RENO, Nevada — Justin Lamson paced outside the visitors locker room, muttering to himself about all the little things the Bobcats could’ve done better. He was certainly satisfied with leading his team to its 17th straight victory. But the senior quarterback knows his offense is only scratching the surface.
The fact that Lamson’s aspirations and Montana State’s realities are both objectively true is a testament to the level Montana State has reached. It’s also an affirmation for what MSU head coach Brent Vigen calls “the gray area” when comparing the best in the Football Championship Subdivision to most of the football programs in the FBS who are not in the Power 4.
Montana State committed 13 penalties and largely sputtered offensively in the second half of Saturday night’s reunion with former head coach Jeff Choate, who now has the unenviable task of rebuilding the once-proud Wolf Pack of Nevada. MSU got out-gained and won the rushing battle 182 yards to 151 yards.
And still, the reigning FCS champions completely controlled the game from the start on the way to a convincing 20-7 victory that could’ve been one or two scores more lopsided had Montana State clicked on all cylinders.
The FBS win is the second over a Mountain West opponent in three seasons under Vigen. The Bobcats knocked off New Mexico 34-31 during an undefeated run to the national championship game in 2024. Vigen’s Bobcats also took Wyoming all the way down to the wire before losing 19-16 in Vigen’s debut as a head coach. And Saturday, MSU held a 17-0 lead at half, the second-biggest lead for an FCS over an FBS at the half in the last six seasons.
Vigen’s been in the FBS. And now he’s coaching a program with as much momentum, buy-in and togetherness within its culture that it’s hard to think of many jobs in the Western United States that Vigen would rather have.
“‘The separation is pretty gray,’ Vigen said. “You see it on the scoreboard. Big Sky teams are competing. Some of the separation can happen up front, but I don’t think it’s necessarily that way. We certainly pride ourselves to win that battle, and we held our own tonight.
“Relatively speaking, I think the top of the FCS and the Group of 6, there’s a pretty good blend of what’s going on right now. And it’s not like that is brand new. It’s been that way. We are just grateful we got this opportunity, we got a chance to play a Group of 6 team, come to their place with a great following and come here and get a W.”
Lamson also has plenty of FBS experience after making stops at Syracuse and Stanford before landing at Montana State.
With Nevada’s quarterback situation shrouded in mystery — Week 1 starter Carter Jones was dressed but did not play, and Choate announced following the loss that he re-aggravated an elbow injury suffered last offseason — Montana State’s advantage at quarterback became further accentuated.
Lamson engineered an almost perfectly executed opening offensive script, capped by a 24-yard strike from Lamson to Dane Steel to stake Montana State to a 7-0 lead the Bobcats would not relinquish.
“All the Big Sky teams are competing with FBS opponents,” Lamson said. “It’s awesome, and I think, you know, you go into a game like this, we hear all about the FBS versus FCS deal, and there’s a chip on your shoulder naturally, you know, and a lot of these guys were under recruited, didn’t get offered by Nevada. I know out of high school, I didn’t get offered by them, and they passed on me. And I know there’s other guys in the locker room that felt the same way.
“So just having that chip on your shoulder, and you try to prove someone wrong every single game, and I think all three phases did a good job of that.”
Nevada won 234 games in 28 total seasons under legendary head coach Chris Ault, including winning two bowl games at the FBS level and nine playoff games in Division I-AA. But Nevada has been searching for any semblance of relevancy in a new college football landscape ravaged by NIL, endless transferring and the stratification, particularly of talent, between the Power 4 and the Group of 6.
When Montana and Montana State play non-scholarship schools like Drake or Butler, it’s easy to wonder who’s farther apart — the Bobcats and the Bulldogs? Or Alabama and Wyoming?
It’s also easy to wonder if schools like some of the Mountain West lower-tier teams wouldn’t be better suited playing in the FCS rather than chasing meaningless bowl games and never actually being in the mix for the College Football Playoff.
“I kind of got on my radio show the other night and I thought it was somewhat insulting, the things that were said about an FCS opponent. Go to Bozeman, Montana, and see how that program is built. They have tremendous facilities, they are well funded, they have a veteran team,” Choate said. “I expect they are going to go on another championship run. But we can’t allow this to define us.”
Vigen has been in the mix at various Western FBS mid-majors, including Fresno State, New Mexico and Oregon State. That’s going to be the case when you win 84.2 percent of your games over your first six seasons.
As Montana State continues to thrive as a university and Bozeman continues to thrive as a metropolis to be, it’s hard to see Vigen bolting for any job that wasn’t in the Power 4. The Bobcats have it rolling, and that was on full display on Saturday night against one of the MSU fan base’s most revered cult heroes.
Vigen lost his first game to the Griz in Missoula in 2021, snapping MSU’s four-game winning streak over the archrival.
Vigen’s only faltered a few times otherwise, putting together an impeccable and almost perfect resume at Montana State. Pretty soon, nobody is going to consider it an upset when the defending national champions roll through a Mountain West opponent. And don’t be surprised if North Dakota State, MSU’s old nemesis that is playing its first season in the Mountain West, runs through the league. The Bison beat Air Force 38-32 to move to 3-0 on Saturday.
“The noise around this game was more the outside world,” Vigen said. “I think for our guys, it truly was about an opportunity to come and play a Mountain West team, play an FBS team, to take on a bigger challenge than we had to this point.
“I think our guys were able to focus on the task at hand, not worry about anything but that, and come down here and do what we did.”
PHOTOS BY BROOKS NUANEZ, SKYLINE SPORTS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
