More Than a Game

The first thing Mark McGowan ’89 wanted to know was where I went to college.

I was interviewing McGowan, who quarterbacked his team to a 17-10 win over Lafayette in the last game ever played at Taylor Stadium back in 1987, for this issue’s cover feature—a feature that attempts to get at the heart of what it means to compete in the most played rivalry in college football history. “Look, I’m a college football junkie,” I explained to McGowan. “But I have to admit—I didn’t go to Lehigh. So I’ve got some homework to do here.”

That’s when he jumped in.

“Well, where did you go?” he joked. “Because if you say Lafayette, I might have to hang up.”

Yes, if there’s one thing I learned while working on this story, it is this: Lehigh folks take this rivalry series awfully seriously.

I grew up near Cleveland, rooting for the Ohio State Buckeyes each year against hated Michigan, and I later attended college at Penn State, where I saw the Nittany Lions play in some pretty heated battles as well. But after attending Lehigh-Lafayette last year, and after talking to so many Lehigh football alums over the past couple of months for this story, I have truly come to appreciate the point that Mark Yeager ’81 makes so eloquently in our story—that the game known simply as The Rivalry matters every bit as much to Lehigh people, and every bit as much to Lafayette people, as any other rivalry game matters to any other school in the country.

It may not draw the attention that games like Ohio State-Michigan or Auburn-Alabama or Army-Navy do, Yeager told me, but Lehigh-Lafayette still matters. To him, to his fellow football alums, to the entire Lehigh community—it really, really matters. Our cover story —in which we talk to former Lehigh football players about what it means, and how it feels, to play in college football’s most played rivalry—helps explain why. This issue also provides you with the information you need to make the most of your Lehigh-Lafayette weekend in the Big Apple. Just check out the two-page Rivalry Weekend primer on pages 38-39.

I hope that you will enjoy reading this special issue of the Bulletin as much as we enjoyed putting it together, and welcome you, as always, to share your thoughts and comments by emailing me at tih313@lehigh.edu, or by sending mail to the address at right.

In the meantime, I join you in saying: “Go Lehigh! Beat Lafayette!”

Sincerely,
Tim Hyland, Editor