MISSOULA, Montana — On a day Montana is scheduled to announce its most recent signing class of football recruits, longtime head coach Bobby Hauck instead retired.
Hauck, who led the Grizzlies to 13 wins and the semifinals of the FCS playoffs this past season, has been the head coach at Montana for a total of 15 years and 14 seasons. He has led Montana to 151 wins and eight Big Sky Conference championships.
Hauck, 61, had a signing day press conference scheduled for 10 a.m. on Wednesday. At 7:30 a.m., the Griz QB Club sent out an email saying the signing day luncheon with boosters that was supposed to follow the press conference had been postponed.
By 8 a.m., Skyline Sports confirmed with more than a dozen independent sources that Hauck will retire as Montana’s head football coach this morning. An official announcement was made at 9:02 a.m.
“There’s never a good time to pull the plug,” Hauck with about 100 people from athletics and the community in attendance. “There’s never a convenient spot on the calendar to announce you are retiring. Today as is good as any.
“I love the Montana Grizzlies. I consider this my football program, whether that’s right our not, tht’s what I consider it. I think I have been a good steward of this football program. We’ve had a lot of success here. But I wasn’t going to have them spread my ashes on the practice field because I dropped dead out there. There comes a juncture where there comes a time to do something else.
“The reasons for it are these. We’ve had an unbelievable run here, both from an on the field success standpoint twice but also from a persona standpoint. We raised our kids here. I have children who are 4th generation alums here. My wife is a third-generation alum here. We have spent a good part of our adult lives here, pouring ourselves into this program. To do it right, there’s no other way.
“It’s been a labor of love and we have given a lot of ourselves to the university and this football program and to this state, which is the place we love the most.”
Bobby Kennedy, who served as Montana’s wide receiver coach last season, has been named the head coach. He will not have an interim tag and will be on a one-year contract. Montana athletic director Kent Haslam said that Kennedy will be the head coach for the 2026 season.
“I joke we are all interim, but jokes aside, he is the head coach this upcoming season and we will evaluate the program at the end of the year,” Haslam said. “He’s our head coach and we will evaluate where we are at at the end of the season.”
Wednesday, Montana will announce the signing of 24 mid-year transfers and a variety of other high school recruits compiled during a season that saw Montana win 11 straight games only to lose its rivalry game at home to Montana State. The Griz then had consecutive dominant performances in the playoffs, thrashing South Dakota State and South Dakota to set up a rematch against MSU in Bozeman. Montana State won that semifinal matchup 48-23 and went on to win its first national championship in 41 years.
The Griz finished with 13 wins for the second time in three seasons. But two rivalry losses in a month combined with the ever-changing, and some would say, eroding landscape of college football was too much for Hauck to want to continue doing a job he’s done consistently and admirably since 2003.
“Dealing with what college football has become is not always enjoyable as a head coach,” Hauck said. “I haven’t been enjoying it enough. I want to enjoy my career and my job. A lot of the head coach stuff in current day Division I college football is not enjoyable. I think it’s the appropriate time, the perfect time for me to retire, turn this over to one of my long, dear friends to replace me. I’m as thrilled as I can be to have such an awesome coaching staff and be able to pour a lot of myself and my life into this place and feel good about where it is and who I’m turning it over to.”
Hauck was first hired as the head coach at Montana in 2003. He led the Griz to 80 wins and seven straight Big Sky Conference championships between 2003 and 2009. He guided Montana to the semifinals of the FCS Playoffs in 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2009, playing in the national title game in 2004, 2008 and 2009. During that stint, Hauck’s last four teams 2006-2009 went 31-1 in Big Sky play.
Hauck left ahead of the 2010 season to take the head coaching job at UNLV. He went 15-49 in Vegas before resigning and taking the special teams coordinator job at San Diego State on Rocky Long’s staff.
Hauck returned to his alma mater ahead of the 2018 season to take over a Griz program that had missed the playoffs two years in a row under Bob Stitt. UM missed the playoffs again in 2018 but bounced back with a 10-win season in 2019 and has made the playoffs every season since. Wednesday, Hauck referenced that Montana had finished the previous three seasons at No. 2, No. 10 and No. 3 in the national polls, respectively.
“I consider North Dakota State to be the gold standard of FCS football and we finished ahead of North Dakota State two of the last three seasons,” Hauck said.
Hauck’s second tenure has included six playoff appearances, two trips to the semis, one trip to the national championship and one Big Sky title. It’s also included two wins in eight games against rival Montana State.
If Hauck does not coach in the Big Sky Conference again, he will finish as the league’s all-time leader in overall victories (151) and conference wins (86).
He was a four-time AFCA FCS Regional Coach of the Year, a four-time Big Sky Coach of the Year, and a three-time finalist for the Eddie Robinson FCS Coach of the Year Award.
Under Hauck, the Grizzlies achieved excellence both on the field and in the classroom. Since his return to UM in 2018 Hauck’s Grizzlies posted the highest grade point averages in program history, averaging over a 3.0 GPA or better for 15-consecutive semesters. In that time the Griz have had a conference-high 243 Academic All-Big Sky honorees. A conference-high seven Grizzlies have also been named Academic All-American.
Hauck recently concluded his tenure as President of the American Football Coaches Association.
“I really have no idea what I’m going to do,” Hauck said. “I don’t know what retirement means to me. Any time I have been out of coaching, the phone has always rang and I had something to do. This is really the only time I can remember where I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow or next week or next month. I know I’ll be at the lake in July (laughs).
“I’m not exactly sure what I want to do. I don’t know if that includes football or not. I love football. I dearly, dearly love football. It’s been a passion my entire life. But I do know that I don’t want to be a head coach. We wouldn’t be sitting here today if I had any desire to be a head coach because if I ever wanted to be a head coach, it would be here at the University of Montana. I don’t want to do that anymore. It does not have allure for me anymore.
“It’s not really for me to say but I’m hopeful that coaching colleagues around the country and people who follow Grizzly football will say job well done. I’m grateful for the time here and the opportunity and I hope that feeling is mutual.”
