Rosenbach is one of the headlining members for the Montana Pro Football Hall of Fame and he joined Colter Nuanez on Nuanez Now, 102.9 FM ESPN MT to tell stories of his football life.

Steve Okoniewski hails from Bremerton, Washington and has made Green Bay, Wisconsin his home for most of the last three decades. But the former University of Montana All-American offensive tackle knows one thing for certain: coming to the Last Best Place changed his life for the better.

His path from the University of Washington to Everett Community College to Missoula launched a six-year professional career that led him to Atlanta, Buffalo, Green Bay and St. Louis.

And that strong affinity for the Treasure State also helped Okoniewski launch his second career as a high school coach and administrator. After retiring from the NFL and Canadian Football League in the summer of 1978, he began his second career in Deer Lodge. He moved to Wibaux for a short time before returning to Wisconsin. Yet Okoniewski longs for Montana every day.

“The best move I ever made in my life when I moved from the Seattle area to Missoula, Montana,” Okoniewski said in January of 2020 about eight months short of his 71^st birthday. “If it wasn’t for that move, it’s hard to say what my life would’ve been. It’s the ultimate best decision I ever made in my life.”

Okoniewksi’s football career had its share of highs — like earning All-American honors for the 1970 Griz as Montana posted a 10-0 regular season record or getting selected with the 41^st overall pick by Atlanta in the 1972 NFL Draft— and its lows; he never played a snap in a preseason game before the Falcons cut him as a rookie and he seemed to always be on the move.

With each new city, whether chasing professional dreams or coaching high school football or serving as a high school principal, Okoniewski has always felt the pull of the Rocky Mountains and the Blackfoot River.

His love for Montana first originated as a kid fishing the Madison River during a family trip to Yellowstone National Park. When he was 17 and about to begin his college career for Jim Owens and the Washington Huskies, Okoniewski and his adventurous friends loaded up their 1953 Chevy and took a trip through the heart of one of America’s most beautiful stretches of land from Missoula to Bozeman to the Paradise Valley to Yellowstone National Park.

When Okoniewski needed  “fresh start” after suffering an injury that cost him the 1969 season at Washington, he didn’t forget about Montana. So the 6-foot-3, 260-pound offensive tackle bought into former UM assistant Jack Elway’s recruiting to come to Montana to play for Jack Swarthout and a Griz team fresh off the first of two straight undefeated seasons.

At UM, Okoniewski blasted holes for All-American running back Arnie Blancas in Swarthout’s Wishbone offense, earning a reputation as one of the best and meanest offensive linemen in the West. Although he played defensive line for the duration of his NFL and CFL career, Okoniewski credits the foundation he built playing offensive line with the Griz, but more specifically the found memories he made in the Garden City, for setting the stage for the rest of his life.

“Montana is the absolute best,” the Class of 2021 inductee to the Montana Football Hall of Fame said. “The people I met like Jack Swarthout and Jack Elway…I knew Montana before Montana was discovered.

“The beauty of that state, the people, I have such a love for the state of Montana.”

Okoniewski grew up in Bremerton, a town of about 35,000 in Western Washington an hour ferry ride from downtown Seattle. Bremerton is a tough town, home to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and the Bremerton Annex of Naval Base Kitsap. The military influence was not lost on Norm Van Brocklin, the head coach of the Falcons who drafted Okoniewksi early in the 2^nd round of the 1972 NFL Draft.

Before Okoniewski could compare stories about his hometown with Van Brocklin, he first had to find himself as a football player and a young man. After two quarters at Washington in 1968, he left the school and attended Everett Community College north of Seattle. There, he played with future NFL Pro Bowl running back Terry Metcalf among other standout players.

After a semester at Everett, Okoniewski returned to Washington but suffered what amounted to a season-ending knee injury in 1969. It proved to be the last straw.

“The University of Washington was just dreadful for me. They weren’t successful. They were 1-9 my last year,” Okoniewski said. “Football wasn’t any fun there at all. It was great fun in 1968 at Everett Community College. We had a great team.

“I went back to the University of Washington in 1969 and I’m limping around Seattle in the rain. It was just miserable.”

Jim Nordstrom, one of Okoniewski’s friends, was playing at Montana. Swarthout, Elway and UM offensive line coach Bill Betcher spent plenty of time recruiting the junior college circuit on the West Coast in those days. And Okoniewski felt like he needed an escape.

“I said to hell with it. You had the Vietnam War going on and it was a really free thinking, get back to nature thing,” Okoniewski said. “I always loved Montana. And Missoula was perfect for me. Going fishing, being in Missoula, floating the river, hunting, I have so many great memories back there. It’s a breath of fresh air beyond that.”

During his two seasons playing for the Griz, Okoniewski dominated. He earned first-team All-American honors from Kodak, the Associated Press and United Press International as a junior and senior. His final season with the Griz in 1971, he earned the team’s Paul Weskamp Award as the team’s outstanding offensive lineman. He was named to the Big Sky Conference’s Silver Anniversary in 1988, commemorating the best players in the history of the first 25 years of the league.

“Okoniewski is strong, athletic and plays with an edge,” Swarthout told the Billings Gazette in an article in the spring of 1971. “He is everything you want in an offensive lineman.”

During Swarthout’s nine seasons at Montana, he assembled a talented group through heavily recruiting junior college transfers to pair with his in-state talent. Missoula became a consistent stop for NFL scouts on trips to and from Seattle.

During Swarthout’s tenure between 1967 and 1975, 14 Griz went to play professional football. Okoniewski remembers players would never know when an NFL scout might be on campus for an impromptu workout. So the weight room warrior always tried to stay in his best possible shape so he could run, jump or lift in front of anyone that might give him a chance to extend his football career beyond the Big Sky.

Leading up to the draft, Okonowieski worked nights at Vince’s, a popular local Missoula restaurant. The night before the draft, which was in February back then, legendary NFL GM Bob Beathard called Okoniewski. Beathard had been the head scout for the Falcons from 1968 until 1971.

“Bobby told me I’d be pretty happy the next day,” Okoniewski said.

The next day when Okoniewski was mopping a floor. Vince’s owner, Vince Baronne, came into the restaurant and said, “Steve, I don’t think you will have to clean up this place anymore.”

“Then Bob Beathard tells me to get on a plane and boom, I fly out of Missoula to Atlanta,” Okoniewski said.

“A total transformation of your life. I’m just this poor college schlup mopping floors and the next day, I’m in Atlanta meeting with Norm Van Brocklin. That was amazing. And eye opening.”

Van Brocklin, the College and Pro Football Hall of Fame player turned coach, had served in the Navy during World War II. He had consequently spent time stationed in Bremerton during his service.

“After that first meeting, Norm Van Brocklin says, ‘You are from Bremerton, Washington? That’s one tough town,’” Okoniewski said. “He was stationed in Bremerton for two years. He used to tell stories about fighting with the Marines. I realized right away this wasn’t Jack Swarthout from Montana. This NFL is a little different deal.”

A standout performance in a college all-star game a month before the draft helped Okoniewski play his way into the second round. But he suffered an arch injury in the game.

When he reported to Atlanta, “I could barely do a toe raise.”

That combined with the heat and humidity of his first NFL training camp in Greenville, South Carolina made Okoniewski’s stint with the Falcons short lived.

“It was a race between the heat and the humidity every day,” Okoniewski said. “It would get up to around 90 for both. I would go into practice at 253 pounds, come out at 238. I had this arch injury and I couldn’t move at all laterally. I was just a total failure in the eyes of the Atlanta Falcons, I’m sure. But I never was able to perform so they cut me.”

That roster move helped Okoniewski’s path lead him to a front row seat to watch the rise of one of the most talented and mercurial players in NFL history. Stan Jones, a two-way starter for George Halas’s Chicago Bears in the 1950s and 1960s, was the defensive line coach for the Buffalo Bills in 1972. Jones had been through Missoula to scout Okoniewski a few years earlier.

“Stan Jones orchestrated I got picked up by Buffalo so all of a sudden, boom, I’m flying up from Atlanta to New York,” Okoniewski said. “You want to talk about a culture shock. You are down there in Atlanta and it’s peach trees and Southern glory and if you have ever been to Buffalo, it’s like Butte, America on a bad day with how tough it is and the brutal weather.

“There was 28 Okoniewskis in the phone book (laughs). My people. I love the place.”

O.J. “The Juice” Simpson had showed the promise of a Heisman Trophy winner out of USC his first three years in the NFL. But when Okoneiwski arrived in Buffalo for the 1972 season, Simpson’s star began to shoot into the stratosphere.

That season, he had his first 1,000-yard campaign, finishing with 1,251 yards and six touchdowns in a 14-game season. The following year, he set an NFL record by racing his way to 2,003 yards and 12 touchdowns. To this day, Simpson’s 1973 campaign is one of seven 2,000-yard seasons in NFL history.

“We were playing in the stadium where ‘The Natural’ was filmed. And O.J. was certainly that,” Okoniewski said. “War Memorial Stadium, in that town, it was so pretty and downright earthy.

“But they told you always to wear your helmet coming off the field because these guys would drop full cans of beer on you if you weren’t playing well.

“O.J. starts going nuts, taking the NFL by storm at that point. He was dominating everything. Howard Cosello is in our locker room all the time. Just the attention he generated was pretty amazing.”

Okoniewski was not on Buffalo’s active roster by the end of the 1973 season. But in the preseason before his second NFL season, Okoniewski had one of the best performances in the NFL to date, beating legendary Green Bay Packers offensive lineman Gale Gillingham for three tackles behind the line of scrimmage.

Fast forward to the summer of 1974. Okoniewski had just gone through a divorce. He was decompressing in Missoula, doing his favorite thing: fishing on the Blackfoot River. He would work out in the mornings, fish and canoe in the afternoons, go out at night.

But his NFL future was uncertain at best with the league’s owners locked in a labor dispute with the players’ association and his roster spot in Buffalo far from guaranteed.

“It was like, ‘Whoa man, life can’t really get much better than this,” Okoniewski said of that summer of ’74 in Missoula. “So one night, I’m sitting there at Stockman’s Bar slugging down a ham and cheese omelet and some guy comes up to me with a newspaper, sticks it in my face and says, ‘You are going to be a Packer.’

“They must’ve been impressed by that preseason game the year before (laughs).”

Because Buffalo is a working class town with manufacturing roots, Okoniewski thought the Bills players likely wouldn’t “break the line” and return to work instead of striking. So before he got the news of his trade to Green Bay, Okoniewski contemplated retiring.

Partly because of the strike and partly because of a 5-7-2 record in 1973, head coach and general manager Dan Devine had orchestrated nine trades that off-season to bolster Green Bay’s roster. One trade sent starting quarterback Scott Hunter to Buffalo. Okoniewski was part of the package.

Once he learned of his opportunity with the Packers, he learned a group of veteran players were ready to play. Okoniewski knew it was a chance for a fresh start. And the new opportunity proved a chance for real playing time with many established players staying on strike.

Shortly before he got the news of the trade, Okoniewski fell from a cliff face along the Blackfoot, sliding a couple dozen yards before falling in the river. So he showed up to Title Town with a hip to ankle scab along the side of one of his legs.

Despite the giant skin burn, he quickly won his teammates over with his work ethic in the weight room and his performance on the field.

Okoniewski recorded two sacks in Green Bay’s final preseason game against Cincinnati, setting the table for the best season of his professional career in 1974. In Devine’s final season , the Packers improved to 6-8 as Okoniewski started the 10 of the 14 games at left defensive tackle.

“The most fun I ever had playing football was those couple of games before the stars and veterans came back after the strike,” Okoniewski said. “I was playing against all these strike breakers and getting like three sacks in a half (laughs).”

The NFL’s roster size started fluctuating and shrinking in 1975. Okoniewski played in every game during the 1975 season, former Super Bowl winning quarterback Bart Starr’s first season coaching Green Bay, the team the Hall of Famer had quarterbacked to so much success as a player.

The slogan, “Fresh Start with Bart,” resonated throughout Wisconsin in 1975 but the Packers finished 4-10. Before the 1976 season, Okoniewski was the final player released by Starr.

He took a few weeks off, explored a tryout opportunity with the Denver Broncos and ultimately landed in St. Louis after impressing Cardinals’ head coach Joe Gibbs and prominent assistant Don Coryell during a tryout. He spent the 1976 and part of the 1977 season with St. Louis before getting cut once again. He retired from the NFL in the fall of 1977.

