On October 3rd, Rensselaer’s football team engaged in a grotesque 83-0 pummeling of the hapless Hilbert College Hawks 83-0, setting a new record for the program's largest margin of victory. The Engineers broke a scoring record that existed while the forward pass was still in its infancy. At times it felt almost uncomfortable to watch, but hundreds of spectators saw the morbid spectacle unfold within the East Campus Athletic Village.
The magnitude of the carnage was staggering. Of the 58 plays Rensselaer had on offense, one in five of them ended in a touchdown. Six of the twelve Rensselaer touchdown drives lasted less than a minute. Hilbert meanwhile managed only two first downs and six yards of offense the entire game. Poor snaps, a non-existent offensive line, dropped catches, and botched punts plagued Hilbert throughout the entire game.
The game itself was a foregone conclusion. The Hawks have never won a football game in their five-year history besides an unofficial 14-7 win over SUNY Brockport’s JV team. Their official roster names only 51 players, while Rensselaer lists over 120, and they only brought forty to Troy. Hilbert’s quarterback tripled as the team's punter and kicker.
The Hawks originally planned to compete in the Eastern Collegiate Football Conference, but the conference folded before they had a chance to compete. In 2024 their backup plan, the Empire 8 conference, then agreed to send Hilbert to the Liberty League to solve both conferences’ scheduling issues. In a grim sign of things to come, Rensselaer visited the Hawks last year and obliterated them 69-14—their highest-ever point tally away from home.
The game cannot be broken down quarter by quarter, but was defined instead by which players on the Rensselaer depth chart were on the field. With Rensselaer up 21-0 at the beginning of the second quarter at Hilbert’s 5-yard line after a Hawks punt went terribly awry, the Engineers began resting much of their starters in an apparent act of grace. Running back Kayden White did not see any action after the first quarter, and Frankie Garbolino subbed in for starting quarterback Justin McCormack early in the second quarter after Rensselaer extended their lead to 34-0.
Pulling starters is the unofficial mercy rule in football. Rensselaer used this practice against WPI in a recent Transit Trophy, stemming the flow of points and thwarting what could have been the largest margin of victory against their rivals. This time, however, the backups continued right where the starters left off, vivisecting the Hawks drive after drive.
Rensselaer was impenetrable. On one play, Garbolino found tight end Grayson Hunter alone in the Hilbert backfield, who promptly dashed past three defensive backs on his way for his first touchdown as an Engineer. Garbolino opted to run the ball himself on one play, breaking tackles from four Hawks defenders on a 38-yard jaunt to the endzone—his second rushing touchdown of the day. When Rensselaer received the kickoff to start the third quarter, Nate Ehui—coming on for the last time this game as a kick returner—ran straight through the middle of the field and into the endzone completely unscathed.
Describing the Engineers’ defense as dominant would be nothing short of an understatement. Hilbert’s 39 rushing attempts were met with crunching tackles, ending the day with a net loss of eight yards on the ground. Fifteen Engineers recorded a tackle for a loss of yards in the game, including four sacks.
Hilbert had one play they almost could look back upon fondly. On a third down, the Hawks quarterback scrambled past Engineer linebackers and almost dodged both of the safeties before being brought down at Rensselaer’s 36-yard line. However, a holding call on a Hawks lineman wiped the play off the drive. That run was the only time a Hilbert ball carrier made it past the 50-yard line.
Passing plays fared no better. Hilbert receivers could only manage a couple of steps before being taken down by a defensive player. One attempt saw Hilbert’s quarterback make a sideways pass to their running back, only for Lance Hersh to brush past the Hawk attempting to block him and wallop the running back at the line of scrimmage. Out of the five completed passes made by Hilbert, they managed to gain a paltry total of 14 yards.
Third-stringers were rotated onto the field by the third quarter, including Ethan Gilson, Rensselaer’s third quarterback of the game. With under seven minutes left in the fourth quarter, running back Sergio Hernandez found his way into the endzone to set the score to 83-0, cementing the scoreline as the largest margin of victory in the football team’s history, eclipsing the previous record, a 77-0 victory over Bard—which then went by St. Stephen’s—in 1909.
Rensselaer will travel to west to play against Buffalo State next weekend, while Hilbert will face St. Lawrence before playing Buffalo the week after. St. Lawrence and Buffalo State are currently the third and second-worst teams in the Liberty League and present the best chance for the Hawks to recover from last week’s battering. The box score can be found here.
