SPOKANE, Washington — As Keenan Curran hiked to the “M” that emblematizes Mountain Sentinel in Missoula, it started to settle in that things would be different at Montana.
The Montana senior wide receiver showed up a few minutes late for class. During Bobby Hauck’s first tenure with the Grizzlies, internal issues were often dealt with by making the guilty player or players briskly hike the vigorous yet short jaunt to one of Missoula’s iconic markings on the mountain. It’s the latest example of to Curran, a Griz senior expected to be a team leader in Hauck’s first season back in the fold at UM since 2009, that the Montana football program has a new vision.
“I like it this way,” Curran said. “You are not going to win the Daytona 500 going slow the first laps. I think every lap has to be fast. Just like us: every phase of our off-season has to be 100 percent go. Discipline, the little things included.
“I like this physicality. I like the way we are lifting. I like the way we are focusing in meetings. Ultimately, that’s going to carry into the season. When fall camp comes, we don’t have to get into gear. We’ve been in gear for the whole year.”
The news of Hauck returning to Montana sent ripples across the Big Sky Conference. To a man, every coach in the league talked at the Big Sky Kickoff media convention about the return of a man who led UM to seven straight league titles between 2003 and 2009, as a positive. “It’s great for the conference”, per Eastern Washington head coach Aaron Best, “awesome”, according to the head coach of defending Big SKy champion Weber State Jay Hill and “I love it”, according to Cal Poly head coach Tim Walsh, a veteran of the league for nearly 20 years between his time in San Luis Obispo and Portland State.
But each head coach also spoke with a tentative reverence about Hauck’s return to a once-peerless program that has fallen into the Big Sky pack since Hauck left for the head coaching job at UNLV in 2009. Between 2000 and 2009, the Griz won 119 games, more than any other Division I football program in the country. Montana claimed 17 of 18 Big Sky titles, including 12 straight, advancing to seven FCS national championship games in 14 years, winning the 1995 and 2001 titles.
Hauck led the Griz to 81 of those wins, seven of those Big Sky titles and three of those national championship games.
“I’m not going to say the word scary and this isn’t a criticism to where they were, but he’s a Montana guy,” Walsh said, referring to former head coach Bob Stitt, who went 21-14 with one playoff appearance in three seasons. “He brings back that mentality that, ‘we can win national championships’ not only to his team but to the community and to all those Griz fans that are up in Montana.”
“He is the standard for FCS coaching going to three national championships,” added third-year Southern Utah head coach Demario Warren said, the reigning Big Sky Coach of the Year. “When I started coaching, I knew a few FCS coaches. I knew (former UC Davis head coach) Bob Biggs, I knew (former SUU head coach) Ed Lamb and I knew Bobby Hauck.”
Rob Phenicie spent 12 seasons as Hauck’s offensive coordinator between seven seasons at Montana and five more at UNLV. Phenicie is entering his second year at Idaho State. In his first head coaching gig, Phenicie has hired several of former Montana players, including new offensive coordinator Mike Ferriter, an All-Big Sky wide receiver on the Griz team that advanced to the 2008 Big Sky championship.
Idaho State’s program has struggled mightily over the last 15 years. John Zamberlin won six games in four years at ISU between 2007 and 2011 before Mike Kramer took over. The former Big Sky Coach of the Year at Eastern Washington and Montana State led ISU to an 8-4 record and to the brink of the 2014 FCS playoffs but could never recapture that success, winning two games each of the next two seasons before being forced out.
Phenicie has gone about rebuilding the Bengals by using the blueprint he learned from Hauck at Montana.
“There’s a lot of things; if a kid from the University of Montana came into our program, they would say, ‘that sounds awfully familiar,” said Phenicie, who’s Bengals miss the Griz on this year’s version of the league’s unbalanced eight-game schedule. “He’s a heck of a head coach. He has a great system.
“Structure, discipline, we didn’t stray from the formula. Those were important things. Coaches, players, everyone from top to bottom competed their butts off. Just as competitive as possible. Those years at Montana, we were winning the Big Sky but we felt every year that our jobs were on the line. We coached in fear. And that’s how we pushed ourselves. We didn’t want to be the team that didn’t win the Big Sky, the Griz team that didn’t win the league. You refused to have that label.
“Bobby brought that out in all of us.”
Now Hauck is getting a once-dominant football team back on track. Since his departure, the Griz have had three head coaches in less than 10 years before Hauck’s rehiring. UM has not officially won a Big Sky title since 2009. After making the playoffs 21 out of 23 seasons — the only two misses came in 2010 in Robin Pflugrad’s first of two seasons at the helm and in 2012 in Mick Delaney’s first of three seasons at the helm — UM missed the playoffs each of the last two years.