Okoniewski had been the first round draft choice of the Calgary Stampeders in the 1972 CFL Draft before choosing the Falcons. Calgary offered as much money as Atlanta. So when the CFL came calling a second time, Okoniewski elected to play the summer of 1978 with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

“It was a good summer job,” Okoniewski said. “I knew I was going to get cut because they can only keep a few Americans. So it was time to say, ‘Hey man, I’m this far away from getting a master’s degree. I said, if you are going to cut me, cut me. They did.”

Once he earned his master’s degree in athletic administration, Okoniewski got a chance to return to Montana. He got the job as the head football coach at Deer Lodge High before the 1978 season. Shortly after, he was name the school’s athletic director.

Behind the outstanding play by future Montana State Hall of Famer Joe Bignell, Okoniewski helped guide the Wardens to a state title in 1979. Bignell went on to become one of the greatest tight ends in Big Sky Conference history. He set an MSU single-season record for receptions during Montana State’s 1984 run to the Division I-AA national title. Okoniewski still considers his former pupil a friend and makes sure to visit the Bignell family ranch outside Drummond in Hall every time he visits Montana.

In 1985, Okoniewski began his migration back to the Midwest by taking a job as the principal and head football coach at Wibaux High in Eastern Montana. A few years later, he took a job as a principal at St. Francis High School outside Milwaukee during a time when the public high school desegregated, sometimes providing frightening challenges. 

After three years surrounded by tumult and violence, Okoniewski moved to a job as a principal and football coach at Luxemburg-Casco High School about 20 miles from Green Bay in 1991. He worked there for nearly 30 years.

“Green Bay, there’s so many similarities between here and Montana,” Okoniewski said. “These are some hard-working farm kids. Now you have mega farms, but these kids were tough as hell. We won 11 state championships in wrestling when I was there.

“Once you got accepted by the community, it took a couple of years. These kids didn’t like me initially. But as time goes on, you get to know the community and the family orientation, the work ethic, the backgrounds of these kids, it was so much like when I was in Deer Lodge, Montana. There, I had a bunch of ranch kids too. They were just used to working.”

No matter the moves Okoniewski has made over the last 50-plus years, Montana has always held a special place in his heart and mind. He returns to the state to see friends and adventure at least once annually and, most years, several times more.

Okoniewski was inducted to the Kitsap Sports Hall of Fame, an event coincidentally emceed by legendary former Griz men’s basketball coach Jud Heathcote. Okoniewski is also in the Hall of Fame at Montana and Everett CC. His induction to the Montana Football Hall of Fame is deserved and fitting for many reasons, not the least of which giving him a chance to return to his favorite second home.

“When I get antsy in the springtime and the weather is good, I always think,’ I wish I was in Montana,” Okoniewski said. “It really is the greatest place in the world.”

Person was a seventh round draft pick trying to stick on the 49ers’ active roster. Smith was in the midst of a first-team All-Pro season, one of five All-Pro campaigns for the outstanding defensive lineman who rolled up 87 sacks over 14 NFL seasons.

During one stretch of that 2011 NFL season, the 49ers had back-to-back East Coast games. So rather than going back to California, the team stayed and trained for a week in Youngstown, Ohio.

On the Monday after playing the Philadelphia Eagles, the offensive and defensive linemen were at Youngstown State for a post-game lift to flush out their lower bodies.

“I remember Justin comes in. And he’s this big human from southern Missouri and he walks in yells at the Youngstown State strength coaches. ‘Hey, what’s your squat record in here? ‘

“The strength coach says, it’s 675 pounds. And Justin says, ‘All right. Let me warm up and then we are putting that on the bar.

“And sure enough, I mean, he could have probably done it five or six times. This is the day after playing an NFL football game where most guys don’t even want to move out of bed. All I could think was, ‘How am I ever going to block that man?’”

Person often wondered during his early days. But he never quit. That helped his storybrook career end almost a decade later with a start in the Super Bowl.

A total of 15 players from Glendive, Montana have played for Montana State. But Person is the best, the pride of the Eastern Montana outpost that holds the distinction as the smallest media market in America.

Person starred for his father for the Dawson County High School Red Devils. His MSU legacy was forever solidified when he captained the Bobcats to a 21-16 win over Montana in Missoula in 2010 to simultaneously clinch a Big Sky Conference title for the ‘Cats and end a 17-year streak qualifying for the FCS Playoffs by the Griz.

When Person became the first Bobcat drafted in seven years when he was picked in the 7^th round in 2011, it seemed like he would have more of an inside track than most Montanans of his generation who were getting shots in the NFL.

Yet he had to ride a wave of instability for most of his first three seasons in the NFL. After getting cut twice in the span of 10 days in 2012, Person wondered if he had a long-term future in professional football.

Thanks to mental fortitude and a pride in where he came from, plus the toughness that has defined each step of his football career, Person emerged out of uncertainty to etch a career defined by its longevity.

Once Person played his way off the practice squad to make the Seahawks active roster, he took advantage of every opportunity in front of him. The offensive lineman earned contracts with the St. Louis Rams, Atlanta Falcons and Kansas City Chiefs before earning a second chance in San Francisco.

In his eighth season in the NFL, Person won the starting right guard position for the 49ers and started 16 games. And in 2019, his ninth and final in the NFL, Person was a starter again, this time for a team that won the NFC title and made a run all the way to the Super Bowl.

By the time his professional career ended, Person played more NFL seasons than any other Bobcat save three former Montana State stars; Jan Stenerud played 19 seasons in the NFL and is the only placekicker in the NFL Hall of Fame; wide receiver Sam McCullum played 10 seasons in the NFL between stints with the Minnesota Vikings and the Seattle Seahawks; and long snapper linebacker Ken Amato played 10 seasons in the NFL, nine with the Tennessee Titans.

Jon Borchardt, himself an MSU All-American offensive lineman, played nine seasons NFL seasons like Person.

Person played longer in the NFL than MSU legend Bill Kollar, the first player ever to become a first-round draft pick out of the Big Sky Conference. Person played longer than former Bobcat linebacker Corey Widmer, a Bozeman native who was a starter for the majority of his eight-year career with the New York Giants. And Person played longer than Dane Fletcher, one of Bozeman and Montana State’s favorite sons, a walk-on turned conference MVP linebacker who ended up starting in the Super Bowl for the New England Patriots.

“When he first got to San Francisco, I thought he was a decent back-up offensive lineman and you get biased based on a player’s history and that’s what he had been. But he completely changed my mind the day we signed him in San Francisco,” said John Benton, a veteran offensive line coach that spent four seasons with the 49ers, including coaching Person his final two in the NFL.

“Mike would tell you as an athlete, he wasn’t maybe the best athlete in the pool but damn he was so smart and so damn tough. There’s no substitute for that. That’s how you play a decade in the NFL.”

Person’s legacy at Montana State is certainly unforgettable and warrants Hall of Fame consideration all by itself. But his ability to forge such a long NFL career that culminated with him playing in the biggest football game in the world January of 2020 for the 49ers is why he’s one of the headlining members of the Montana Football Hall of Fame Class of 2023.

“If you have the baseline size and strength, as an offensive linemen, you can make yourself into a player if you want it bad enough,” said Benton, a Colorado State alum who coached under former Bobcat head coach and longtime CSU head man Sonny Lubick from 1995-2002 before embarking on an NFL journey that’s at 20 seasons and counting. “That’s Mike Person. He wanted it more than almost any player I’ve ever coached.”

The high school coaching in Montana is exceptional because people from the Treasure State take so much pride in where they come from. A great many of the best football players to ever come out of the Treasure State are the sons and relatives of many of the stalwart coaches walking the sidelines during fall Friday nights across the Last Best Place.

Person is one of those coaches’ sons. The early evening practices in eastern Montana were a part of his daily life since he can remember. His father, Jim, was the head coach at Dawson County High School from 1979 until 1995, then again from 2001 until 2007. 

“I was around it from day one, watching my older brother (John Pereson) play football as he was growing up,” Person remembers. “Some of my favorite memories of growing up were going to practice with dad, just being down there, being a fly on the wall, hitting attack on dummies when I was six…I’m sure I was getting in the way but I was having the time of my life.

“I knew from the time I started playing football, I wanted to be an offensive lineman. And that’s what I wanted to do, wanted to be like my dad, like my brother. It was just something that was always a part of me.”

But most kids want to be a quarterback…

“I couldn’t throw a baseball very well so I figured I couldn’t throw a football very well either,” Person said with a laugh. “I was always the big kid, and I knew that the big kids, they play o-line and that’s what I wanted to do.”

Although Jim Person has lived a life of football and sports, Mike remembers his dad balancing football life and home life perfectly. Football stayed at school. If Mike ever brought up football during dinnertime with the family (Person also has two sisters, Sara and Katie), Jim would stop him dead in his tracks and redirect the conversation.

Person stood out during the fall, winter and spring during his junior and senior years at Dawson County. He was a three-time all-league selection in football and an All-State honoree as a junior and a senior. He was the two-time Class A Offensive Lineman of the Year and was regarded as one of the top prospects in the state, fielding offers from Montana State and Wyoming along with interest from the Grizzlies.

Person was also a two-time track and field discus state champion and a two-year letterman in basketball under Doug Selvig, a former University of Montana standout who also happens to be the younger brother of the legendary Robin Selvig, the iconic head coach of the University of Montana women’s basketball team for 38 successful seasons.

“I remember him as a skinny rail of a frame but I remember watching his junior year track meet and he threw the disc more than 170 feet so you could see how explosive he could be once he filled out,” said Jason McEndoo, who was the offensive line coach at Montana State from 2003 until 2014. “He had the long levers, rangy kid and we instantly loved the way he played the game. His dad, a football coach, so he got it. He had that tenacity, that chip on your shoulder that you want.

“And that’s been a hallmark of his all the way from high school, college and through his pro career. He was that nasty, edgy player. And that’s what stood out to me in the beginning.”

Person had huge upside in track as a thrower and thought basketball was fun. But football was in Person’s blood. His father played offensive line at Montana Tech in Butte, where Mike’s late mother, Shelley, grew up. Her brother, Dennis Lowney, played at Montana Western while Jim’s brother, Jerry Person, played at San Diego State.

When Mike was in seventh grade, he remembers running into Montana State head football coach Mike Kramer while the man known as “the Big Human” was on MSU’s annual Eastside Swing Tour through the Eastern part of Montana.

Person and his father just happened to be out to lunch the day the Bobcats were in town — Mike still doesn’t know if Jim planned it that way, or not — but Kramer left a lasting impression.

 “He started telling stories and he had me hook line and sinker,” Person said. “Then he says, ‘I guess we will see you in about six years. That really stuck with me.”

Like so many towns in Montana, Glendive is one founded upon and build around industry. The unique topography of the area caters to farming and ranching. Dawson County is also a railroad community. And there’s oil in that part of eastern Montana.

Growing up, Person noticed from a young age “seeing people who put their nose in the dirt and just do what they need to do every single day.”

During his high school days, Mike didn’t just play three sports. He was also expected to work any time he wasn’t practicing or playing. That set the tone for knowing how to wake up early, knowing how to manage his time and knowing the value of an honest hard day’s work.

“In high school during the summers, I worked with my dad and our shop teacher and we would roof houses and frame, all things construction,” Person said. “My dad kicked me out of bed at 5 a.m. in the morning in the summers so that we can go work and then we would get done with the day at 4 o’clock and we would go get the lift in for the day.”

Although Montana and Wyoming entered the mix — “those are the three schools a kid from small-town eastern Montana dream about getting recruited by,” Person said — the prospect never forgot that initial meeting with Kramer when he had just turned into a teenager.

And Person knew he had a mentor for life when he first developed a relationship with McEndoo, Montana State’s cornerstone offensive line coach who spent 2003 until 2014 at MSU, making him the longest-tenured assistant in Bobcat football history.

When the Bobcats beat the Grizzlies 16-6 in the 2005 rivalry game in Bozeman — the victory marked MSU’s third rivalry win in four seasons after losing 16 in a row to Montana — Person knew his future would play out in Bozeman.

