So what now? Just last week there was newfound excitement with the Idaho State football team. The first winning season since 2018 was in play and there were even talks about possibly making the playoffs for the first time in 41 years. But after a 77-42 drubbing at the hands of a previous 3-win Eastern Washington team Saturday on the red turf of Roos Field in Cheney, Wash.
, there’s suddenly a much different feeling around campus. “That was a good old-fashioned butt whipping and sometimes you gotta take your medicine,” said Idaho State head coach Cody Hawkins in the immediate aftermath of arguably the worst loss of his two-year tenure. “Everybody in our conference is capable of beating the heck out of everybody else, especially with the way we played today.
We knew the margin of error was going to be pretty slim. They’ve been pretty prolific on offense all year. Even though I didn’t think it was going to go that far in that direction.
” The 77 points are the most the Bengals (5-6 overall, 3-4 Big Sky) have given up to a non-FBS opponent since Portland State walloped them 77-10 at its place all the way back on Oct. 6, 2012. To put that in perspective, Hawkins hadn’t even started his coaching career yet.
He was only one year removed from playing professionally for the Stockholm Mean Machines in Sweden. Now while ISU has certainly given up more points to FBS programs like Utah State (78) and UNLV (80), and suffered its fair share of lopsided losses over the years, i.
