since they joined the league in 2000.

I'd go
1. Holy Cross
2. Colgate
3. Lafayette
4. Bucknell
5. Lehigh
6. Fordham
7. Georgetown

Fwiw, this is the first time in PL history when Bucknell is spending almost as much as everyone else in the league and has almost as many equivalencies as everyone else. In the past when LU, LC, FU, and CU had 60+ equivalencies, Bucknell had 42-43 on average. Tough to win with that big a difference. So it is possible, if Cecchini turns out to be a good coach, that Bucknell can emerge as a contender. Down the stretch, 21 of their 22 starters were non-seniors fwiw. One thing that will always hold back the program is the Bucknell Administration's refusal to allow 5th year players. Basically only a five year engineer will be allowed to use a 5th year of eligibility. That doesn't help.

[ngineer]

1. Patriot League has very good Head Coaches. No slouches at Fordham, Holy Cross, Colgate, Lafayette, Bucknell. You better have a good game plan.

2. Good athletes will come. USNA, USMA, Duke, Wake Forest, Stanford, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Ivies prove that. LEHIGH has to win these head to head recruiting contests. There is a right place for every scholar-athlete.

3. Extreme accountability. Starts at the top. Gilmore has to own all the performance below him. Then plan, train and execute for wins. #2s have to be just as good as #1 by sophomore year. SPRING BALL and off season must be learning to be better coaches and better players, mentally and physically.

LEHIGH has a team of about 90 players of which half are not FCS talent. To win deep in FCS, it needs a team of 99 players ALL with FCS level talent. LEHIGH has to land 1/2 star players every class and hope that a few preferred walkons emerge also.

Rosters are capped at 90 (60 scholarships) per PL rules and we only had 65 physically able the last few weeks of the season. Tom needs another big freshman class coming in (brought in about 34 this past year).

[HFO]

Well Patriot League better wake up and go to max on NCAA FCS rules
1. Go to max of 105 roster players at time of start of Fall semester and
2. 63 equivalency athletic scholarships and get 63 fulls and 42 preferred walk on.

Else Patriot League will continue to be stomped on by Ivy and CAA and be laughing stock of FCS selection show and face NDSU every year.

Indeed. Lehigh likely to have a big number drop off roster by spring. Gilmore likely will need to bring another 30 plus group. Most of these guys will not even be 1 star players.

[Sundayamqb]

Well Patriot League better wake up and go to max on NCAA FCS rules
1. Go to max of 105 roster players at time of start of Fall semester and
2. 63 equivalency athletic scholarships and get 63 fulls and 42 preferred walk on.

Else Patriot League will continue to be stomped on by Ivy and CAA and be laughing stock of FCS selection show and face NDSU every year.

Indeed. Lehigh likely to have a big number drop off roster by spring. Gilmore likely will need to bring another 30 plus group. Most of these guys will not even be 1 star players.

+1

[ngineer]

Well Patriot League better wake up and go to max on NCAA FCS rules
1. Go to max of 105 roster players at time of start of Fall semester and
2. 63 equivalency athletic scholarships and get 63 fulls and 42 preferred walk on.

Else Patriot League will continue to be stomped on by Ivy and CAA and be laughing stock of FCS selection show and face NDSU every year.

Indeed. Lehigh likely to have a big number drop off roster by spring. Gilmore likely will need to bring another 30 plus group. Most of these guys will not even be 1 star players.

PL cannot reach 100+ rosters with their method of scholarship allocation not be allowed to be mixed with need based grant in aids. PL was in better shape when based solely on grant in aids. Rosters were much deeper. We can now recruit some very good skill players, but we cannot create sufficient depth, which really shows in the second half of games due to PL teams inability to have enough fresh players. The Presidents will not change their philosophy without a large hue and cry from the alumni and donors willing to put $$ in support of their cry...and not enough care. The PL is not a 'football league'. Other than football, the PL model works fairly well.