01/09/2009
The SUNY Cortland football team has been honored as both the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Lambert Meadowlands Award Division III winner and the ECAC Division III Team of the Year for the 2008 season.
Cortland claims each award for the first time in school history. The Red Dragons finished 11-2, tying a school single-season record for victories. Under 12th-year head coach Dan MacNeill, Cortland won the New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC) title with a 9-0 record and advanced to the NCAA Division III tournament quarterfinals with two playoff victories before losing at eventual national champion Mount Union. Cortland ranked sixth in the final D3football.com national poll and eighth in the final American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) national poll.
Joining Cortland as Lambert Award winners this season are Penn State (Football Bowl Subdivision), Richmond (Football Championship Subdivision) and California (Pa.) (Div. II). Penn State, James Madison (FCS) and West Chester (Pa.) (Div. II) are the other ECAC Teams of the Year.
Cortland will receive its awards at the annual Eastern College Football Awards Banquet, presented by FieldTurf Tarkett, on Tuesday, February 24. The event will be held at the Pegasus Restaurant at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, N.J.
Established in 1936 as the Lambert Trophy to recognize supremacy in Eastern college football, the award has since grown to recognize the best team in the East in other divisions. In 1957, the Lambert Cup was created to recognize non-Division I-A teams, and in 1966 a Division III award was added. In 1983, the Lambert family decided the Meadowlands Sports Complex would be the best organization with a sincere and involved interest in college athletics to sponsor and manage the award, and since that time, the awards have been known as the Lambert Meadowlands Awards.
To be eligible for the Lambert Meadowlands Award, a school must be located in the East or play half of its schedule against eligible Lambert teams. The territory includes New York, New Jersey, New England and Pennsylvania, while teams in the bordering states of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia and the District of Columbia qualify if half of their schedule features eligible teams.
The ECAC is the nation's largest athletic and the only multi-divisional conference in the country with 321 Division I, II, and III colleges and universities. The ECAC stretches from Maine to North Carolina and west to Illinois.
Final 2008 ECAC Lambert Meadowlands Division III Football Poll
presented by FieldTurf Tarkett
1. Cortland
2. Washington & Jefferson (Pa.)
3. Wesley (Del.)
4. Hobart
5. Ithaca
6. Curry (Mass.)
7. Muhlenberg (Pa.)
8. Salisbury (Md.)
9. Trinity (Conn.)
10. Montclair St. (N.J.)