“Right after that 2005 rivalry game, I distinctly remember telling my dad I was going to the Bobcats,” Person said. “We didn’t’ beat the Griz again until my senior year, but still definitely one of the best decisions of my life.”

As a full scholarship player, Person was certainly expected to compete for a place in the rotation. But his development was accelerated more than most offensive lineman.

When he first arrived on the Montana State campus in the fall of 2006, he rolled with the second string at right tackle despite intending to maintain his redshirt. It was a common tactic of McEndoo’s, having his most promising lineman getting practice reps against varsity players while still hoping to preserve a fifth season for later on in their careers.

“Small-school guys do everything, football, basketball, track, so he was always busy and he was always in the weight room,” McEndoo said. “I love those small-town kids who check all those boxes and then when you are a coach’s kid, that’s whole other element as well because he gets it and he knows what to do, how to do it.

“I knew Mike had all the potential in the world to be a great player.”

Person remembers the butt whippings given out in practice by a variety of veteran MSU defensive linemen, particularly Reshawn Bobo and the late Brandon Hoffenbacher. Person also remembers one day when veteran offensive lineman Peder Jensen told senior defensive end Aaron Papich that “Mike wants to go one on one and he said he was going to whip you,” which the redshirt right tackle had not said. Person got whipped.

“Those first few weeks were absolutely a nightmare,” Person said with a reflective chuckle. “That’s what introduced me to pass blocking in the Big Sky Conference.”

By the opening game of the 2007 season, Person was a starter getting ready to go up against Texas A&M. The Aggies defensive line featured Jonathan Jolly, Red Bryant and Michael Bennett, all who went on to have successful NFL careers.

If that wasn’t nerve racking enough…

“First career start, starting at one of the most intimidating stadiums in college football, going against an entire NFL defensive line….and I forget my helmet,” Person said. “Luckily, they brought another one.”

Person’s steady improvement throughout his Montana State career received decoration every year he was in Bozeman. He was the top offensive scout as a redshirt in 2006. That award came at the end of a very hard year for Person on a personal level. His mother Shelley passed away Mike’s second year away for college in 2007.

The heartache did not deter his consistent and constant improvements. Person won the Cliff Hysell Award for Bobcat Spirit and Courage in 2008. He was the Tom Parac Most Improved Offensive Player in in 2009 and a first-team All-Big Sky nod for the first time after earning honorable mention honors the season before.

In 2010, he won the Chuck Karnop Award for toughness and the Dennis Erickson Offensive Coaches’ Choice honor. He also shared the D’Agostino Family Strength award with Steven Foster and Jordan Craney.

“I would be a liar if I told you when we got to Montana State, he was ready to go,” said former Montana State safety Mike Rider, a Billings native who was co-captain of the 2010 Bobcats alongside Person. “When we were at the Shrine Game and the Mon-Dak game, here was this full scholarship guy. And I wouldn’t say he dominated.

“That redshirt year, he knew he had some ground to make up and that’s what set him apart. He never stopped working in the weight room and every single day, nobody worked harder than him. He had such high expectations for himself and other people had such high expectations for him.

“He took his lumps as a freshman, starting his first game against Texas A&M. That’s a pretty big jump from Class A Glendive. I think he willed himself into it. He worked his tail off and you saw that exact same thing translate into the NFL.”

Person’s final season with the Bobcats finished with a crescendo. The team captain was one of 30 Bobcats ever to earn first-team All-American honors after leading MSU to a Big Sky title by winning against archrival Montana in Missoula.

“The Montana State program is built on the backs of Montana kids. It always was, always has been while I was there and still is,” McEndoo said. “My whole time there, I was the in-state recruiter in Montana and I loved traveling the state.

“Mike had that Montana dude toughness, was a great leader, a vocal leader who grew into his own. He personifies everything about being a Montana kid playing for Montana State.”

Person came to Montana State as a 6-foot-5, 240-pound lanky teenager. By the time 2010 finished, he’d started 34 consecutive games and more than 40 games overall. He was one of the central pieces of the ascension of the Bobcats.

”He’s blue collar and he’s had a ton of adversity in his life, from losing his mom really young to trying to always live up to the hype as a prized recruit in the state of Montana,” Rider said. “There was always that chip on his shoulder and it carried on to the NFL.

“He was incredibly talented and when you couple that with hard work and toughness, that’s how you have that sort of success in college and the NFL.”

That Cat-Griz win in 2010 solidified Person as a Bobcat legend and also helped form the foundation for a last decade-plus that have seen Montana State inch past Montana in the hierarchy of the Big Sky Conference.

That game is embedded in McEndoo’s mind (and his ear) to this day.

Both McEndoo and Person remember it pretty much identically. McEndoo had a rule that the offensive line would not wear sleeves during games where the temperature was below freezing. And the coach would also not wear sleeves in an act of solidarity.

In the hours before the ‘Cats took on the Griz in Washington-Grizzly Stadium in 2010, the Hellgate wind was ripping and the meteorologists were warning of record-setting cold temperatures. So McEndoo thought he might wear a coat or some sort of sleeves.

“I would be layered up underneath but I wouldn’t have sleeves,” McEndoo said. “That Brawl of the Wild in 2010, that was the coldest game I have ever been a part of. I got out in pre-game and I had a jacket on, but it wasn’t game time yet.

“I came out in a jacket and Person looks at me and says, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ And I ignored him. And then he told me I wasn’t allowed to wear sleeves. I walked back in the locker room, took all that stuff off.

“I had gloves on and a ball cap and that’s it. I still, to this day, have frostbite on the tips of my ears. When it gets cold, the tips of my ears start to hurt and I think of Person and that offensive line and that win every single time.”

During his playing days, McEndoo was a standout offensive lineman at Washington State. Like Person, he was a seventh round draft pick. McEndoo was selected by the Seattle Seahawks.

And like Person, McEndoo had to overcome the heartbreak of tragedy. McEndoo and his late wife, Michelle, were in a roll-over accident when McEndoo was 21. Michelle did not survive.

Person wasn’t McEndoo’s first protégé but he was certainly the one that reminded the coach most of himself, from a sharp tragedy early in life to a long shot at the next level to a love of the game.

McEndoo only lasted the one year in the NFL, but he vowed to help any pupil who was trying to fight his way onto an NFL roster. So he and Person have been in contact pretty consistently for the last decade-plus.

“At the end of the day, you have to keep a great mental state of mind, not get too low, not get too high and that’s what I would tell him,” McEndoo said. “For him to be with six, seven different teams and then his career to culminate with starting in the Super Bowl with the Niners, I think that’s a testament to him and the fortitude and the work ethic and drive and determination to keep pushing through it.

“No matter what is thrown at you, keep your head down and stay in your lane and that’s the epitome of Mike. He had all those things. Most guys would’ve packed it up. Most guys would’ve gotten discouraged, gotten down, folded the tent. I think a lot of players are missing nowadays is grit. Mike was just a gritty, gritty player and that’s from his background, Butte ties to Glendive, Montana (laughs)… Glendive is not Butte, but Glendive is the Butte of eastern Montana.”

Person first started riding the roller coaster of NFL uncertainty following his rookie year when the 49ers cut him. The Colts signed him a few days later only to cut him following the weekend.

“I think I’m fine when the Colts claim me,” Person said. “Then the following Monday, they cut me. That’s really when it hit me, this NFL thing might not work out.”

But things did work out. Person caught on with, like McEndoo, the Seahawks. After playing his way on to the active roster, he spent two seasons in Seattle.

He signed with the Rams in 2013 and the Falcons in 2015 before spending 2016 in Kansas City. He earned redemption (and half a dozen starts) for the Colts in 2017. And he played his final two seasons as a full-time starter for the 49ers in 2018 and 2019.

“There were some dark days early on in my NFL career, and there was a handful people that I knew who, whenever I called, they would pick up and coach Mac was one of them,” Person said. “And he always gave me the best advice. And when he had to kick me in the rear, he would get my act together.

“Being able to pick his brain because he went through it was such a great resource for a young player. You don’t usually get the same offensive line coach for all five years at your school, but him being there for all five years that I was there.

“We still talk at least once a month, to this day. And you know, I always called Mac and Ruth, they were my second family in Bozeman. So just having someone like that, that you can lean on who is invested in you, who has walked the path that you are trying to walk? You can’t really put it into words what it means.”

The 2014 season in St. Louis proved to be a turning point in Person’s career. That season, he dressed for every game and played in most. He had film to show teams his talents. In the summer of 2015, Person signed a three-year contract with the Atlanta Falcons.

“It’s absolutely affirmation,” Person said to Skyline Sports in 2015. “That’s what you want to do: you want to play. I didn’t play at all my first three years and then sparingly last year. Now it’s just making that push to get over that hump and become a starter in this league.”

A few years later, the goal of becoming a reality. And it culminated with Person playing in the Super Bowl.

“One of my favorite memories, period, was the 2019 NFC Championship game,” Person reflected in an interview with ESPN MT Radio in April of 2023. “We ran it down Green Bay’s throats, threw the ball eight times the entire game.”

Earlier in the year, San Francisco center Weston Richburg (a second-round draft pick Colorado State in 2014), tore his patella tendon.

“He was my best friend on the team and he was kind of our general out there,” Person said. “It’s the same thing that we had in San Francisco as we had at Montana State. It’s a really tight knit group of guys, especially that o-line.

“I’ll never forget, we’re taking our final knee to win that NFC championship and Weston hobbles himself down to the sidelines on his crutches. And all five of us went over to Weston instead of celebrating with the team, the five offensive linemen, we went over to Weston and gave him a big bear hug. He was kind of our rock that year and unfortunately had his year end early but that moment will remind me of that NFC Championship night. That’s was something that I’ll cherish for a very long time.”

San Francisco’s offensive line was one of the stalwart units in the league, even before adding future first ballot Hall of Famer Trent Williams in 2020. The 2019 line, coached by Benton, was bookended and anchored by left tackle Joe Staley and right tackle Mike McGlinchey. Richburg and Laken Tomlinson were the other starters along with Person.

“McGlinchey was still a young guy and really Mike had a lot to do with McGlinchey’s success,” Benton said. “Person took the role on of the tough guy, the grunt, getting in the mud, down and dirty, tough guy. He really played that well.

“That’s really when you have your best offensive line: when each guy plays a role and you run with it. And you have to have that tough guy. He was always in a good mood but he would keep people in line.”

Person met his wife, Kelly, during his rookie year in San Francisco in 2012.

“And I somehow kept her, even though we were moving all the time and living out of a suitcase those early years,” Person said with a laugh.

Through all the moves, the family has finally found a spot to settle down. In June, the Person clan will have lived in Dublin, Ohio for four years. That’s the longest by far Mike and Kelly have lived in a single place since first meeting.

The same summer Mike signed with Atlanta, the couple welcomed son Sean (8) into the world. Daughter Nora (6) and son Eli (4) followed.

“Kelly is definitely the head coach of the family,” Person said.

After retiring from the NFL, Person started volunteer coaching at a local high school in Dublin and also started Five Dot Offensive Line Academy to help area teenagers develop in techniques, drills work and studying film.

In 2021, Person started thinking about getting into college or NFL coaching. Last season, he served as the assistant offensive line coach at Mike McDaniel’s staff with the Miami Dolphins.

Person is quick to acknowledge how much he enjoyed the experience of working for McDaniel but also said he realized that moving his family to South Beach wasn’t ideal.

So this fall, for the first time in close to three decades, Person might just be a football fan. And how could you blame him?

Regardless of what his football future might hold, the impact the game has had on his life is indelible.

“Football has been huge for my life,” Person said. “Football has brought me so many things, not just learning experiences good and bad. If I didn’t play in the NFL, I never would have met my wife. We met in San Francisco my rookie year. I wouldn’t have this family that I have right now.

“Football has been an ever present part of my life and my wife’s life as long as I’ve known her. So the things that the game brings you, the possibilities are endless. It’s tough to put it into words, but I’m living in a beautiful neighborhood in Dublin, Ohio. And that that wouldn’t have been possible without football.

“The lessons that it teaches you, that’s the most important thing. That’s the beauty behind any sport, is the lessons that it teaches you on and off the field. But the things that it provides you in your life, that what makes it special. You meet all of these people, who would have ever thought that my best friend would be from Amarillo, Texas. Had I not played football, I never would have met some of my best friends. It’s been one of the most important parts of my life.”

