By MONTE DUTTON

Presbyterian College has a new president, returning to Clinton after a relatively short-term tenure at Mercer University and a long-term one on the PC history faculty.

This may or may not have an appreciable effect on the Blue Hose athletics program for Dr. Anita Olson Gustafson has much to do besides improving the sports teams fielded mostly unsuccessfully at Presbyterian.

I expect PC will do better in the coming school year, due in no small part to the fact that it couldn’t possibly do worse. With the shining exception of men’s tennis, Blue Hose teams fared poorly in the sports where an appreciable number of colleges and universities compete. Presbyterian placed ninth (of 10) in both the men’s and women’s all-sports competitions, finishing ahead of only Winthrop in both.

The men’s basketball program leads NCAA Division I with an active streak of 18 losses. Football has lost 10 straight – 16 in a row in the non-scholarship Pioneer Football League — as Steve Englehart’s second season beckons.

Since PC entered Division I in 2007-08 – and suppressed records of everything that happened before – its leaders have stumbled into one disaster after another. College athletics has changed radically, and Presbyterian College has taken every wrong direction; more scholarships, no scholarships (in football), upgrades, downgrades, the firing of a football coach after the only winning record since 2014 in favor of a radical head coach who left after losing his last nine games, and the addition of such drawing cards as women’s wrestling and acrobatics & tumbling. In fact, PC is building a facility to house wrestling and “acrotumbling” in the parking lot of Templeton Center, thus eliminating most of the places where anyone who might actually consider attending a basketball game or volleyball match might leave his or her vehicle.

I saw this with NASCAR. I saw it for most of a decade at Clinton High School, which has refitted its fleet dramatically and is as beloved as ever in the lower half of Laurens County.

It is impossible to fix a problem without admitting mistakes were made. Presbyterian College has drowned its athletics program by throwing it into an unruly tempest without teaching as much as how to tread water.

Just the other day, I bumped into a prominent sports figure who began a conversation by saying no one cared about PC athletics anymore. I told him it had gotten dramatically worse in the past decade. It has by every possible measure.

I grew up during the Cally Gault football era. He told me more than once that if athletics wasn’t a viable part of the PC educational experience, then they ought to get rid of it. That attitude saved Blue Hose football in the 1960s.

Now a deep dive into the website (GoBlueHose.com) reveals no evidence that Bob Waters, Bill Hill, Wayne Renwick, Dan and David Eckstein, Jimmy Spence, Stanley Gruber, Roy Walker, Clayto Burke, Jody Salmon, Lynn Dreger and hundreds of other memorable gridders ever existed. Never heard of them? That was the plan.

When one of Kevin Kelley’s parting shots was that PC football had never won before he came, he had no way of knowing otherwise.

Those are the unkindest cuts of all.

I may be overly critical because, in spite of everything, damn it, I still care about PC. I remember when Gault’s “fighting Blue Hose spirit” was worthy of more than a smirk.

Presbyterian College caught a break when Englehart, a successful coach and fine man, agreed to take over the sports equivalent of the Italian army. Having inherited a cupboard so bare that mice weren’t interested in its contents, I expect Englehart and PC football to be more competitive this fall, perhaps dramatically so.

PC owes a chance of success to its athletes, not to mention its students, alumni and what few fans are left.

Another inspiration for this rant was the selection of Justin Bethel, who has played in the National Football League since 2012, as Presbyterian’s only member of the Big South Conference Hall of Fame. Bethel, from Blythewood, has played in 196 pro games for five different teams.

So much has changed. Bethel played at PC with a scholarship. In the age of the transfer protocol, the best the Blue Hose can hope for is to develop a player’s skills enough for someone else to pay for his schooling.

Unless something changes, a Bethel will not pass this way again.

I’ve written a baseball novel, The Latter Days, that can be purchased inexpensively at MonteDutton.net, along with other books I’ve written over the years. Insofar as local sports is concerned, you can contribute to the coverage here by contributing either as a patron or by sending a check to DHK Sports, P.O. Box 768, Clinton, S.C. 29325.