2025 EIWA Championships

[gimpeltf]

Does anyone see that the ACC has anything but full members? Other than Notre Dame being a non-football member.

[FloridaGuy]

>>>>>>>> The panic exhibited by some posters regarding the EIWA sans the Ivys is really over the top.

The EIWA has been a good fit for Lehigh wrestling for more than a century——-and it will continue to meet our wrestling needs going forward————traditional nearby rivals and a solid NCAA qualifier tournament.

Unlike Stanford, Cal or SMU, Lehigh does not have to go hat in hand to plead for ACC acceptance—-we have a viable wrestling conf.

The ACC is currently a very troubled conference. They are in litigation regarding FlaSt leaving and Norte Dame is close to finally joining the BiG. When the conference movement music stops, the ACC will very likely be without UNC and UVA as well as ND, FlaSt, and several others.

Why join an conf that doesn’t care about wrestling———Unlike the BiG, wrestling is an ACC afterthought.

Lastly, John’s Hopkins was offered the BiG lacrosse affiliation because the Big needed a 6th men’s program to have an NCAA qualifier conf tourney. Plus Hopkins was a great addition to the BiG research consortium and Hopkins is MD’s lacrosse arch rivals.

[Oracle]

>>>>>>>> The panic exhibited by some posters regarding the EIWA sans the Ivys is really over the top.

The EIWA has been a good fit for Lehigh wrestling for more than a century——-and it will continue to meet our wrestling needs going forward————traditional nearby rivals and a solid NCAA qualifier tournament.

Unlike Stanford, Cal or SMU, Lehigh does not have to go hat in hand to plead for ACC acceptance—-we have a viable wrestling conf.

The ACC is currently a very troubled conference. They are in litigation regarding FlaSt leaving and Norte Dame is close to finally joining the BiG. When the conference movement music stops, the ACC will very likely be without UNC and UVA as well as ND, FlaSt, and several others.

Why join an conf that doesn’t care about wrestling———Unlike the BiG, wrestling is an ACC afterthought.

Lastly, John’s Hopkins was offered the BiG lacrosse affiliation because the Big needed a 6th men’s program to have an NCAA qualifier conf tourney. Plus Hopkins was a great addition to the BiG research consortium and Hopkins is MD’s lacrosse arch rivals.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Panic? Surely you jest General Obvious. It's called discussion. Obviously -- and that should be right in your wheelhouse -- there are obstacles, but it would be better than what you are suggesting by a country mile. IMO.

[HFO]

HFO. Woah, Woah, Woah. Not enough rooms in Bucknell is not a problem to me. Have a campsite in the State Forest.

Any room for an ambulance because that's about the only way I would get there. I'll be watching from my chair on internet.

[HFO]

Does anyone see that the ACC has anything but full members? Other than Notre Dame being a non-football member.

Exactly my point about Lehigh football. It would be a long shot and a huge dollar commitment of Lehigh University and benefactors to remotely come close to making it happen. The standards of facilities and offering minimum number of men's and women's sports and equal number of full athletic scholarships would be very expensive just for entry, not to even be in realm of competitiveness in many sports.

Upfront capital investment costs could be well over $100 million. Let's say you fund full FBS football scholarships, basketball and a few other men's sports, then match with women's scholarship, looking at something close to 400 scholarships. Lehigh total cost now is about $80k. $32 million per year minimum. Setting up an athletics scholarship endowment is 20x that amount or an additional $640 million to raise.

So total all in cost to become a member of ACC is likely to be in the $600 - $800 million range of additional fundraising to the Lehigh endowment. Do not see it happening.

Lehigh is already $100 million in on a failing College of Population Health. At least it fully fails, the building is multiuse and can be used in a new way. Lehigh going forward is a 6000 student undergraduate FCS football school and D1 for others ports. It's focus in future has to be on increasing the esteem of the graduate school and growing that to near equal 6000 students and start landing massive corporate and government funding.

In classic business strategy, Lehigh is caught in the middle. It is no low cost=high volume and it is not of the best quality for high cost - low volume. This is part of reason of the need for the additional 1000+ students to fund operations in the future. Even that number will turn out to be too low of a number. Where Lehigh is at is a no man's land with a very poor recent strategic plan. This current President is NOT THE GUY for Lehigh's future and what is needed to be done. He is just a continuation of the Simon problems.

ACC pipedream. Sell it for those who want. It would upgrade Lehigh in the world of academics to be in a league with UVA, Duke, NC-Chapel Hill, but I just do not see it ever happening. Even the list of current multi centimillionaires of Lehigh are not giving much money to the university because it has become too woke and out of alignment of Lehigh historical culture and values.

So it will take another group of very wealthy Lehigh alum to come up with $600 million additional.

[Mountain Hawk]

Start with the board that searched out Simon and brought him in. Same folks that brought in our current president. Simon was an absolute disaster both short term and long term. Hard to recover from that kind of stupidity. Many of those same people still a big part of the decision making at Lehigh.

[Richb-3]

Rich: I don’t think anyone is talking about full membership. Just an affiliation in a minor sport / wrestling. Where did the idea of full membership come from?

Lehigh, Army, Navy for wrestling only has a high percentage chance. Koll, Ayers, Gavin, Pop, Garland, and VA Tech would all be in favor.

HFO mentioned it at !0:09 AM on Tues, 3/5. But I am pretty sure someone else mentioned it earlier.

[Oracle]

Full membership ain't gonna ever happen. There's a chance (slim) taking the 3 teams I mentioned would work out. Taking AU and Bucknell, if I were the ACC, I'd say no. But Army/Navy/Lehigh for wrestling only -- maybe.

[Richb-3]

Lehigh is an odd position in the PL. The other 4 key members are considered Liberal arts colleges. Buck and Colgate are universities, but with 100-150 grad students. (Laf and Holy Cross are the other two)) and we have about twice the size of each of the other four. (udergrad).

Maybe when Dartmouth becomes a full time Professional sports franchise, we can take their place. (note concerning union- Dartmouth has not been in the NCAA tournament since 1959.

[Richb-3]

Full membership ain't gonna ever happen. There's a chance (slim) taking the 3 teams I mentioned would work out. Taking AU and Bucknell, if I were the ACC, I'd say no. But Army/Navy/Lehigh for wrestling only -- maybe.

That is basically what I see. Try for those 3, but do not be surprised with failure. And we need a new AD.