On the surface, Colt Anderson’s story is one of an underdog triumphing over long odds over and over again.

But when one dives into this person’s makeup, it quickly becomes apparent that the man who earned the nickname “the Butte Missile” was perhaps destined to become one of the most successful Montanans to live a football life.

Anderson, who hails from the Mining City, has defied the odds ever since he emerged from a winless high school football team his senior year as walk-on at the University of Montana. Yet he and those around him always knew he would achieve great successes.

Despite walking on at UM, Anderson wasted little time affirming himself as one of the greatest players in Griz football history, earning first-team All-Big Sky Conference honors three times while establishing a reputation as one of the hardest hitting safeties ever at UM or in the Big Sky.

Once into the NFL, he had to start all over, working his way from practice squad to kick team units to, eventually, starting for several of the most storied franchises in professional football.

And that life of football continues today as Anderson continues his work in the NFL as an assistant coach on Zac Taylor’s staff for the high-flying Cincinnati Bengals.

Hundreds of men either from Montana or who played collegiately in Montana (or both) have gone on to compete in professional football. Very few have done it for as long or as consistently as Anderson did.

For his longevity, consistency and general excellence, Anderson is one of the headlining members of the Montana Football Hall of Fame Class of 2023.

“The thing that made Colt stand out most as a football player is decisive urgency,” said Tom McMahon, a Helena native and Carroll College alum who has been an NFL special teams coordinator since 2007. McMahon is currently the special teams coordinator for the Las Vegas Raiders and coached Anderson for the two seasons Anderson played for the Indianapolis Colts.

“There’s not a lot of guys who have that. He is very decisive and really fast. He sees it and when he does, he is going 100 percent. And 99 percent of what he sees is correct. He almost never makes mistakes and it makes his play speed seem even faster. That’s how you play a decade in the NFL.”

Anderson played nine seasons in the NFL, working his way from the Minnesota Vikings’ practice squad as a rookie in 2009 to starting games for both the Philadelphia Eagles and the Indianapolis Colts. He played on five playoff teams and was a part of five playoff wins between 2010 and 2017.

Only four Griz alums — Guy Bingham, Tim Hauck, Mike Tilleman and Scott Gragg — played longer in the NFL. And Anderson equaled Kirk Scrafford’s nine seasons in the League.

“The whole body of work is so impressive when you look at it,” said Tim Hauck, a Griz legend in his own right who pioneered Montana’s iconic No. 37 jersey. Hauck played 13 seasons in the NFL before returning to Missoula and coaching Anderson for most of his time with the Griz.

“Play after play, big hit after big hit, it was never one game here or one game there, it was always the consistency of his performance that was so impressive. To play that long in the NFL this day and age is incredible.”

Not bad for a kid from a “mile high, a mile deep” who went from playing on a Butte High School Bulldogs team that didn’t win a game during the 2003 season to earning a reputation as a special teams ace for NFL playoff teams led by quarterbacks like Michael Vick in Philly and Andrew Luck in Indy.

Now he’s coaching for the Bengals during the rise of Joe Burrow. Cincinnati had the worst record in the NFL the season before Anderson joined Taylor’s staff. Over the last two seasons, Cincy appeared in Super Bowl LVI and the AFC championship game, respectively.

“He knows what to teach and how to tell these guys what they need to do to be a part of an NFL roster,” Tim Hauck said. “If they will listen, they’ll get it done and if they don’t listen, they won’t. He’s been through the wars so he immediately has their respect.”

Folks from Butte knew who Anderson was…because that’s how folks from Butte are.

In Butte, high school sports are a religion. And Colt’s father, Mike Anderson officiated high school and Frontier Conference hoops for more than four decades. Mike also coached his three sons in baseball growing up and was a defensive backs coach at Butte High during his sons’ high school careers. Colt’s mother Michele Anderson taught dance when she wasn’t busy chasing around her three sons and daughter, Brianna.

During his prep days, Colt was more well-known on a state-wide level for his exploits on the basketball court as a gritty, tough and efficient guard for John Thatcher’s Bulldogs. Anderson’s first big athletic achievement in Missoula actually came the winter before he walked on with the Griz.

He led a Butte High team playing in its first state tournament since 1990 to a pair of victories over Bozeman and Billings West, respectively, in that 2004 basketball tourney. The wins punched the Bulldogs’ ticket to the Class AA state title game.

“Colt made an incredible contribution to our basketball team, No. 1, leadership. No. 2, he was extremely coachable. I didn’t let Colt shoot because he never came to open gym, he never proved to me he could shoot,” joked Thatcher, Butte High’s head boys’ basketball coach for years and currently an assistant women’s basketball coach at Montana Tech in Butte.

“But he always picked up the toughest defensive job. Prime example, when we beat Billings West Colt’s senior year, they had that great guard who’s dad was the coach, Chase Sukut. (Colt) did a great job of guarding him. We didn’t have the athletes but we controlled the tempo.”

Almost 7,000 fans packed the Adams Center — a vast majority of them dressed in Butte purple. Yet the Cinderella run fell short as Great Falls CMR won its fourth Class AA title in five years in a defensive slugfest.

“Colt was our best defender, but that’s only part of it,” Thatcher said. “I can’t say enough about the person he is. Salt of the earth.

“He was such an unselfish athlete and he knew what it took to win. You try to convince high school athletes that it’s not about each one of you individually; it’s about how we perform. It doesn’t matter who scores, it’s all about what it takes to win. He executed EXACTLY what I asked of him. High school kids don’t do that.

“He was the leader, no question about it.”

Anderson was a three-sport athlete who also excelled as a shortstop on baseball diamond. Colt’s father was a longtime baseball coach and his oldest brother, Beau, was also a standout player.

Colt’s senior season of football did not reap a win. So the surge through the hoops state tournament, despite the disappointing final loss to CMR, helped show Anderson knew how to win. It also first showed Thatcher the character of Anderson.

“I have a saying I have said to every team I’ve ever coached: never forget who you are, never forget where you came from and never fear anything,” Thatcher said. “He falls into all three of those categories. His worth ethic is and was second to none. There are very few people out there that paid the price he did to make it to the NFL. And you could see that when he was a teenager.”

The Bulldogs — who played at a middle school field back then rather than iconic Naranche Stadium like Butte High does now — might’ve had a hard time breaking through. Yet Anderson’s toughness stood out as an individual talent throughout his high school career.

“We watched him a lot in high school and for some reason, most of the film we watched, he was playing tailback and he was really good,” Montana head coach Bobby Hauck, who spent 2003 through 2009 at UM before returning ahead of the 2018 season to lead his alma mater, said in the spring of 2023. “He wasn’t very big. But he ran well and he was tough, really a good running back.

“We didn’t see him as a running back in college but we were trying to project him. I was so stupid I didn’t offer him a scholarship (laughs). We ended up convincing him to walk on to play safety.”

Although he loved basketball and baseball, ultimately, Colt’s attention settled upon football when it came to his post-prep days.

“Growing up, my brothers had opportunities to play college football and neither one of them did,” Anderson said. “My oldest brother, Beau, went to play college baseball (at Walla Walla Community College) and my brother Luke had an opportunity to play at Montana Western and he didn’t want to pursue football.

“So when I had an opportunity to walk on, I thought at least one of us has to try to do this because I thought both those guys were better football players than me. They were bigger than me. The fact that they didn’t do it, I felt like I needed to do it.”

Tim Hauck — who had his first college coaching job came working for his older brother between 2004 and 2007 — instantly noticed Anderson’s sharp explosiveness, fearless pursuit and natural abilities at safety.

“Tim kept coming to our personnel meetings during spring ball, fall camp when Colt was a young guy and saying, ‘He’s our best safety. What’s the hold up? Let’s go!” Bobby Hauck remembered. “I’m always putting the brakes on, watching them more, making sure they are ready. Then it became apparent pretty early on, probably a year and a half in, that this guy is going to be a special player for us.”

“I tried to tell my brother that Colt was the best safety we had,” Tim confirmed with a laugh. “He’s explosive, instinctive, tackles well, runs well. Once we believed what he could do, he made the most of it.”

The story of football in Montana has deep roots in the Mining City. Partly because of the late Sonny Holland and the enormous influence he had on Montana State’s first 20 years in the Big Sky Conference, Butte was a Bobcat town for most of the 1970s and ‘80s.

The emergence of players like Todd Erickson in the early 1990s started to shift the Mining City’s allegiance. Butte is the hometown of 99 lettermen for the University of Montana football team.

The first Griz ever drafted in the NFL Draft came out of Butte. Milt Popovich was selected with the 15th pick of the second round of the 1938 NFL Draft by the Chicago Cardinals. The man known as the Butte Bullet is still the highest ever draft pick out of UM.

And the most recent Griz to make an NFL active roster is also from Butte: offensive lineman Dylan Cook signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers in May of 2023.

Anderson had two uncles who played for each Montana (Pat Sullivan and Dave Manovich) and Montana State (Barry Sullivan and Jim Anderson). One of his best friends growing up was Cole Salo, who’s uncle Greg Salo was the defensive coordinator at MSU in the 1990s before taking over as the head coach at Butte High in the early 2000s. So Anderson had ties on both sides of the rivalry.

“He was a great all-around athlete, played basketball, baseball, and on the football team, we used him all over the place,” said Salo, who’s now retired and golfing as much as possible. “He is a great all-around athlete, great competitor with a great work ethic, which we learned to find out how far that can take you after he walked on to the Griz.

“The underdog, chip on your shoulder, whatever cliché you want to use, that 100 percent drove Colt. That was what he was going to use to motivate him to get the most out of his ability.”

Anderson didn’t give it a second thought when Bobby Hauck extended a walk-on offer to join a Griz team that was in the midst of a run of 12 straight Big Sky Conference championships.

“Butte was a Griz town when I was coming up,” Anderson said. “They were rolling at the time and they were out-recruiting Montana State with Butte guys. There was a handful of Butte guys on that national championship team in 1995.

“In 4th grade, I was 10 years old (in 1995) and my fourth grade teacher was Dave Dickenson’s aunt. That was a school year I will always remember. Everyone from my class grew up big Griz fans because of that 1995 team.”

So often, the story of the in-state walk-on at Montana is one of being buried on the depth chart for years before getting an opportunity to break out. Anderson rose through the ranks almost immediately, earning a starting job as a sophomore.

“He’s a great tackler, he’s a great hitter, has good instincts, fearless, all those things that you love about safeties in our defense,” Bobby Hauck said. “He had it all.”

That 2006 season, Anderson rolled up 96 tackles and earned his first of three straight first-team All-Big Sky honors. That Griz season ended in a Big Sky Conference championship, one of four straight that Anderson helped contribute to during his time in Missoula. That Griz team also went on a march to semifinals of the 2006 FCS Playoffs.

The following season, Anderson was equally consistent and impactful, rolling up 85 tackles, including seven for loss, forcing three fumbles and intercepting four passes. He was an All-American for the first time. But his junior season ended in disappointment.

The top-ranked and undefeated Grizzlies lost 23-22 to Wofford in the first round of the playoffs. The upset loss to a triple option team left a bitter taste in Anderson and his returning teammates’ mouths.

In 2008, behind one of the great single seasons by any Griz defensive players in program history by Anderson, the Griz rolled to 14 victories, including an 11-1 finish in the regular season. They steamrolled the Bobcats in Missoula after a quick and iconic wardrobe change and carried that momentum into the playoffs.

“We did senior night the week before the ‘Cat game against Idaho State and we thought that was weird,” Anderson said. “There was whispers going around that. Then the day of the game, we are in our team room and Coach Hauck comes in with this big duffle bag.”

Montana had warmed up in its traditional maroon and silver jerseys. But right before the famed tunnel run on that November afternoon, the Griz changed into throwback Copper and Gold jerseys. Montana State never had a chance as the Griz rolled to a 38-3 victory to spark another playoff run.

“It still gives me goosebumps to this day thinking about that tunnel run and that game,” Anderson said. “I don’t think the University of Montana had worn those colors since (the national championship season of) 1995 so to be able to represent the University of Montana with the old school colors, the greats I grew up watching, the Dave Dickensons, all the Butte guys, those are the colors I watched the Griz play in as a kid so to wear those same colors, me and all the Montana guys on that team, for us, it was such a special day.”

