Marty Fine claims he hasn’t seen a cowboy since 1984.
Bryant’s longtime head coach has never taken his team on a road trip any further than to South Carolina. He has no idea where the team will stop while traveling from Smithfield, Rhode Island to Bozeman, Montana nor does he have any illusions of grandeur when his Bulldogs takes the field at Bobcat Stadium against the Montana State Bobcats on Saturday afternoon.
All he knows is he just hopes his troops make it back alive to the East Coast.
“We are like the Christians and the lions; we are going to go in there, get our paycheck and try to get out with as few broken bodies as we can,” Fine said during a comedy-filled 17-minute interview with members of the Montana media on Tuesday afternoon.
“Some people say there are no moral victories. Well, those people, I’m not sure they’ve ever been the underdog. If you are Alabama, there are no moral victories. If you are Bryant, there are a whole lot of moral victories. We will go out there, enjoy the trip, eat some barbecue, meet some cowboys, ride a horse or two, play some football and see how it goes.”
Bryant linebacker Jake Wiswall (43)/by Dave Silverman – BU Athletics
Self-deprecation aside, Bryant’s trip across the Mississippi into the heart of the Rocky Mountains will be filled with new experiences. In his 13 seasons leading the Bulldogs, the bluntly honest Fine has coached his team against favored opponents like Maine, Stony Brook and almost all the members of the Ivy League. Last fall, Bryant competed well against top-ranked Coastal Carolina before falling 31-17 in Conway, the farthest road trip the school has ever embarked on.
“When I think of Montana, I think of trees and mountains and bears but I’ve certainly never been out West,” said senior linebacker Patrick Kenney, a three-year starter and second-team All-Northeast Conference selection last fall. “The guys aren’t used to flying so that will be interesting and fun. At the end of the day, we have to stay focused on the task at hand and be ready for the game.”
“It’s a great trip for us in so many ways,” added Fine said. “It’s a great trip to show our kids another part of the country. It’s a great trip to broaden horizons and show our kids that there is more to the world than the East Coast and the place we live at. I think it’s great for our administration to go on the road and learn what real I-AA football is like, real faculties, real football players, all those things.”
Bryant is a small, private liberal arts school located in a 21,430-person town of Smithfield in Providence County, within the smallest geographic state in America. The school offers two colleges: the College of Business, and the College of Arts and Sciences. Bryant is known for its international business and MBA programs and was named the No. 1 “most connected campus” in the country by the Princeton Review.
Fine got his coaching start at Western New Mexico in Silver City in 1984, the last time the 57-year-old from New York City claims he’s seen a cowboy. In 1987, Fine became the youngest active head coach in college football at 26 when he took over at Sonoma State. Cal Poly head coach Tim Walsh, a longtime Big Sky mentor, worked for Fine at Sonoma before taking over at the California D-II school. Fine emphasized Tuesday that Walsh is still “the finest football coach I’ve ever worked with in my career.”
Fine’s career led him to the Naval Academy Prep school in Rhode Island before he took over as Indiana State’s offensive coordinator from 1991 until 1995. He coached special teams at Colgate in 1996 before spending the next 15 seasons as an assistant at Indiana in the Big Ten. He coached for two seasons at Iowa State before becoming a head coach again after more than a 25-year hiatus.
Fine took over at Bryant before the 2004 season and led the Bulldogs to consecutive eight-win seasons and two straight Northeast 10 conference titles in 2006 and 2007 when the league was still part of Division II. Playing as Division II independent, Bryant went 7-4 in 2008 behind a defensive-oriented and tough-minded approach to East Coast football.
When Fine first arrived at Bryant, he and his staff made the commitment they wanted to breed a culture of tough, physical, hard-nosed football where running the ball, controlling the clock and playing sound defense ruled the day. It worked as the school made its first-ever postseason appearance in 2006 and continued winning up until the dawn of the Division I era in 2009.
