You won’t get an answer from Coach Cragg or the rest of coaching staff on this one. Their focus is, and should be, on beating the RPI Engineers this Saturday. However, after an impressive 6-0 run and only two games left, this is a question on the minds of many Statesmen alumni, fans and others who follow Division III football.
Since I was a little curious, I did some research. What I found out was that Hobart Football has only been 8-0 once in their 118 year history. You have to go all the way back to 1954 to find the only team that accomplished this feat, winning eight straight games and finishing a perfect 8-0. Overall there have been only five undefeated Hobart teams – 1891 (the inaugural and very short 2-0 season), 1896 (9-0-3), 1915 (5-0-1) and 1957 (6-0) being the others – all-time, so the 2011 squad has a rare opportunity to join a very exclusive fraternity if they finish 8-0.
Although eight wins in a row hasn't happened in 57 years, the last time the Statesmen won seven in a row wasn’t that long ago. It was 2006 in fact when a seven game Hobart win streak was broken by rival Union College, 31-14. You have to go back just two years earlier to the last time Hobart won seven in a row to go undefeated in the Liberty League (LL) en route to a 9-2 overall finish, tying the program record for wins in a season (the team also had 9 overall wins in 2005 and 2008), advancing to the second round of the NCAA playoffs.
Given the current NCAA football tournament format, not to mention a handful of programs that have dominated Division III football (and should move up to DII or FCS) for the past 10-15 years, it’s likely that this run will eventually come to an end at some point (perhaps in a place called Alliance, but I digress).
Regardless of the historic implications cited above, the Statesmen actually don’t even need to go undefeated to win the league and go to the NCAA playoffs (i.e., a 7-1 record would effectively clinch the NCAA automatic bid based on LL tiebreaker rules). That said, it begs the question should ending the year 8-0 even be a priority for Hobart? Why not rest some starters, get healthy, etc before finding out who the first round NCAA opponent will be?
I can't speak for the Coaches or the team but I hope they shoot for 8-0. The company it would place this team in, not to mention making good on the end of the 2010 season, (when Hobart lost to RPI on a last second FG and to Rochester in 2OT when a two point conversion pass fell incomplete) and going into the playoffs on an eight game win streak (and receiving potentially as high as a number two or three seed in their bracket) should be motivation enough to accomplish the same in my opinion.
Can they do it? Time will tell. The final march to perfection (and history) starts this Saturday, November 5.
More on the RPI game later this week. Go 'Bart!
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