The following week in the playoffs, the Griz kept chugging. Montana had no trouble with Texas State, drilling the now FBS Bobcats, 31-13. The following week, the Griz avenged the only Big Sky Conference loss they suffered between 2006 and 2009 when they defeated Weber State 24-13.

That win over the Wildcats set up a clash of titans. In 2004, during Hauck’s second season, the Griz rode a hot streak all the way to the national championship game, only to lose to James Madison University.

Four years later, Montana got another shot. But this time, UM had to go to Harrisonburg, Virginia to play the No. 1 ranked Dukes.

In what Bobby Hauck still calls “one of the finest wins in school history”, Montana bludgeoned Walter Payton Award winning JMU quarterback Rodney Landers and the top seeded Dukes, 35-27, to earn UM’s sixth trip to the national title game, all since 1995.

“They were No. 1 in the nation and we beat them on the road,” Bobby Hauck said.

“Colt and the guys in his class all performed in that game. Colt had a big night and JMU had some really skilled players and Colt and our defense really showed up. Colt led the charge in that game and that was an enormous win for the Griz.”

Anderson was a part of Griz teams that went 45-8 between 2005 and 2008, but his final game as a Griz ended in heartbreak. After the landmark win at JMU, Montana ran into a brick wall. Defensive end Lawrence Sidbury had a coming out party coming off the edge to spark a 24-7 Richmond runaway in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Despite that disappointing ending to his Griz career, Anderson earned a reputation as an all-time Griz great. He piled up 313 tackles, which still ranks in the top 10 in school history. His 129 tackles a senior is the seventh-most ever by a Griz.

Anderson is also one of only five Grizzlies to ever win multiple Tony Barbour Awards, given each year “ to the Griz who best exemplifies outstanding practice habits and makes an unselfish contribution to the betterment of the Grizzly football team.”

Anderson won the Golden Helmet Award in 2007 and 2008 as the hardest hitter on the Griz and he also was the 2008 Steve Carlson Award winner as the team’s overall MVP.

“He was hard-nosed, he did everything right, he worked hard and he had all the intangible stuff and when he finally got on the field, you saw his athletic ability take over also,” Tim Hauck said. “That’s a great recipe for a really great football player.”

Although the disappoint of his final game as a Griz stung, Anderson hoped he didn’t have to stop playing football.

And he made sure of it with an unforgettable pro day that helped solidify what Tim Hauck knew to be true all along. The Butte Missile was an NFL caliber safety and special teams stalwart who would get a shot to play on Sundays, even if he had to prove himself all over again.

Many thought that Anderson would get drafted. Instead, he ended up signing with the Minnesota Vikings. He flirted with the active roster but ultimately spent the 2009 season on the practice squad.

He signed with Minnesota’s practice squad in September of 2010. By November, the Eagles signed him to a three-year contract that elevated him to the active roster.

He played in eight games for the Eagles in 2010, rolling up 16 tackles and, like Tim Hauck, established himself as a special teams ace that the Philly faithful noticed and appreciated.

“Being a walk-on was very similar to being undrafted,” Anderson said. “Your back is against the wall and you get over looked a little bit. They have the guys they drafted just like in college where they have guys they gave scholarships to. I knew I had my work cut out for me, but it was a challenge I was willing to accept. I just approached it like I did in college, where I was going to outwork my opponents, which were my teammates and show the coaches that I deserved a shot.”

The following year, Anderson was playing at a Pro Bowl level on special teams through 12 games. Then disaster hit — he tore his ACL.

As has been the proven pattern of his life, Anderson was not deterred. And he returned to full strength by 2012. His fourth season in the NFL happened to be the first that he worked his way into the starting lineup.

Anderson played in 48 games and started six during his four seasons in Philadelphia, compiling 71 tackles, three forced fumbles and his first (and only) career interception.

“He was ALWAYS confident in his ability to compete in the NFL,” Bobby Hauck said. “There’s a lot of people who might think they can play in the NFL but they can’t. Colt can.

“He was tough enough to handle both the mental aspect of trying to make the team every year and the physical aspect of competing in the kicking game at a high level, which is a high-speed, hard collision type game every time you are in there. He’s a fine football player who maximized his ability.”

By the time he signed with the Colts in 2014, Anderson had a well-earned reputation as a steady performer who could have an elite impact on an NFL special teams unit, plus he was a viable option as a safety that carried himself with professionalism.

McMahon hails from Helena. The Capital High and Carroll College alum first recognized Anderson while watching film of the Eagles. He wanted to get the fearless gunner on his team right away.

“I remember watching his tape and I knew he played with some real urgency,” McMahon said. “It’s rare, what he has.

“I was in Coach (Chuck) Pagano’s ear every single day. Through the free agency process, I wanted Colt every single day. I would leave a note on Pagano’s desk every single day, saying either ‘Colt’ or ‘Anderson’, just bugging him relentlessly. But finally, they brought him in for a visit and they saw his talent, too.”

Anderson spent two seasons in Indianapolis before making one more move during his playing days. He landed with the Buffalo Bills for the 2016 and 2017 seasons. He spent most of his final two seasons in the NFL on injured reserve before retiring.

“He is one of the top five best teammates I’ve ever seen since I’ve been in the league,” McMahon said. “He epitomizes what a teammate should be. And on top of that, he’s a great person and a great communicator.

“And he produces. Good teammates produce. They get out on the field and they make plays. They are good in the locker room, too. But I’m a great guy but I could never play in the NFL. There’s a lot of people who could be a great teammate because they are great people. But you have to be able to play. Colt went out and produced.”

Hundreds of Montana football legends hail from Butte. But Anderson is a modern day Mining City hero. And like Thatcher taught him, he never forgot his roots. It’s an important part of his legacy and the Anderson family name.

“He’s always kept Butte, America close to his heart,” Bobby Hauck said. “Over the years, he and his family, they have always gone out of their way to keep in touch with his college teammates, his college coaches. Their family is so tight. He is a true Montanan, a true Butte guy and he’s proud of that fact. It’s such a part of who he is and it’s one of the things that makes him so special.”

Each summer, Anderson hosts a two-day even called the “Dream Big Montana Experience” where he and his NFL friends rally together in Butte to give local and statewide kids an unforgettable few days that Anderson hopes inspires the next generation. The event includes a skills camp, a summer kick off  concert and a BMX show, a family-fun day, and a gala.

“He’s done so much for this town and for kids,” Thatcher said. “He does his camp every summer and he brings in all the big time athletes, the former NFL guys. He has a business here (UpTop Clothing with his brother, Luke) and he has the Mo Club in Missoula with his brother, Beau. He pays attention to business, dots his I’s and crosses his T’s at every road way.

“As an old guy like I am, he’s a real special person to me. There’s no arrogance about him. He has never demonstrated any ego. You could be a stranger on the street and he will be with you when you are talking to him. He’s as down to earth as you can get and he doesn’t have to be as far as I’m concerned. He’s paid his penance, paid the price and he’s accomplished more than most Butte people that have ever come along.”

Anderson has had steadying presence throughout his entire life journey: his wife, Keelie, who’s been his other half since the couple was in high school. The Andersons have four boys: Cage (11), Krew (10), Coye (6) and Kace (2). Each is very involved in a variety of sports, including hockey and baseball.

Throughout his career, Anderson has always kept ties to Butte. Often in the off-season during his playing career, the Anderson clan would come back to Butte before embarking on the next adventure wherever Colt was playing at the time. Now the family is in Cincinatti full time as the Bengals chase the first Super Bowl in franchise history.

Sports have always been a huge part of Colt Anderson’s life, whether as a kid or as a father. From Butte High to the University of Montana to living all over the country working in the NFL, a few key factors have never waivered during Anderson’s football life.

“A lot of people say faith, family and football and I look back at my life and that’s what it’s been,” Anderson said. “Family is very important to me. My faith is important to me. And football has been a huge part of my life. It’s always been something in my life that I’ve always had.

“When I took two years off, I felt like something was missing. So to be able to come back and coach and be on the other side has been a blessing. Football has been such a huge part of my life.”

First and foremost, Jim Sweeney was a son of Butte, America.

“He was all Butte,” says Phil Schneider, a Montana State offensive lineman under Sweeney’s tutelage during the 1957 and 1958 seasons. “Tough. He was tough. And funny.”

Dennis Erickson’s Hall of Fame coaching career nearly interlocks with Sweeney. Erickson played for Sweeney at Montana State, coached as an assistant with him at Washington State and Fresno State, and Erickson’s father Pink coached with Sweeney in Pullman, too.

Erickson sums his mentor up simply. “It was all Butte in him,” he said with a laugh. “He was tough. Everything you hear about him is true.”

Sweeney rose to great heights in the college football world as a head coach of three Division I programs over more than three decades. He spent 19 seasons between 1976 and 1996 leading Fresno State. He helped the Bulldogs’ program transition from the Pacific Coast Athletic Association to the Big West in 1980 and then into the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) in 1992. He led Fresno to eight conference championships, seven bowl games and five bowl game victories.

Sweeney finished his head coaching career with 201 victories, including a program record 144 that still stands as the most ever at Fresno State. He is one of 95 coaches in college football history, any division, to earn 200 career victories.

Although he spent most of his 32 seasons as a college head coach leading teams in the Pac 8 (Washington State, 1968-1975) and along the West Coast, his Montana roots ran deep. And some of his greatest influences, from guiding Montana State into the Big Sky Conference as a charter member to convincing one of the greatest kickers of all time to give that pursuit a try to growing an impressive coaching tree that impacted the Big Sky and college football for so many years,  Sweeney is one of the godfathers of modern football in Montana.

The man from Butte has been a conduit for the heights many who began in the Treasure State, like Erickson, who is now a College Football Hall of Famer.   several of the men from his coaching tree earned reputations as some of the game’s most memorable figures.

Many remember Sweeney, who passed away in 2013 at the age of 83, as one of those unforgettable coaches.

“Jim is a coaching legend. His legacy of success, both here and at other schools, is a very real part of our program’s tradition,” former Montana State head coach Mike Kramer (2000-2006) said in 2002 when Sweeney was inducted into Montana State’s Hall of Fame.

Bill Moos, who played at Washington State under Sweeney before rising through the ranks to become one of the most successful athletic directors in college sports, never forgot the influence Sweeney had on him. Moos was the athletic director at Montana when the Grizzlies won their first football national championship in 1995. Moos was the AD at Oregon (1995-2007) as the Ducks exploded into a West Coast titan. And Moos spent 2017 through 2021 as the athletic director at Nebraska.

“If Jim Sweeney had Woody Hayes’ (former Ohio State coach) players, there wouldn’t even be a debate here,” Moos said during a celebration of life for Sweeney in February of 2013, “because he’s the best football coach ever to coach in this great country, I believe.”

Born in Butte in 1929 to an Irish immigrant who worked as a hard-rock miner, Sweeney followed a stellar athletic career at Butte Central High with three standout seasons (1947-50) at the University of Portland, also a Catholic institution. His coaching career began at Columbia High School in Portland as an assistant in 1950, but the next season he joined the coaching staff at Butte Central. He worked as an assistant in 1951 before taking the reigns as head coach one year later.

In 1955, Sweeney became head coach at Flathead High in Kalispell. During his four seasons there the Braves won two Class AA State Championships and rolled up 18 consecutive victories. Four of his former players welcomed him upon his arrival at Bozeman in 1960 to coach Bobcat linemen.

Sweeney’s success at Flathead had already helped launch the most prolonged period of success in the history of the Montana State football program by the time he took over as head coach in 1963. Montana State had strung together seven straight winning seasons to that point, and Sweeney tacked on two more for a record that stood until 2009. His fingerprints remain visible on the Bobcat program today.

In the fall of 1960, though, he was tasked with developing line play for head coach Herb Agocs’ squads. Montana State featured some of the program’s greatest linemen ever that season. Tackle Bob Biastoch from Butte, is a Bobcat Athletics Hall of Famer, while his bookend Curt Farrier played spent five seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs. Sweeney also mentored All-America Joe Tiller, like Erickson a future collegiate coaching legend, and six other future all-league selections.

Sweeney displayed his penchant for toughness during his first season as Bobcat line coach.

“He had gone downtown to see (the movie) Spartacus, and the next day in practice we had a drill called Spartacus,” said Dick Hueth, then a sophomore offensive linemen. “I’ll never forget it.”