“That’s when the plan slowed down,” Fine said. “Once we went Division I, we weren’t going to be as successful doing that as we once were. We’ve had to change what we are.”
Over the last six seasons, Bryant has won at least seven games three times, and eight games once, in 2014, when the school went 8-3 and narrowly missed the FCS playoffs for the first time. That season, Bryant started 8-1 and earned a spot in the Top 25 of the FCS rankings for the first time. The school has done it with strong execution on both sides and multiple schemes that are understood and played by players’ with great cerebral abilities — Fine said his team has almost 70 students with 3.0 grade-point averages or higher and 40 kids who made the Dean’s List last semester alone.
Bryant plays a lot more nickel and dime packages defensively with the proliferation of spread offenses. In the past, Fine wanted to emphasize “knocking back” the opponent on both sides of the ball.
“Now you knock people back and they just throw a bubble screen and you chase then around and they are tired after four plays,” Fine said. “We invest more scholarships in our defense, we invest more in our defensive coaches. If we have a good player, we put him on defense because I still think we can win games a lot easier 17-14 than you can going 54-51. Your plan just goes out the window at that point and you are hoping for a flag or saying a Hail Mary.
“We are not trying to be the toughest guy on the block anymore. I grew up in New York City and all anybody ever wanted to do was drive a Cadillac and be tough. Now the Cadillac is the old man’s BMW and toughness doesn’t count in our sport anymore. They are ruling it out. We are changing as quickly as we can to be more like you guys do it on the West Coast.”
The Northeast Conference champion has earned an automatic bid to the FCS playoffs since 2010, with Sacred Heart earning back-to-back berths in 2013 and 2014, while Robert Morris (2010), Albany (2011), Wagner (championship in 2012, auto-bid in 2014) and Duquesne (2015) earning spots in the FCS playoffs. Northeast teams are 1-5 in the FCS post season, the one win a victory by Wagner over Colgate in the 2012 playoffs. Wagner fell 29-19 to Big Sky champion Eastern Washington, the No. 2 seed, the following week in Cheney.
Last week, NEC member Saint Francis (Pennsylvania) came to Missoula and gave No. 13 Montana all it could handle before falling 41-31. Fine said he had no idea the Red Flash played the Griz, let alone gave them a run for their money. He did call Saint Francis head coach Chris Villarrial the best coach “at teaching blocking in our league” because of the Red Flash head coach’s deep football roots. Villarrial was an offensive lineman for the Chicago Bears (1996-2003) and the Buffalo Bills (2004-2006) during an 11-year NFL career.
Fine said he first learned about his team’s trip to the Treasure State when Bryant athletic director Bill Smith walked down the hall and said “they are giving us a really big check.”
“My initial thought? I hope it’s a REALLY big check,” Fine quipped. “Let’s not lie about it. They are better than us. I’m fun and games, but let’s tell the truth. They are much, much better than us. They are deeper, they are faster, they are longer, their offensive line is terrific. They are better than us. We understand that.”
Martel Field at Bobcat Stadium/by Brooks Nuanez
Montana State has three national titles at three different levels to its credit. Since 2002, the Bobcats have endured exactly one losing season (in 2015), winning six Big Sky titles and advancing to the national playoffs seven times during that span. The Bobcats are under a first-year head coach in Jeff Choate and guided by a first-year starting quarterback in Tyler Bruggman. Yet there’s no denying Montana State is the favorite, at least if you listen to Fine.
“I will show up on Thursday and they will point me where to go,” Fine said when asked about the logistics of the trip. “I will carry my briefcase, limp a little bit, get there slowly, everyone will laugh, we will take off and fly and we will be there. I don’t even know where we are stopping. We will get there around dinnertime on Thursday night. Friday, we are going to go see a museum. What, you have an old west museum right by the stadium right? I haven’t seen cowboys since I was in Silver City, New Mexico when I was coaching there in ’83 and ’84. I’m excited to go out there, spit some tobacco and wear some pointy shoes.”
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