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Written by Administrator
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Friday, 04 May 2007 |
 Thanks for reading week eleven of the Rivalry Name Rankings, brought to you this week by…eastern Pennsylvania.
The No. 5 ranking is a match-up of two Division I-AA football schools that, besides for the length of their rivalry, you may never have known had football teams. Lehigh University (Bethlehem, PA) and Lafayette College (Easton, PA) have matched up 142 times since 1884, making this one of the most storied rivalries in all of college football. The Patriot League teams frequently duke it out for the league championship, and fans of the Mountain Hawks (formerly Engineers) and Leopards, respectively, are known to hate each other with a passion.
The game’s moniker is “classic,” because of its simplicity and powerfulness. I could spit out more adjectives about this, but without further ado, the rivalry’s name is…well…The Rivalry. The Rivalry means so much to the schools that Lehigh even dedicated an entire page of it’s athletics web site to it, which can be seen here.
Here are some details on the history of the rivalry, which Lafayette leads 75-62-5. Lafayette won ten games in a row from 1919-1928, and has won the last three games dating back to 2004. Lehigh didn’t win a single game from 1937-1949, losing the first five games of that streak, earning a tie in 1942, and then dropping nine more in a row. However, Lehigh has kept the rivalry somewhat close by dominated the 60’s, 70’s, and 90’s.
The rivalry features multiple traditions, including bonfires, tearing down goalposts, and more. The following explanations come from Carey Yorio’s 2004 article in Lehigh’s student newspaper, The Brown and White.
On the bonfire: “Each year the height of the flame was equal to the year of graduation of the freshman class. For example, the freshman class of 1965 hosted a 65-foot flame…On the day of the bonfire, it was the freshmen’s responsibility to guard the woodpile to prevent Lafayette students from either stealing it or prematurely setting it on fire…In 1968, Lehigh banned the bonfire tradition. About 450 students from the class of 1972 protested, but the administration wouldn’t budge. The Student Senate brought back the bonfire tradition in 1998. It is now called Firefest.”
On the goalposts: “Tearing down the goal post after the game was also a deeply rooted tradition. The objective was to tear down and keep the largest piece of the goalpost possible. After the game, students from both colleges rushed the field, jumped onto the wooden goalposts and pulled until a piece came off…Alpha Tau Omega fraternity holds the title at Lehigh with a 10-foot-one-inch section from the 1987 game. Chi Phi fraternity at Lafayette holds the title with a 23-foot-four-inch section from the 1964 game.”
For more information, you can read the article here, and also consult the book “Legends of Lehigh-Lafayette: College Football’s Most Played Rivalry,” by Todd Davidson and Bob Donchez (which the article cites).
That’s it for this week – if you have any comments whatsoever, please post them on the message boards, using the link at the top. Thanks for reading, and check back next week. Go Wahoos.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 06 September 2007 )
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