Sweeney created a chalk-lined square around three feet-by-three feet, and a player took his stance in a defensive position within the box. An offensive player got a running start with the defender fending off the play to tackle the oncoming ball carrier. Curt Farrier, at 6-foot-5 and 230 pounds, charged an offensive lineman and rammed into him.

“Farrier knocked him out of the square and knocked his teeth through his lower jaw,” Hueth continued. “There were two other (injuries) right after that, and then Marshall (Cook, the school’s athletic trainer) walked right into the middle (of the drill) and said, ‘That’s it. We’re done with this.’”

Hueth still marvels at Sweeney’s hard-edged enthusiasm. “He really was like a Roman gladiator in the Coliseum.”

Herb Agocs, an assistant under Tony Storti beginning with Montana State’s 1956 national championship season, took the program’s reins in 1958. Two seasons later he brought Sweeney on board as line coach, and in 1963 upon Agocs’ retirement from his football coaching duties Sweeney was elevated by Director of Athletics Gene Bourdet to head football coach.

Two members of Sweeney’s final Flathead High team played for the Cats in 1963, including quarterback Ken Christison. A brilliant prep athlete, Christison threw for 855 yards as a part-time starter in 1962. That included touchdown passes of 80 yards against both Utah State and Fresno State. Christison had earned All-America honors in the javelin in the spring of 1963, and Sweeney promised to throw the ball more that fall to take advantage of Christison’s arm.

While that didn’t exactly pan out, the reason was an improved and complex ground game. Christison ran for 219 yards himself, averaging 5.4 yards a carry, while Dan Sundling starred at halfback. He set a school record with 672 rushing yards, and his 144 yards against the Grizzlies also broke a school record.

That was the first sign of Sweeney’s adaptive nature as a head coach, and part of that was a response to a changing environment. In 1963-64 Montana State University, the University of Montana, Idaho State University, Weber State University, and (on a limited basis at first) the University of Idaho formed the Big Sky Conference. Gonzaga University also joined, but had long since dropped its football program.

After a 7-3 campaign in its final season as an independent in 1962, Montana State finished Sweeney’s first campaign as head coach 6-3 overall, 2-1 in the Big Sky. In 1964 the Cats finished 7-4 but won all three Big Sky games to claim the Big Sky crown. Injuries wiped out the 1965 season (although the Cats beat Montana for the second straight season), but in 1966 Sweeney and MSU were ready to lay claim to the league’s first real dynasty.

“Sweeney was an intense son of a gun, but he had a great, great feel for blending talent – or lack of it – and emotion,” longtime Montana State trainer Chuck Karnop said  years later. “He had an understanding of where a kid was in terms of his spirit, and where his heart was. A lot of people from Butte seem to grow up with that feel. They have a way of appreciating the whole person, and not necessarily just the athletic ability. Jim really had that knack.”

Montana State posted an 8-3 record in 1966 and 7-3 in 1967, winning the Big Sky with 4-0 records each season. The Bobcats had beaten Sacramento State in the 1964 Camellia Bowl, and earned another bid in 1966. The foe awaiting them in their second Camellia Bowl was San Diego State, the nation’s top-ranked small college team. With an offense constructed by head coach Don Coryell and a defense led by coordinator John Madden – both future NFL coaching legends – along with eight players that would be drafted a few short months later, the Aztecs beat Montana State 28-7.

Sweeney tinkered with his offense throughout his time at Montana State, landing on a “belly option” attack spearheaded by Erickson and tailback Don Hass because “he really wanted to run the ball and I couldn’t throw it at all,” Erickson said laughed.

At that point in his career, though, Erickson said X’s and O’s and schemes and offensive concepts were secondary to Sweeney in those years. “The biggest concept he relied on was toughness,” Erickson said. “We ran the football and he was one of the first guys running the I formation back in 1967 and ’68, but more than anything he wanted his teams to be tough.”

Sweeney is also part of a fateful decision to lure a Norwegian ski jumper from the hill to the gridiron, opening the door for one of the greatest careers by a kicker in football history.

In 1962, Jan Stenerud was fresh off a sixth-place finish at the Norwegian Junior National Ski Jumping Championship when a letter from Montana State arrived at his family’s home. Former MSU ski coach Bob Beck was offering a full-ride scholarship to come halfway across the globe.

As a sophomore at Montana State in 1964, Stenerud finished fourth at the NCAA National Championships in the ski jump, earning All-America honors in the process. Then his life took an unexpected twist.

The following spring, Stenerud was running the stairs at Gatton Field with his teammates. After the cardio session, MSU football player Dale Jackson talked Stenerud into cooling down by kicking a few footballs.

It so happened on that afternoon that MSU men’s basketball coach Roger Craft was taking his typical shortcut across Gatton Field back to Brick Breeden Fieldhouse on the Montana State campus. He witnessed the young Norwegian consistently kicking footballs from the opposite 40-yard line “out of the back of the end-zone and beyond.”

The next day, Craft went into Sweeney’s office.

“I said, ‘Jim, have you ever seen Jan Stenerud kick a football?’ and he kind of ignored things,” Craft said in 2016. “So I said, ‘You should get him because he could really be a great asset’. He shrugged his shoulders like we basketball coaches don’t know what the hell we are talking about.”

A few weeks later, Craft saw Stenerud running the Gatton stairs again. Sweeney and his team were also on the field that day, so Craft yelled at Stenerud to come down and show his stuff.

Stenerud was wearing loafers that afternoon, so he had to wear one of Sweeney’s waffle-soled coaching shoes.

“I said, ‘Jim, you are going to watch this guy kick the football’, so Jim lined them up in kicking formation,” Craft said. “The holder was on the hash mark of the 35-yard line. Jan put it right through the uprights. Jim said, ‘Let’s see that again’. So he did it again. Right then, Jim walked over to Jan and patted him on the rear and said, “We have pregame breakfast tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock.”

In that moment, a record-setting football career was born. In 1965, Stenerud forever etched himself in MSU lore and put his name on the national map. In Montana State’s annual rivalry game against the University of Montana, Stenerud hit a 59-yard field goal, the longest in college football history at the time.

By 1966, he was a star. That season, the Bobcats scored 50 touchdowns and won the Big Sky Conference title. Stenerud hit 11 field goals and 49 extra points in scoring an NCAA-record 82 points. He was a consensus All-America selection and was picked by the Atlanta Falcons in the NFL Draft. He’d been drafted by the Chiefs the year before and ultimately decided to play for Hank Strom’s Chiefs. By his fourth season, KC became just the second AFL team to win a fledgling football game known as the Super Bowl.

During his 18-year NFL career, Stenerud essentially wrote the record books. His 373 made field goals and 1,699 points were all-time records when he retired. He earned seven All-Pro selections and was named to four Pro Bowls. He played on the Kansas City Chiefs team that won Super Bowl IV and he’s a member of the Chiefs’, Green Bay Packers’ and Montana State Bobcats’ Hall of Fames. He was also inducted into the Montana Football Hall of Fame’s inaugural class in 2016.

“Sweeney got a hold of me, and Sweeney, he was a dominant individual,” Stenerud said. “He dominated every room he was in. He gave me the chance of a lifetime because I was a sideshow, a circus. I was the only guy on the team who couldn’t play football, didn’t even try to play football, couldn’t play football. He’d never had a guy who had just kicked. Instead of being the sideshow or distraction, he embraced this idea and it was absolutely great.

“I think about him almost every day in my life. There will never be another man like Jim Sweeney.”

Sweeney’s five seasons at Montana State netted 31 wins, three of the first five Big Sky Conference championships ever won in football and a pair of Camellia Bowl appearances, including MSU’s lone bowl victory in 1964. Sweeney’s time at MSU also helped him influence men like Erickson, Tiller and Sonny Holland.

Erickson, who was a senior quarterback for the Bobcats in 1968 and an inductee into the Montana Football Hall of Fame in 2017, came to Bozeman to play for Sweeney. He went on to lead Miami to a pair of national championships and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2019. Erickson worked for Sweeney at Fresno State and Washington State.

Tiller, an all-conference offensive lineman for the Bobcats after coming to Bozeman from Toledo, Ohio, played for Sweeney his senior season and coached for him four more. In 1971, when Sweeney was four years into his eight-year stretch leading Washington State, Tiller joined the Wazzu staff as the offensive line coach.

After spending nine seasons coaching in the Canadian Football League, Tiller returned to the college ranks as an assistant at Purdue from 1983 to 1986. By 1991 he was the head coach at Wyoming and by 1997 he was the head coach at Purdue. He led the Boilermakers to 10 bowl games, including the 2000 Rose Bowl, in his 12 seasons at the helm.

And Holland, himself a Butte product, stayed long enough in Bozeman to earn the reputation as the Greatest Bobcat of all time. There’s a statue out front of Bobcat Stadium in homage to “The Chief” after he helped guide MSU to the 1956 national championship as a player while leading the Bobcats to the 1976 as head coach 20 years later.

Erickson, Tiller and Holland all worked for Sweeney at multiple stops. Sweeney’s eight seasons at Washington State were more challenging than the rest of his largely charmed coaching career. The Cougars finished with a winning record just once: a 7-4 mark in 1972 that helped Wazzu finish with a No. 19 overall national ranking.

“He had come to Pullman from MSU where he had a really nice run of conference championship teams,” Kramer, who was recruited by Sweeney out of his native Colton, Washington to play at WSU, said years later on ESPN Radio. “The Cougars were sorely lacking in a lot of areas. But Sweeney brought in a brand of enthusiasm that is still around on the Palouse decades later.  The way they celebrate college football in Pullman, that started with Sweeney.

“A lot of ways that I thought you had to act as a coach came from watching Coach Sweeney from afar. For example, at Washington State University, after every win, they would sing the Bobcat fight song. Not the Cougar fight song. The Bobcat fight song (laughs).”

After a 26-59 mark that included a 12-41 Pac 8 record, Sweeney resigned. The following season, he took over at Fresno State, helping build the Bulldog program into the envy of the rest of the small-school college football world.

From Dick Fry’s book “The Crimson and Gray” about Washington State football, it reads about Sweeney:

“Jim Sweeney’s coaching record at Washington State belies his popularity at the school. Sweeney posted an unexceptional 29-59-1 mark at WSU. Yet he could have owned the school — and most of the sportswriters on the Pacific Coast, if he’d wanted ‘em — because of a ready wit and Irish charm that usually disarmed his most severe critics.”

During his run at Fresno State, Sweeney earned six of his staggering 11 conference Coach of the Year awards. He helped the university establish itself among the landscape of competitive West Coast football schools.

“Coach Sweeney awakened our university and Central California to new possibilities and new dreams and he led the way,” former Fresno State president John Welty said during a celebration of life at Fresno State shortly after Sweeney’s passing in 2013.

“Coach Sweeney puts us on the national map and made Fresno State the gold standard for mid-major football,” added Tim DeRuyter, the head coach at Fresno State from 2012 until 2016 who is now the defensive coordinator at Texas Tech. “He made us the envy of everybody else out there.”

Sweeney led the Bulldogs to nine wins and an outright PCAA title in his second season in 1977. He spent the 1978 season with the Oakland Raiders in John Madden’s final season, and the 1979 season with the St. Louis Cardinals under Bud Wilkinson, who was fired before the season’s end.

Sweeney returned to Fresno State as head coach in 1980 for 17 seasons, compiling a 144–74–3 (.658) record and eight conference championships

By 1982, Fresno went 11-1, winning a second conference crown and winning the California Bowl for the first of four times Sweeney led the team to a victory in that particular post-season affair.

The Bulldogs went undefeated in conference play in 1985, 1988 and 1989, winning double-digit games and the California Bowl in each season. Sweeney also led Fresno State to the first two WAC titles ever and bowl appearances each year in 1992 and 1993.

“He understood what made a great football coach and a great leader,” standout Fresno State quarterback Trent Dilfer, the No. 6 overall pick in the 1994 NFL Draft and a Super Bowl champion in the pros, said at Sweeney’s celebration of life in 2013. “You get the most from the least and the best from the best, and I guarantee you that there’s guy 113 on the 1991 team, that I don’t remember his name, but Jim Sweeney got the most out of him.”

