Raiders open play Sept. 4 at home field.

High expectations and a tough early schedule can create a lot of pressure.

Greg Sullivan is OK with that.

Sullivan, Colgate University’s senior quarterback, is the Patriot League’s Preseason Player of the Year, and he and his Raider teammates are favored to win the league this fall, something they’ve done four times in the last seven years.

Colgate was a solid 9-2 in 2009, but didn’t win the league or make the Football Championship Subdivision (I-AA) playoffs.

“Those accolades are a really cool thing,” said Sullivan, a double-threat passer-runner who completed 135 of 230 passes for 1,952 yards and 18 touchdowns last season and added 875 yards and seven
touchdowns on the ground. “It does add a lot of pressure, but any athlete would tell you that pressure is what you want. It’s a good thing and a bad thing. I kind of forgot about those two things. They don’t mean anything once you get on the field.”

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The 6-foot-1, 204-pound Sullivan, who led Monroe-Woodbury High School to a state championship as a junior in 2005, has been on the field the last couple weeks as the Raiders prepare to open the season against Monmouth at 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 4, at Andy Kerr Stadium.

Colgate resumes its historic rivalry Saturday, Sept. 25, with Syracuse University at the Carrier Dome.

The Colgate-SU game was the biggest on both teams’ schedules for more than half a century, until the series was suspended after the 1961 game.

The teams met in 1981, 1982 and 1987, with the Orange dominating. Colgate still holds a 31-29-5 edge.

“All of us are guys who just missed the Division I level,” Sullivan said. “You want a shot at the big-time guys.”
Dick Biddle, the winningest football coach in Colgate’s history (113-52 as he begins his 15th season), doesn’t mind being picked to win.

“You normally get picked because you’ve been fairly good,” he said. “You’d rather be picked than not. We have our quarterback (Sullivan) and tailback (Nate Eachus) back, and other people have lost theirs, so we get picked.”

There is a bit of second thought, though.

“Every time we were picked, we haven’t won,” Biddle said. “And I don’t think we were picked in 2003.”

That season, the Raiders were 15-1 and went all the way to the FBS championship game.

Sullivan, 18-4 as a starter, and Biddle have to make some adjustments to be successful this season, with All-American receiver Pat Simonds having graduated.

“A 6-6 kid, great hands,” Sullivan said. “On third down he is real, real good. Just throw it up there and he’d get it.”

Simonds signed a free agent contract with the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles in April. He was waived in June.

Biddle wonders if his wide receivers can pick up the slack, but he knows the abilities of Doug Rosnick.
Rosnick will be a four-year starter, and he had 29 catches for 396 yards last season.

Then there is Eachus, a hard-running sensation who has carried the ball 359 times for 1,851 yards and 26 touchdowns in 20 games his first two seasons.

“He’s our workhorse,” Sullivan said. “Sometimes I don’t know how he does it. He looks better in the fourth quarter than he does in the first. He’s our guy.”

Pressure-packed season? Bring it on, Colgate says
By JOHN PITARRESI, The Utica Observer-Dispatch
http://www.uticaod.com/football/x7657308/Pressure-packed-season-Bring-it-on-Colgate-says