National Signing Day

Hauck adjusts to changes in recruiting process in second stint at Montana

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The last time Bobby Hauck went through a recruiting cycle at Montana, the early signing period was just for junior college transfers, nobody was on Twitter, and the coach could depend on Eastern Montana to bolster his offensive line consistently. 

None of those things are true anymore. The story of how Hauck and his staff adapted to those changes and, in some cases, used them to their advantage. is the story of Montana’s 2019 recruiting class. 

Despite the changes, Hauck signed 21 players with the opening of the early signing period on Wednesday, the most ever signed by Montana or Montana State since the NCAA added the new signing day last December. And Hauck thinks the first portion of his first full recruiting class in his second stint at Montana resembled the ones that spurred the Grizzlies to dominance in his first tenure.

“I really like this group of kids,” said Hauck, who won 80 games and seven Big Sky titles between 2003 and 2009 in his first stretch coaching his alma mater. “We got a lot of big-framed, running guys, which is sort of our way of building a football team. … You go back and you look at how we were back in the day when we were really a dominant football team, we had big-framed guys and guys that could run at every position. We’re just going to throw these guys in the weight room and see what comes out.”

Montana head coach Bobby Hauck gives a high five to kicker Tim Semenza after a made kick earlier this season/ by Brooks Nuanez

This was only the second year that high school players were allowed to sign early rather than waiting for National Signing Day the first Wednesday in February. That locks players into their commitments earlier and prevents other schools from trying to poach them away.

If coaches can identify the players they want, and build good relationships with them early, it’s a way to finish up recruiting and move on, knowing that the group that you want is in place.

That’s exactly what Hauck thinks the Grizzlies did.

“I’m kind of fired up about the way the structure is now. It moves things up a little bit, just in terms of kids making their decisions. You don’t have to spend time defusing things at the end. We had a couple here the last couple of days where you start getting bombs thrown,” Hauck said, referring to other coaches making late offers to his commitments.

For example, cornerback Corbin Walker, from Renton, Washington, had been committed to the Griz since November 1, but Big Sky Conference champions Eastern Washington tried to flip him with an offer on December 17, two days before signing day.

Now that Walker — and the other players in the class — have officially signed National Letters of Intent with Montana, Hauck won’t have to worry about other schools trying the same thing.

“I just think it’s cleaned a lot of that stuff up,” Hauck said. “The kids that want to sign get done. We’d just as soon have recruiting in our rearview mirror so we can move on to our next season’s preparation rather than delaying that another six weeks.”

Montana took advantage of the early opportunities. The 21 players the Griz signed on Wednesday — with another, Arizona prep offensive lineman Colin Dreis, joining on Thursday — was the most of any program in the Big Sky.

Northern Colorado, with 19 early signees, was next closest, and the majority of the programs in the conference were in the single digits. Montana State signed 17. 

“I think it’s great to get things going,” running backs coach and recruiting coordinator Justin Green said. “Most of these guys have just finished up playoffs and championships, and with the early signing period, they’re not twiddling their thumbs all the way until February.”

Montana recruiting coordinator Justin Greenl/by Brooks Nuanez

The other big change in recruiting since Hauck was last at Montana is the overarching importance of social media and technology.

Recruits use Twitter and other services to reach out to coaches, promote themselves, announce decisions and, because they’re high school students, broadcast every aspect of their life.

Hauck, like any good veteran college football coach, made sure to announce that he wasn’t a fan.

“We tend to like guys more, talking about our kind of guys, that aren’t real big social media guys,” Hauck said. “I don’t have any problem with Snapgram, Twitter, whatever. My kids do it, but social media, Twitter, all that, it’s not the real world. I think they get polluted a little bit. We de-pollute them when they get here.”

But for better or worse, the internet runs recruiting these days, and the Montana staff has been able to take advantage, as well.

“It actually helps us probably more with the vetting process,” Green said. “You get a good look at a kid and what he thinks about, what he talks about. Some guys have a little bit of an alter ego on social media, so you get to really kind of learn more about the kid. … The other thing that has helped a lot is [highlight-sharing service] Hudl. Hudl has really transformed our ability to be able to see anyone in the country.”

Green said that a good Hudl tape will get him to watch game tape, and from there potentially to contact a recruit.

Of course, having the tape of just about every high school football player in the country with even the slightest college dreams just a click away means a lot of work for a recruiting coordinator who has to cut through a lot of film to find the players he really wants.

“At some point, how many plays can you really look at?” Green asked. “If it’s the case that I don’t like the first five plays, it’s going to be hard to get me to watch the next one. … I always joke around, I want something that I can’t do right now. As a coach who hasn’t touched a weight or conditioned, I could score a 1-yard touchdown right now. So, give me the guy who scores from 99 yards, or the guy who ran over six guys to get into the end zone, as far as a running back is concerned. You can cipher those guys out.”

The third big change for Hauck this year was a little more local.

One calling card of Hauck’s mid-2000s teams was a dominant, physical offensive line.

The Griz did not have that last season, to put it mildly, and it affected the entire offense.

Even with projected improvement from several of the young starters who were thrown into the fire last season, it’s still a major weak area on the team, and one the Griz were expected to go heavy on in recruiting.

They did — just not in the way Hauck was accustomed to in his first years at Montana.

“The one thing I am seeing is there aren’t as many big kids in Montana anymore,” Hauck said. “It used to be you could pretty much recruit, for sure, your offensive linemen in-state, and there aren’t as many of those guys, there just aren’t.”

Despite 11 of 22 players in the class overall being in-state players, just one of the five offensive linemen the Griz picked up in the Early Signing Period was from Montana — Dillon Botner of Whitefish. 

Hauck was forced to go out of state to get the others — Dreis, Johnny Bothel of Bellevue, Washington, Dumitru Salagor, of Moldova via Vancouver, Washington, and JUCO transfer Kordell Pillans of Kodiak Island, Alaska by way of Mesa CC in Arizona.

“If you look at the way the population of the state has shifted and how Eastern Montana has become pretty sparse, population-wise, and a lot of those big farm kids of Scandinavian ancestry we used to get in here, they aren’t out there anymore,” Hauck said. “Those farms are huge and there’s fewer people, and towns like Glasgow and Plentywood and those places are much smaller than they used to be, and on down the line. There just aren’t as many people in Montana, at least that half of the state.”

 

About Andrew Houghton

Andrew Houghton grew up in Washington, DC. He graduated from the University of Montana journalism school in December 2015 and spent time working on the sports desk at the Daily Tribune News in Cartersville, Georgia, before moving back to Missoula and becoming a part of Skyline Sports in early 2018.

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