He retired from college coaching in 1996 after 32 years, with a combined record of 201 wins, 153 losses and four ties, including five bowl victories. He was named the Pacific Coast Athletic Association’s Coach of the Year on three separate occasions, the Big West Coach of the Year for both 1988 and 1989, and was a finalist for National Coach of the Year honors in 1989. He was inducted into the Fresno State Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Montana State Hall of Fame in 2002. At the conclusion of the 1996 football season, the field at Bulldog Stadium was renamed “Jim Sweeney Field” in his honor.

And now this season, Sweeney joins the illustrious group enshrined in the Montana Football Hall of Fame, so many of whom he helped pave the way for.

“Coach Sweeney, who led Kalispell to the Montana high school state championship over Helena High in 1958 to Montana State where he led the Bobcats to Big Sky titles to Pullman where he got the Cougars in contention to Fresno State, where he had such an outstanding career, to the NFL and back to Fresno State…what a great, outstanding contributor he was to football in the state of Montana, to the Big Sky Conference and around the country,” Kramer said. “He had as much influence as any coach the Big Sky Conference or the West has seen in college football.”

“The kid from Baker, the fastest kid ever from the state of Montana,” former Griz defensive end Jace Palmer would say, followed by a jolly laugh that endears him to all, especially those who know him best.

“And he might be the nicest guy on the planet.”

How nice? Tim Hauck remembers coaching Schillinger during his early years at Montana.

“And this kid would apologize every single time I corrected him. And he was so nice, ‘Sorry, sir, sorry, sir’,” Hauck remembered some 15 years later with a chuckle.

“I would tell him, ‘Shann, if you ever apologize on the football field again…just run and keep running until I tell you to stop.

“Once he got past the over-thinking part and he just let himself play, it clicked. And BOOM, you have something so special.”

So special that Schillinger emerged from that 2005 recruiting class — the group with the unique distinction of having 15 Montanans sign that would eventually make it to their fifth seasons — among its most successful players.

Schillinger rose from “skinny, gangly kid from a tiny town near North Dakota”, as “Hitter” Hauck describes him, to a player who played an integral role in the Grizzlies winning 31 out of 32 Big Sky Conference games.

The two-time unanimous first-team All-Big Sky safety went from nearly undefeated during his legendary high school career (49-1) at Class B Baker and transformed into an NFL Draft pick by the Atlanta Falcons.

Because the love of the sport and the love of the Griz runs in his blood, Schillinger was the first of that famed class — the one featuring four Montanans who earned shots in the NFL — to return to his alma mater.

He joined Bob Stitt’s staff as the safeties coach in 2016, a position he retained when Bobby Hauck, Tim’s older brother, returned to lead UM ahead of the 2018 season.

Schillinger spent five seasons over six years at UM before leaving to take an analyst position on Mike Leach’s staff at Mississippi State of the SEC in the spring of 2022.

And now Schillinger is the first player of what is sure to be many from Hauck’s phenomenal Montana teams of the late 2000s to be inducted into the Montana Football Hall of Fame.

“He did so much for us at Montana, a guy who was one of the most important elements of our defense, a great leader, and a great player who really had his best year as a senior (in 2009),” said Tim Hauck, who coached safeties at his alma mater on his older brother’s staff from 2004 until 2007 before being hired at UCLA in 2008 and returning to the NFL in 2009 with the Tennessee Titans.  

“But people really realized how great of a player he was when he had that awesome final year, went to the national championship game, and then goes on to play for five years in the NFL. Not bad for a skinny kid from a Class B school in Eastern Montana.”

Palmer, a Missoula Big Sky product who was a three-year starter at defensive end after coming to Montana as a safety turned outside linebacker, lived in Craig Hall with Schillinger.

That class, led by a decorated group of Montanans, formed a close bond, sharing dorm rooms and sharing 6 a.m. lifting sessions throughout their first fall on campus in Missoula.

The group frequently shared stories of their high school successes, whether it was Havre wide receiver Marc Mariani touting his Class A state title the previous year or Great Falls CMR inside linebacker turned defensive lineman Austin Mullins holding bragging rights over fellow Class AA Co-Defensive MVP Shawn Lebsock because Mullins’ Rustlers beat Lebsock’s Billings Skyview Falcons, the defending AA champions that fall, for the 2004 state title.

Schillinger had bragging rights over just about every single Class B player from his era or otherwise and a prep resume that measured up favorably against any of his new classmates.

During his four seasons starring for his uncle, Don Schillinger — whose 318 career victories are the second-most in Montana prep history, trailing only former legendary CMR head coach Jack Johnson — Shann was a two-way standout who helped carry his family name.

“In football circles in Montana, the last name Schillinger is well known,” Bobby Hauck said. “His dad, Jim is a great coach. His uncle Don might be the winningest coach in Montana high school history. For me growing up in Big Timber, I knew that last name.

“Because of the name, we knew who the kid was and knew the family. But he earned his own way because he was a great athlete and he did nothing but win.”

Growing up in Baker, Jace Schillinger remembers he and his brothers never feeling pressure to succeed in athletics but certainly feeling pressure to live up to the family name.

 “All of us kids would agree, there was always pressure at school to do the right thing and to behave because when your uncle is the principle and your dad is a teacher and our dad coaches three sports and my uncle is the head football coach — and we knew about how successful of a coach he was, although now I look back and I see how much of an impact he really made — but it really came down for us kids always wanting to do right at school because of our last name,” Jace explained.

Don Schillinger helped guide Baker to a total of 262 wins (he also won 56 at Ekalaka) and six state championships (1986, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004 and 2007) plus a runner-up finish in 1996. His teams set a state record with 37 straight road wins from 1995 to 2003, a stat made even more impressive considering Baker is 49 miles from North Dakota and a world away from many Class B competitors. Baker saw a string of 62 consecutive conference wins between 1997 and the end of Don Schillinger’s final season at the helm in 2010.

“We went to practice every single day after school when I was little and watching your dad and your family and all the guys in town you looked up to, you just love it,” Shann Schillinger said. “You fall in love with it.

“Basketball was always my first love. I enjoyed football, but at a younger age, I felt I was a better basketball player. But there’s not many 6-foot basketball players who go to great heights” (laughs).

“But growing up in Baker, the community really supports football and every Friday night, everyone goes to the game. Being around it so closely, it was easy to fall in love with.”

The most successful stretch of Don Schillinger’s Hall of Fame run came with his nephew quarterbacking and captaining the Spartans. During Shann’s four years on varsity, he led Baker to an unbelievable streak of 49 wins in 50 games, including Class B championships in 2001, 2003 and 2004.

“When we recruited him, he was a tall, lanky kid and like a lot of us coming out of a Class B school, it was really hard to project how he would play at the FCS level,” said Tim Hauck, who was a standout at Big Timber before spending a season at Division III Pacific, leading to walking on at UM before former head coach Don Read’s first season in 1986.

“Shann was a success in every sport, he excelled in every sport, he almost literally never lost in high school. You just knew he was going to be successful.

“But you didn’t know how successful it was going to be. When it comes down to it, five years in the NFL, that’s pretty special for a guy from Baker, Montana.”

While that memorable freshmen class redshirted, the 2005 Griz went 5-2 in league play, 8-4 overall, losing 16-6 to Montana State for the third loss in four years to the Bobcats. The following week, the Griz lost 35-21 to Cal Poly in the first round of the FCS playoffs.

That marked the second time in three seasons under Bobby Hauck that the Griz had lost their final two games, each time losing to the ‘Cats in Bozeman (2003, 2005) and then again the following week in the first round of the playoffs.

Schillinger’s roommates, the coach Hauck brothers, his classmates and teammates:  everyone could see how talented Schillinger was. The internal competitiveness of the group combined with the ultra-competitive environment for the Griz in the weight room, the locker room, the practice field and on game day accelerated the development the Class of 2005.

When it started to click, Schillinger’s ascension along with the rapid rise of Colt Anderson gave Montana lynchpins for a defense that would smother opponents over the next four years.

“We could look at one another and know what the other one was thinking,” Anderson, who played nine seasons in the NFL and is now a defensive assistant for the Cincinnati Bengals, said. “It was a lot of fun playing with Shann because I knew he was going to give everything he had and there was no question he was going to be in the right spot. He was smart, detailed and he was a lot of fun to play alongside.”

The Griz went 51-6 over the next four years, three of which Schillinger and Anderson, a former walk-on out of Butte, America who transformed into a three-time All-American, spearheaded a ferocious defense that remains one of the Big Sky’s best of this century.

“There would be times where we were be down, losing at Montana, but we had guys who had been in so many tough situations that scratched and clawed out of them, found ways to win and pretty soon you don’t accept losing as an answer,” Shann Schilllinger said.

“When you win, it’s contagious and when you surround yourself with a bunch of winners like I was fortunate enough to be around, the results are usually pretty good.

“Our expectation every time we took the field was to win.”

Internally, everyone knew that Palmer might be right: Schillinger might’ve been one of the Treasure State’s fastest exports. Externally, his smooth, understated, cerebral style was the perfect compliment to Anderson’s kamikaze fearlessness and ability to blow up ball carriers.

“They made it real easy for everybody else because they are both very smart guys, they can line everyone up, they knew where everyone was supposed to be and they played extremely fast,” Tim Hauck said. “If you wanted to keep up with them, play fast with them, you had to be a fast-thinking dude willing to play physical like they played.”

But make no mistake – Schillinger didn’t just run well. He would also bring the wood.

“Anybody that has ever met him will tell you he’s probably the nicest guy you will meet and he hasn’t waivered from Day 1, he is that guy, just so nice. So you meet him and you are like, ‘There’s no way this kid is a tough, physical football player,” Anderson said with a laugh.

“But then this guy straps it up and he’s as a tough a football player as I’ve ever played with. He isn’t scared to get dirty, put his nose in there and bang with anybody.”

Even with 257 tackles on his resume (still Top 25 in UM history), a pair of all-league nods, a pair of national championship game appearances (2008, 2009) and a pair of Tony Barbour Awards (given to the player “who best exemplifies outstanding practice habits and makes an unselfish contribution to the betterment of the Grizzly football team.”), outsiders still wondered what Schillinger’s football future might hold after his Griz career ended with a December loss in Chattanooga, Tennessee for the second year in a row.

Then the stopwatch flashed “4.49 seconds” and then “4.52 seconds” on UM’s Pro Day in the spring of 2010… And the vertical leap measured 37 inches… and the 200-pounder pumped out 21 bench press repetitions with 225 pounds on the bar…And Schillinger’s 40-yard dash compared with Mariani, an All-American receiver and returner.

“Heady player, knows the game, pretty smart, he’s not going to make any major mistakes, does that equal an NFL player? I don’t know. You probably have to do something a bit different than everyone else,” Jace Schillinger said.

“Then the 40 happened. And the Pro Day. Then he did things different than some others (laughs).”

Just a few months later, the kid from a tiny Eastern Montana town (Baker population in 2000: 1,695 people) was the 171^st player picked in the 2010 NFL Draft.

“You don’t go play in the secondary in the NFL without being able to run. You just don’t. Every single one of those guys is fast,” Bobby Hauck said. “There’s nobody playing in the NFL in the secondary that isn’t fast.”

“Shann was a great track guy. He knew how to run. He ran and played hard. But he also had great instincts, great ball skills, wasn’t afraid to hit, saw the game. That’s what made him a total package at safety and an NFL Draft pick.”

Schillinger had already proven he could play. He had already proven he could win. Before he arrived in Atlanta, he was 100-7 during his team at Baker and UM between 2001 and 2009. That’s certainly as much winning as any Montanan has ever done, any classification or level of prep and college football.

The 6-foot-1, 205-pound safety had to find a way to fit into the NFL. So like Tim Hauck, fellow 2022 Montana Football Hall of Fame inductee Blaine McElmurry, and, more recently, Anderson had before him, Schillinger first made his name in the NFL on special teams.

Schillinger played for four seasons (2010-2013) for the Atlanta Falcons, twice ranking among the team leaders in special teams tackles. He also had an opportunity to form relationships with players from all around the country.

“When I was playing for the Falcons, some of my best friends, one dude was from Pittsburgh, Kansas, one of them was from a tough part of St Louis, another was from a tough part of the Bay Area,” Schillinger said. “And we realized we had a lot in common, at least when it came to football and life.

