By MONTE DUTTON
For Presbyterian College football, the pressure never lets up. For every Saturday that the Blue Hose win a game, the need for another multiplies.
Seven weeks in, Presbyterian still has its perfect season intact. The Blue Hose goal is the Pioneer Football League championship and the automatic berth in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs that comes with it.
Presbyterian has a 5-10, redshirt-sophomore quarterback, Collin Hurst, who has completed his passes at a .689 percentage for 1,743 yards and 18 touchdowns. Six receivers have caught at least 10 of them, led by seniors Cincere Gill and Dominic Kibby, who have combined for 50 receptions.
The leading rusher, another senior, Zach Switzer, has 515 yards for eight touchdowns and a per-carry average of 7.3 yards. Switzer is the grandson of Barry Switzer, who won three national championships as head coach at Oklahoma and a Super Bowl with the Dallas Cowboys.
Yet if you’re looking for the soul of this surprise, consider Boyce Bankhead, a senior linebacker from Columbia and leading tackler with 55.
Head coach Steve Englehart said Bankhead “really, really exemplifies what you would want a PC football player to be, to come here, work really hard, be a great teammate and be ready for an opportunity.”
When Bankhead was a freshman out of A.C. Flora High School, he traveled, but the reason he traveled was to help with “managerial types of duties.”
“He’s a PC guy, true and true,” said Englehart. “He’s a real man of PC who has earned the right to go out and perform.”
Englehart, his staff and players can ill afford to let up. They are 7-0 in a regular season that has five games to go and 3-0 in a PFL schedule that also has five more tests. PC ranks 16th in one national poll (FCS coaches) and 19th in the other (Stats Perform).
To win the league and make the playoffs, PC must keep on winning. One loss and poof! It all disappears. One other team, Drake University of Des Moines, Iowa, is 3-0 (4-2 overall). The Blue Hose and Bulldogs do not play each other. As long as Presbyterian remains undefeated overall, it’s going to remain in the national rankings and hold the inside track for a playoff berth, but there’s only one spot.
For the first time, the nation’s other non-scholarship league, the Ivy, has voted to participate in the playoffs. Three schools – Harvard (5-0, 2-0), Penn (4-1, 2-0) and Princeton (3-2, 2-0) – are tied for first place. The Crimson and the Tigers play at Princeton on Saturday at noon. The Blue Hose take on Dayton (5-2, 3-1) in Ohio at the same time. The Flyers fell to Butler, 23-17, last Saturday. PC beat Butler (5-3, 3-1), 31-25, the week before.
Presbyterian opened the season with a 15-10 victory over the Southern Conference leader, Mercer (5-1, 4-0), on Aug. 30. yet the Bears are now ranked higher than the Blue Hose in both national polls. Mercer is 14th according to the coaches and 17th by Stats Perform.
The Blue Hose have to keep on winning, and Englehart knows it.
Presbyterian pounded Stetson (3-5, 2-2) on homecoming, 42-7, last Saturday. Englehart said his team needed to do a better job on kickoff returns.
“That’s the one unit we’re not quite clicking on,” he said. “It’s never the same people. It’s just one guy here, one guy there. You can never play a perfect game, but that’s what we’re shooting for. Shoot for the stars and land on the moon. We’re always going to hold them accountable and shoot for perfection.
“Overall, it was a pretty good performance, a homecoming win in front of the biggest crowd that we’ve had since we’ve been here. We feel a lot of momentum.”
Englehart is demanding. He has to be.
Dayton, Flyers because Wilbur and Orville Wright invented airplanes there, is 2-2 against Presbyterian, but the Blue Hose have won the last two meetings, 20-17 in overtime in 2023 and 28-7 last year.
The Flyers “have their backs against the wall a little bit,” Englehart said. “They’re going to come out really motivated, and they’re a really good football team.”
Two, Drew Van Vleet and Bryce Schondelmyer, split time at quarterback, combining for 16 completions in 30 attempts for 156 yards and two touchdowns in the six-point loss to Butler. Luke Hansen rushed for 105 yards in 15 carries.
“[Dayton] plays very sound, they play very hard and they’re physical,” Englehart said. “Their defensive line gets off the ball, they penetrate and they have a lot of tackles for loss. I just think they’re a good, well-rounded football team. It’s going to be a really tough game for us to go on the road and get.”
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