The weather this week has been really hard on me. I've been taking pain medicine at night in order to be able to sleep. Between the excessive heat warnings, the (sometimes fulfilled) threat of thunderstorms, and the rising humidity pushing the barometer down, I haven't been exactly well. My longtime readers know that I'm very much at the mercy of the weather for a lot of things, and it's hard to be awesome when you don't want to move. But I'm doing my best here.
Being subject to the weather isn't helping with another problem - I'm running low on stockpiled markers, as I've mentioned. I'll be fixing that a bit in the coming weeks; I have a planned day trip to Schuylkill County near the end of July to collect markers with a college friend, and a few other possibilities up my sleeve. I have some plans for posts on the other blog as well, such as next month when some of my friends and I go to Dorney Park in Allentown and celebrate the 100th birthday of the roller coaster Thunderhawk.
All of that is to tell you why this week's post is about a football game. I just collected the second of the two relevant markers during a trip to Bethlehem with best friend Andrea last week; we were a little bored, the weather was decent, and we decided to grab a few markers in the nearby city and follow up with ice cream at the historic Bethlehem Dairy Store, familiarly known as "the Cup." I'd heard of it but never been, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who finds themselves in the vicinity of Lehigh University. A proper marker hunt always involves ice cream, you know, it's a rule.
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| This version of the marker is found on the campus of Lafayette College in Easton |
Bethlehem's Lehigh University was founded in 1865 by Asa Packer, who convened a meeting at the historic Sun Inn to begin the process. Lafayette College, on the other hand, is a fair bit older; it was established in 1826, thanks to a charter granted to the citizens of Easton for the college by our then-governor John Andrew Shulze.
Exactly what kicked off the Rivalry is not entirely clear. However, during one of my visits to Jim Thorpe, I took a tour with the wonderful Jim Thorpe Trolley Company, and our delightful tour narrator told us that the rivalry is at least partly rooted in enmity between two great men. One of these was Asa Packer; the other was Louis Comfort Tiffany, the famous glass artist. Louis's second wife, Louise Wakeman Knox, was the daughter of Lafayette College's eighth president, and Louis made some stained glass windows for the school which are still there to this day. Allegedly, Asa and Louis severely disliked each other, and this is one of the reasons for the Rivalry.
Another reason is said to be that Lafayette had approached Asa Packer about creating an engineering wing at their school. He was initially interested, but then he found out that Lafayette College was controlled by the Presbyterian Church. Having been treated poorly by the Presbyterian congregation in his own hometown, he was not about to have anything to do with them in Easton either, so he dropped out of the project. It's believed that this was part of his inspiration for creating Lehigh University, and the Rivalry was a natural result.
The two schools are less than twenty miles apart, so the closeness is likely another factor. A more easily grasped cause is the fact that both schools aggressively try to recruit graduating star athletes from the various high schools. So do many colleges and universities, of course, but the prestige of Lehigh and Lafayette often means that the student ultimately narrows their choices down to those two, and then must make the hard call.
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| This version of the marker is found on the campus of Lehigh University in Bethlehem |
For the first couple decades, the two teams would play each other twice a season, though in 1891 they played three times, and they didn't play each other at all in 1896. This was apparently due to some kind of dispute about player eligibility. From 1901 onward, they played once every year, except in 1943 and 1944; those years, during World War II, they played twice a season. They then resumed the annual game until - no surprises here - 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic called a halt to the annual skirmish. This was a great disappointment to fans of the Rivalry, because it was the first time in 124 years that the annual game did not take place, and at the time it was the country's longest consecutive streak. The game was only delayed, however, not canceled; the teams met each other on the gridiron in April 2021 for a belated 2020 game, and then again in November.
Some of football's most significant changes have occurred because of Lafayette College's team. It's not specific to the Rivalry, but one of their players is credited with inventing the football helmet in 1894, when he used straps of leather to protect his head (and, more specifically, his ears) during play. Thirty years later, in 1924, the huddle was invented when the Lafayette coach realized that rival teams were decoding the hand signals he used with his players; he then instructed his players to huddle up before any offensive plays, so that the other teams couldn't work out what they were planning.
I mentioned that the Lehigh University athletic teams were originally called the Engineers. I assumed it was because of their world-renowned engineering program (my own stepfather is a graduate), but it was done in honor of their founder, Asa Packer. He wasn't that kind of an engineer, but as the owner of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, he had a lot of the other kind of engineer on his payroll. So it was sort of a play on words. They changed it in 1995 to the Mountain Hawks, which is a type of bird that doesn't actually exist. They made it up to combine hawks, which can be seen frequently throughout the Lehigh Valley, with the mountainous nature of the university campus. Seriously, it sits on Bethlehem's South Mountain and you'd better take some endurance training before walking to classes. There was considerable resistance to the change, especially by alumni, but the students were supportive and it ultimately was accepted. (In order to acknowledge their athletic history, though, the school continues to refer to their teams from before 1995 as the Engineers, or the Brown and White.) A Mountain Hawk mascot was added to the teams, and in 2008 was given the name Clutch.
Since changing over to a single annual game in 1901, the two schools alternate hosting each other for the showdown, with Lafayette welcoming Lehigh in even-numbered years and Lehigh hosting Lafayette in odds. The one exception to this rule came in 2014 when, to celebrate the one hundredth time the teams faced off, the game was hosted in New York City at Yankee Stadium. No trophy is awarded, only bragging rights and the game ball, and this is because the Rivalry is actually older than the existence of football trophies. However, since 1960 the media has used the Rivalry game to select each year's Most Valuable Player. On two occasions (1976 and 2006), they had to pick co-MVPs because the players were just that good, and eight players (four from Lehigh, four from Lafayette) have received the distinction twice.
The Rivalry has spawned a number of traditions over its century-plus of existence, many of which take place in the week leading up to the actual game. I was quite amused to read about the bonfire wars, in which each school would build a bonfire and try to light each other's bonfire ahead of schedule. The freshman class, regardless of what time it was, would be summoned by a special alarm to defend the bonfire against attack. Sometimes these attackers would be literally kidnapped and held prisoner, which I can't imagine would fly today; indeed, the bonfire battles are a thing of the past, though I think the bonfires themselves still happen. Other traditions include band serenades, handmade sheet banners, and bed races. No, really, they turn beds into racecars. The whole thing is a special brand of insanity that probably only truly makes sense to the people who know it best, and I can respect that. One tradition which has been called off, however, is the dismantling of the temporary wooden goalposts; it used to be that the crowd would run onto the field and destroy the goalposts at the end of the game. This came to an end in 1991, when both schools installed permanent concrete goalposts, because some people had started sneaking onto the field and tearing down the goalposts before the game was over.
This November will be the 160th game between the Leopards and the Mountain Hawks. It's an even year, so fans of the Rivalry will be invading Easton to celebrate the madness. If you get the chance, Sports Illustrated is of the opinion that you should go, and they might be right. As they once told their readers:
"Watching a Lehigh-Lafayette game is something you have to do once in your life."
Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.
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