“From a small town to the big city, you surround yourself with good people and you’ll be successful. And there’s good people everywhere. That’s the one thing I learned from Baker to Missoula to Atlanta is there are good people everywhere.”

In the first game of the 2010 season when Schillinger was a rookie, the Falcons played the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Steel City. It’s a memory that is vivid to this day.

Schillinger reflected on that moment: “I remember going into the fourth quarter, the stadium erupted, Troy Polamalu intercepted Matt Ryan’s pass and I kind of looked around and thought, ‘Man, this really is unbelievable that I’m getting to experience this. That moment will always stick with me as my first NFL moment. Heinz Field, opening day, something I’ll never forget.”

Schillinger said the ability to connect with so many from all over was what led him back to the game. He played one game toward the end of the 2013 season with the Tennessee Titans before retiring as a player.

The following year in the fall of 2014, he joined the coaching staff at Dickinson State, where he reunited with his brother, Jace. Shann spent the 2015 season as a special teams assistant at Nebraska before returning to his alma mater ahead of the 2016 season.

“When I went to college, was in Coach Hauck’s system, I grew up from a boy to a man,” Schillinger said. “The structure, the accountability of being on time, he instilled that into me. My coaches, the way they coached me, they guided me.

“And that made me feel like I wanted to coach. I didn’t know what I would do when I first retired from the NFL. I’ve always thought about other things. But when you consider the ability and the impact my coaches had on me is something I could never give back but I always try to give back to that by doing it the best myself.”

From Class B to the University of Montana; from the Garden City to consecutive trips across the country to Chattanooga, Tennessee to play for the national championship; from a breakout pro day to the heart of the NFC South; from Stitt’s staff to Hauck’s; And now, to this new adventure in Starkville, Mississippi with his wife, Ericka, and their daughters Lennex and Malloy, Schillinger has left a positive impact wherever football has led him.

And that still doesn’t compare to the impact made on Schillinger by the game he loves, the game that has given him so much.

“The shared joy you get in football is something you cannot get in real life,” Schillinger said. “When you win a big game or share a big play and you celebrate with one another, that is a special feeling. And fortunately, you have shared misery, too. And when you lose tough games, the only people you want to be around are your close family and your guys you work with. The shared joy and the shared misery is contagious.

“It’s like nothing else. This game has given my family so much. Football is something I don’t know where my life would be without it.”

Photos by Brooks Nuanez and attributed. All Rights Reserved.

“Watch out world! This could be America’s 1992 Olympic Five” reads the sub headline, centered between a photo of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing and Karl Malone.

It’s the most impactful periodical I’ve ever picked up. It’s the magazine issue I remember most from childhood, the one that made me want to become a sportswriter because of one story, a beautiful work chronicling basketball on Montana Indian reservations.

It wasn’t the “Dream Team” cover story. And I was not reading Gary Smith’s unforgettable article until a handful of years after it was initially published.

In the same issue as Jack McCallum’s article that first dubbed America’s juggernaut for the 1992 summer Olympics in men’s basketball the “Dream Team” is Smith’s astounding, poignant story “Shadows of a Nation.”

The sub-headline of Smith’s epic story reads: “The Crows, once proud warriors, now seek glory—but often find tragedy—in basketball.”

Smith’s stunning, tragic prose tell the story of Jonathan Takes Enemy, a legend among Montana’s Native American people, a supremely talented yet tortured standout from Hardin who rose to great heights in high school but could never conquer the game or his demons after his prep career ended.

It also tells of legends like Elvis Old Bull, the Lodge Grass star that dominated Class B in the late 1980s in Montana, continuing the impressive legend of Indian basketball players in these parts. 

Smith’s story opens with:  Singing. Did you hear it? There was singing in the land once more that day. How could you not call the Crows a still-mighty tribe if you saw them on the move that afternoon? How could your heart not leave the ground if you were one of those Indian boys leading them across the Valley of the Big Horn?

The words, the scenes, were all so tragically compelling and thought provoking. But that struggle seemed non-relatable to the Montana Natives I know best.

Shadows of a Nation by Gary Smith

My younger brother and I grew up with the LaValley brothers, a pair of Blackfeet that also lived in Missoula. Michael, R.J. and their parents Shane and Rolanda taught us a great deal about their Native culture from a young age.

Smith’s article painted a different picture. The story, the people of Montana, our personal friends – it made Montana’s Native American culture a nearby neighbor for my brother and I growing up in the Garden City.

I first met Robert RidesattheDoor when I was a teenager. Robert is Mike and R.J.s uncle. Rolanda LaValley, Robert’s older sister, remains one of my mother Suzanne’s longest and dearest friends. The family unit their tribe brings everywhere is impossible to ignore and impossible to not feel inspired by.

Among the quotes from Gary Smith’s memorable prose in that SI more than three decades ago that struck me then and still lingers with me now is the quote from Jonathan Takes Enemy’s brother, James, when James says “Every Indian that leaves (the reservation) has a rubber band attached to his back.”

The legend of Native basketball players in the state of Montana is one of the richest examples of the mystique connected to athletics in our proud state. But so often, as Smith chronicled so sharply, the Treasure State’s great Indian stars would struggle in hoops, in school and in life when they left the reservation.

My friends didn’t seem to experience similar struggles, nor did Robert and his growing family, nor did the elders of the clan.

Robert RidesattheDoor — who like his father and grandfather before him, goes by Doore in the professional world — followed in his elders’ footsteps, learning to live in this fast-paced world we share while maintaining old-world traditions. He and his family have proven you can pursue successes in the 21^st century while maintaining the stories, teachings and language of our past.

From a standout multi-sport athlete at Browning High School to the highest-ranking Native American executive in the NFL since Jim Thorpe was president of the league back in 1920, Robert has achieved at a high level in modern life while always keeping his Pikuni roots close to his heart.

“I was raised in the Pikuni way, the teachings of the Blackfeet from my parents and that’s my foundation,” Doore, an inductee in the Montana Football Hall of Fame class of 2022, said on Nuanez Now on ESPN Radio in April of this year. “You have to balance the two worlds you live in. The tribal one and the non-tribal one. And if you are successful in both, you can manage both.”

Doore and his family have done a tremendous job of that balance. Although basketball is close to religion on Montana’s Indian reservations, football has been a primary mechanism, particularly for the men of the clan.

Doore’s parents are Darnell and Smokey RidesattheDoor, who are dignitaries in the Blackfeet tribe. Darnell’s brother, Doug Davis, played football at Montana State, including on MSU’s 1984 national championship team.

Doug has five sons. His oldest Leo was a starting offensive tackle for Montana State’s back-to-back Big Sky Conference championship football teams in 2010 and 2011. During those same years, Steven Davis was a member of the MSU basketball team.

Matt and Ryan played football at Montana State as well. Matt also stood out in rodeo at MSU in the mid-2010s. Ryan was a captain tight end during Montana State’s epic run last fall, culminating in the first national championship game appearance in nearly 40 years.

“We come from a long line of warriors,” Robert said. “Pixie Kipp was my great uncle and he was drafted by the Detroit Lions out of Western Montana College. That’s my lineage.

“Doug, Leo, Matt, Ryan, they all played for the ‘Cats. Doug and my uncles were my heroes growing up, the ones who made me notice football back in the 1980s. They started to make football in Browning cool. A bunch of runners and basketball players, but football, it started to become popular.”

That love of football also trickled in when it came to a love of the NFL, particularly the team formerly known as the Washington Redskins. Robert would watch the games on Sundays with his father and brother.

He remembers seeing Brent Musburger, a 2021 Montana Football Hall of Fame inductee, doing a live shot during an NFL game as Musburger stood on the rim rocks in the Billings Heights. That was the first time Robert realized that “a Montana boy could make it all the way to the NFL.”

The Washington franchise used a logo for decades that was fashioned after Chief Two Guns White Calf of the Blackfeet Nation, a part of the family’s rich and abundant lineage across the state and region. That was also a draw for Robert and his friends while growing up on the reservation to become fans of the franchise.

They played for the Browning Indians and wore Washington gear with a logo fashioned after an influential tribal elder.

The name RidesattheDoor also has a unique meaning. I remember sitting with Smokey and Darnell following Senior Night for Missoula Big Sky boys’ basketball in 2009.

That evening, Smokey had gifted his grandson, Mike, along with my brother, Brooks, and the other Big Sky seniors with eagle feathers in a traditional Blackfeet ceremony. Following the game, Smokey explained the significance of the ceremony to help the young men transition into adults. He also told us the origin of “RidesattheDoor.”

As a young man, Smokey’s father stole “The best horse from the rival Crow, which was tied to the chief’s door and rode into the sunset.”

“The translation of the Pikuni name is ‘he who rides the best horse at the enemy’s door,” Robert remembered years later.

When Leo Davis was a senior at Montana State, I wrote a profile on the offensive tackle and his family. Darnell shared with me some of the reasons why sports are so important in Blackfeet and Native American culture, particularly when it comes to the symbolism of young people’s right of passage into women and men.

Back in October of 2011, I wrote for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle about the dynamic:

Today, like each Saturday for the past four years, Leo Davis will do his best to “count coup.” And just as they have each home Saturday at Bobcat Stadium, those who take pride in his accomplishments will be there to see the Montana State offensive lineman as he carries the banner of his people.

But today is different. It’s family weekend on the MSU campus. Look around. You will see No. 50 jerseys in hoards. The cheers coming from those wearing Davis jerseys will be as loud as ever. The young warrior will enter his combat arena buoyed by a “warrior song” sung by more than 150 family members as his Bobcats take on Northern Arizona.

Davis and his four younger brothers, sons of Deborah, a Lower Brule Lakota and Doug, a Blackfeet, are accustomed to overwhelming family support. Dozens of family members come to Bobcat football games each Saturday to cheer on Davis and his brother, Matthew, a freshman walk-on this fall.

Davis’ relatives come here during winter as well, as Leo’s brother, Steven, is a 6-foot-7 forward on the MSU basketball team. The support given to these modern-day warriors is deep-seated in the family.

It’s also woven in the fabric of the family’s Native American heritage.

“Not only are we a close family, but it comes from our culture, our traditions,” said Leo’s aunt and Doug’s sister, Darnell RidesAtTheDoore. “These are our young warriors. This is a different type of warrior situation. You compare it to the parallels of the past when young men went out and did great things, counted coup. Then the family could tell their coup stories with great pride. Those who counted coup were the ones people looked up to, the heroes, the ones you wanted your young boys to be like.

“These are young warriors out there making history, but also writing their own legend and the legend of our people. Leo has done that tenfold. He is a warrior we look up to, someone who brings our people much pride. So (today) before the game, we will sing him out onto that battlefield.”

MODERN DAY WARRIOR by COLTER NUANEZ

It’s a similar coming of age that led Robert RidesattheDoor to sports and to football. That passage from boy to man, the representation of his family and his people, is what helped his rise through the ranks of the National Football League.

And that perseverance, that ability to live in two worlds, is what helped Robert earn induction into the Montana Football Hall of Fame.

During his time in the NFL, Robert remembers, “floating almost every day because I was truly living my dream come true.” The kid from Browning proved it’s possible to grow up on the reservation and earn your way into an NFL front office, all while maintaining pride in your people’s heritage and pushing the envelope forward for those that come next.

The tie to family is what ultimately caused Robert to step away from professional football.

“My dream was to make it to the top of the NFL,” Doore said. “After a Monday Night Football Game, you turn your TV off as a fan and go to bed. I was a first in, first out guy and my responsibility in the NFL was shutting down the stadium. I wouldn’t get home until 4 a.m.

“Then I would wake up and do it all over again. One night, or early morning, I looked at my kids and realized they had gotten older. The sacrifices I was making following a dream were colliding with missing out on being a dad and being a husband. That was an emotional time but I realized the shelf life had expired. And then I knew I needed to give my kids a chance to see who they became.”

What we love about sports so much, especially in a rural place like Montana, is this same coming of age ceremony many of the Treasure State’s indigenous peoples find so connected to competition and sport.

While Smith’s epic tale was also one of tragedy, the story of Robert RidesattheDoor and his family is one of triumph.

In a time muddled with unrelenting noise, straddling a balance between old world traditions and new age pursuits is an undeniable challenge.

Like his grandparents and parents before him, Robert RidesatheDoor is the latest shining example for his family and his people how to balance the challenge with grace and dignity.