THE RIVALRY: Trivia and a mea culpa

JEFFREY KORDENBROCK

I’ve been thinking a lot of Lafayette’s 17-16 win over Lehigh last Saturday in game No. 155 of college football’s most-played rivalry.

I have been trying to figure out how I would play it in one of my final blogs with which I plan to assess the 2019 season. Every season, after all, is in some way affected by the outcome of the Lafayette-Lehigh game.

This is a game that produces all kinds of trivia, so here’s what I think is the best addition of 2019.

This is the first time Lafayette has won the game by a single point.

It is also only the second one-point game in the entire series. Lehigh won the 1929 game 13-12 in a game where quarterback Arthur Davidowitz kicked what proved to be the winning extra point. Lehigh broke a 10-game losing streak to Lafayette in that game and the Brown and White blocked two extra point attempts and a late field-goal try to preserve the win.

Here is the second paragraph that appeared in The Morning Call the next morning, Nov. 24, 1929, courtesy of my favorite historical website these days, newspapers.com. The sports writer is not mentioned.

“Scenes such as probably never before been witnessed in the concrete saucer of Lehigh University were witnessed in the hysterical demonstration following the final whistle of referee W.C. Crowell. Out onto the field rushed the Lehigh partisans, fairly smothering the Lehigh players in their frantic efforts to reach them, and one swaying mass of humanity ushered the players off the gridiron. Staid old grads for the time forgot themselves to join in the wild demonstration and the steel city was truly a typical college town last night in every sense of the word.” 

Reinhard: A chat with Colgate's Dan Hunt

No current Patriot League football coach – assistants included -- has spent more time in the league than Colgate’s Dan Hunt. It may be only his sixth year as the head coach, but Hunt spent another 19 years as a Dick Biddle assistant.

Hunt won league Coach of the Year honors in three of his first five seasons. He’s not getting it this year – in fact, he will finish with fewer wins this season than any other since he succeeded Biddle in 2014.

At 3-8, he’s having a tough time, but he could still have a say in who represents the league in the FCS postseason tournament. Lafayette would to well to put the blinders on this week and focus on nothing but the Raiders, who have a whopping 45-13-4 advantage in the head-to-head series.

I caught up with Hunt the other day to get some comments for my Morning Call preview of the game. But before we hung up, we talked about lots of other things as well. So, I thought I’d simply post the interview in full.