By MONTE DUTTON

It should go without saying. When a college football team wins its seventh game in a row, it’s not a miracle anymore.

Presbyterian College is just good. The Blue Hose took the crease out of Stetson on a homecoming Saturday in front of an announced 7,435 fans. The score was 42-7, and it was probably the biggest crowd at Bailey Memorial Stadium, since, well, the last time PC played Newberry on Nov. 11, 2006.

I’m not sure there were really 7,435 there since the stadium, opened in 2002, is popularly listed as possessing a seating capacity of 6,500. It wasn’t packed, but it was more crowded than any game in recent memory.

At long last, Newberry College may be beyond the point of sorrow. The Blue Hose don’t play the now-Wolves anymore, and few around the college want to talk about it. PC is 7-0, 3-0 in the Pioneer Football League, 11-0 since another flattening of Stetson, 42-14, on Oct. 26, 2024.

Under fourth-year head coach Steve Englehart, the Blue Hose are the best they’ve been in a while (like, since the year after my birth), and the absence of the nearby Wolves isn’t going to put the slightest damper on that which presently transpires.

PC doesn’t give scholarships. It doesn’t seem to need them.

Englehart has none of the charisma of his predecessor, Kevin Kelley, who sold PC oceanfront property in Arizona. Englehart doesn’t portray himself as a genius, though he has assembled a diverse, multitalented group of players and coaches that Bill Walsh would have envied. Every week, a little more of the world takes notice.

The team and the coach have grown up together and learned how to win, undaunted by long odds.

Englehart is not backing off.

“We had a lot of mistakes and penalties, so I’m not happy about that,” he said. “We ripped into them at halftime like we were losing. Twenty-one to nothing is all fine and dandy, but the way we played, it wasn’t all that great.

“It doesn’t seem like we’ve been on this winning streak for an entire year, but our guys are just committed. … That’s what type of team we have when nobody cares who gets the credit.”

Presbyterian, the smallest school in Division I football by enrollment, is outscoring, outrushing and outpassing the opposition. It is averaging more than 40 points and allowing less than 15. At its stately home, the Blue Hose have won by scores of 42-14, 76-3, 41-0 and 42-7.

In the farflung Pioneer Football League, which was nationwide before it was cool, only PC and Drake, which the Blue Hose don’t play, are 3-0. Dayton, which PC visits next, and Butler, which it has already beaten, are 3-1. Only one other team in the league is within two games of PC’s 7-0 overall mark. The Flyers are 5-2.

Stetson (3-5, 2-2) didn’t score until early in the fourth quarter on Gunner Chenier’s 26-yard touchdown pass to Cayden Betts. By then Presbyterian’s Justin Montgomery had already rushed for three touchdowns.

“Whoever has the hot hand is going to get the ball. We know that,” said Montgomery, a sophomore who, like quarterback Collin Hurst, is from Davie, Fla. “We just want to play. We’ve had terrible seasons in the past, and now we’re on the right track. We just want to play football. That’s all we hear about in the locker room.”

Hurt completed19/27 passes for 236 yards, a touchdown and an interception. To date, that’s 18 of the former and four of the latter. Backup Ty Englehart was 4/4 for 57 yards. Six receivers caught at least two passes, led by Cincere Gill with six for 107 yards.

Montgomery rushed for 54 yards, Antonio Wright for 44, Englehart for 29. The season leader, Zach Switzer, settled for 19. This offense gets around to everyone.

“Winning helps,” Englehart said. “It solves all the problems that you have. Everybody’s excited, regardless of how we get the job done.

“You play the game and you win, but the next week success doesn’t mean anything.”

Take a look at the stats here.

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