The Most Epic Game in the Universe

When? November 21, 2009 12:30pm. Where? Lehigh University’s Goodman Stadium. What? The 145^th Lehigh-Lafayette Game. No matter what stories you are told, I don’t think anyone can fully understand the grandness of Lehigh-Lafayette week until they have experienced it themselves. It all started with the parties leading up to the game. For a full week before the game itself, people were celebrating beating Lafayette college. (This is one of many reasons that this showdown can only occur once a year – even Lehigh’s student body can’t handle being drunk this much for more than one week.) Then came the Thursday before the game (November 19). At 8:00pm, students migrated towards a concert to hear Girl Talk perform. It was a decent show, but the most memorable part of it for me is the walk back. As my group of friends was waiting in line to catch a bus back to campus, we realized we had been waiting for about forty-five minutes, and hadn’t even seen a bus drive by. We promptly found a police officer and asked him what gives. We had been waiting in line forever! Much to our dismay, he informed us that no more buses were running on account of the fact that Lehigh students had kicked windows out of all of the six buses that were commissioned for the event. “Well what are we supposed to do then?” We angrily asked. “I would suggest starting to walk now, since it might take you a while to get back,” replied the police officer. Isn’t that great advice? And so our journey began. An hour later, when we finally returned to Dravo, none of us had the energy to go out, so we sat and watched Slumdog Millionaire; a quality choice in my opinion.

Before I knew it, the Saturday of the game had arrived. Heading out of the dorm with the wave of Lehigh students all clad in brown and white, we made our way to the buses so we could stop by and tailgate before the game. Tailgates was crazy. Everyone had been drinking far too long to be able to function properly. Beer was everywhere and the lines for the bathroom were at least a thirty-minute wait. Finally noon came around. We entered the stadium and all I could see was brown and white. I loved it. The game was fun to watch, but it was the atmosphere of the situation that made it worth the week of waiting. Keeping a pretty even score for the whole game, it was a nail biter to be sure. The most epic part of the week though was when we went into overtime. What an incredible ending! Just when it looked like the missed extra point would come back to kick Lehigh in the butt, we were able to pick off Lafayette’s pass. The game was over. Lehigh had one. 27-21 in overtime – that, folks, is what I call epic.