You learn some interesting things writing a blog like this.
Things like this: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute — a classic engineering school, and mostly not thought of as an athletic powerhouse — has been fielding football teams (not quite continuously) since 1886.
This week we hearken back, through my grandpa’s hand, and revisit a rare and noteworthy highlight from a particularly difficult stretch for the school’s football program.
October 23, 1965. Future Mets pitcher Al Leiter is born in Toms River, N.J.
A Homecoming win is always a nice thing, if you’re into high school or college football.
(My high school was more likely to be a patsy than a victor in Homecoming games; we were the sort of school other teams wanted to play on their Homecomings. The one time in high school that we won our Homecoming game, the other school went out of business at the end of the year.)
Anyway, RPI’s victory over Middlebury College on Oct. 23, 1965, must have sent the Homecoming crowd in Troy home happy.
But, looking at the records, this one meant a lot more than your average win: Going into the game, the Engineers hadn’t won a football game in more than six years. Most of them hadn’t been tremendously close, either.
Following a 21-0 win over Union on Oct. 17, 1959, the RPI gridders lost their last four games of 1959 (scoring a combined two points); all eight games in 1960; all seven apiece in ’61 and ’62; all six in ’63; six in ’64; and four more to start the 1965 season.
(In football-speak, they did manage to kiss their sister at one point, earning a single 20-20 tie against Nichols on Oct. 10, 1964.)
The nadir of this stretch had to have been an 82-6 pasting by Vermont — at home in Troy — on Sept. 29, 1962. For comparison’s sake, the RPI squad only managed to put 76 points on the board in the 1961, 1962 and 1963 seasons combined.
So after the final whistle sounded on Oct. 23, 1965, there must have been some serious celebrations in the dorms, frat houses and beer cellars of Troy.
The student paper, The Polytechnic, got in on the act a few days later with an above-the-fold tease and five pages of coverage:
The Engineers wouldn’t win another game in 1965, but would post records of 5-4 and 4-4 in 1966 and 1967 — positively Lombardian by RPI standards.
(Rejiggering the schedule had something to do with it. Haverford College, a team that hadn’t been on RPI’s schedule during the down years, conveniently showed up in time to get walloped 57-0 in 1966 and 61-14 in 1967. A lot of events in 1966-67 made people think the world was turning upside down; RPI football winning a game 57-0 must have been one of them.)
The one remaining question, for Hope Street purposes, is whether my grandpa or my dad actually happened to be there for the big day.
The answer appears to be no. My dad only attended a few RPI football games over the years, and those because membership in school organizations required him to. He was not in the house for RPI’s only win of his five-year tenure:
I did not see the game, but I know it was a great excuse to party that night, although no excuses ever seemed necessary.
My grandpa’s calendar doesn’t record any trip to and from Troy that weekend. And if my dad wasn’t at the game, my grandpa surely wouldn’t have gone either.
So the calendar entry for Oct. 23, 1965, is simply a reflection of my grandpa’s amazement at a noteworthy and long-awaited event.
Would wonders never cease?
Hope Street 
You do your research well, so I assume 42 straight losses is correct (I thought I remembered a number of 49). In any event, that compares pretty favorably (or unfavorably, depending on how you look at it) with the all-time NCAA college record: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/apsu/2017/09/12/how-austin-peay-losing-streak-compares-longest-college-football-history/657790001/
I remember the partying!
RB
I don’t know how ties count in the official reckoning of losing streaks. Could be that the one tie RPI managed in 1964 breaks their losing streak into two less impressive losing streaks.
The “looking at the records” phrase links to a year-by-year account of RPI’s football records. I re-counted and still got 42 losses (plus the tie).
OK, I’ve actually been thinking about this – how long before some schools like this drop football, ostensibly because they’re concerned that it causes brain damage but more likely because they’re not very good and it’s not a big deal at the school?
The list of schools that have already dropped football is pretty impressive:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_college_football_teams
I dunno if the schools care that deeply about brain damage as long as they’re not liable … but if the football program doesn’t pay for itself, schools don’t seem too hesitant to drop it.
Oh, that’s right – didn’t your alma mater get rid of their football team? Perhaps they were ahead of the curve. Although from Wikipedia’s list, most of the Division I teams eliminated since 1980 were from private Northeastern colleges and public California universities.
Long losing streaks are, in many ways, more interesting than long winning streaks. My University of Wisconsin Badgers had a 23-game winless streak covering the entire 1967 and 1968 seasons (in ’67 they managed to tie Iowa), which was broken in the fourth game of the 1969 season, a game I remember listening to on the radio during my first season of Badger fandom. People are still talking about it up here. The guy who caught the winning touchdown pass was recently honored as part of the 100th anniversary celebration of the UW football stadium. (The guy who threw it was nowhere to be found.)
Wisconsin is a pretty big-time athletic school. It wonders me that they managed to get that bad for that long. I guess even big schools fall into losing ruts sometimes, though that’s a pretty extreme one.