The Griz lose four starters on the offensive line, must find a quarterback to replace Freshman All-American Gresch Jensen and have a slew of question marks defensively, not the least of which is the uncertain health and availability of senior linebacker Josh Buss, the preseason Big Sky Defensive Player of the Year.
“But he’s (Hauck) got a great stallion to hop on,” Portland State fourth-year head coach Bruce Barnum said. “He has a damn nice horse to ride. Buy him a new saddle and look out.”
Hauck himself has held fast to the process he hopes to reinstitute at his alma mater, a place his brother Tim rose to stardom as an All-American and fan favorite before playing 13 seasons in the NFL. Bobby Hauck himself did not play football at the University of Montana but his four-year stretch the second half of his first tenure led UM to its most dominant stretch against the Big Sky Conference.
There have only been a handful of undefeated runs through the league since it formed in 1963, particularly with an eight-game league schedule. Montana posted three undefeated campaigns and won 31 of 32 Big Sky games between 2006 and 2009. The lone conference loss came at Weber State in 2008. Montana avenged the loss by ousting the Wildcats from the playoffs with a 24-13 win in Missoula in the quarterfinals of the playoffs that season.
Hauck also earned a salty reputation against the league’s best teams. He lost to Mike Kramer’s Bobcats two of his first three seasons before stringing together a four-game winning streak over Rob Ash’s MSU teams. Between 2006 and 2009, The Griz owned the Brawl of the Wild trophy, a run that included an iconic 35-3 win in 2008 when the team reemerged from the locker room right before kickoff at Washington-Grizzly Stadium in throwback copper and gold uniforms.
Hauck posted a 47-6 record overall, yet his resume continues a final ranking column that includes three No. 2 nods and a No. 3. He lost in the national championship game in 2004, 2008 and 2009. UM ripped off 11 straight wins in 2006 before losing to UMass in the semifinals of the FCS playoffs. The undefeated and No. 3 ranked Griz lost in the first round of the 2007 playoffs.
“That’s a motivation, for sure,” Hauck said in an interview in the spring.
To reach so many big games, Hauck had to win huge contests, the most memorable including the 2008 revenge enactment against Weber State, the upset of JMU in Harrisburg, Virginia later that playoff round and the 2009 run that included rallying from a four-touchdown deficit for a 61-48 win over South Dakota State and an instant classic victory in a driving snowstorm over three-time defending national champion Appalachian State in the semifinals of those playoffs.
Since leaving Montana, Hauck has failed to replicate his success, although he did lead UNLV to its first bowl game since 2000 and only the fourth in school history during the 2013 season. After UNLV, Hauck served as the special teams coordinator on Rocky Long’s staff at San Diego State, an experience that could only sharpen his coaching acumen.
“That was one of the great runs in the history of the league,” said Walsh, who’s Mustangs host the Griz on September 29. “My concern now is he’s been some places now so what are they going to be?
“Is he going to be what they were when I coached against them seven or eight years ago? Or is he going to be a little combination of some of the things they did at UNLV, some of the things he learned at San Diego State?
“Defensively, is he bringing Rocky Long’s stuff? There’s a lot of question marks we won’t know until I watch him on film. But from a mentality standpoint, great hire. And I’m glad to have him back in the league.”
Hauck’s first tenure was not without speed bumps, from a loss to then-Division II North Dakota State in Hauck’s home opener to losses to the ‘Cats twice in three years.
But Hauck’s teams consistently improved each of his seven seasons at the helm. The talent level he developed is peerless at Montana and around the league. He assisted 17 players in reaching the NFL, many becoming known NFL mainstays like cornerback Trumaine Johnson, Buck Buchanan Award-winning defensive end Kroy Biermann, Pro Bowl returner Marc Mariani and NFL Draft pick running backs Justin Green and Lex Hilliard.
“His statistics during his time at Montana speaks for itself,” Best said.
“I think it’s great for the conference. I think familiarity is good. I think the league has changed since he’s been in the league. How much, I don’t know, that’s for him to find out. He knows it having been in it before. But it’s different. Every team is great.”
Eastern Washington has replaced UM as the standard for the league, claiming five of the first seven league titles this decade and winning the Big Sky’s last national championship in 2010. The conference expanded to 13 teams with the addition of Cal Poly, Southern Utah, UC Davis and North Dakota, although UND is now out of the league, replaced by UM’s second-oldest Big Sky rival, the Idaho Vandals.
This season, Hauck will host UC Davis while playing at Cal Poly, SUU and Idaho. The Griz miss EWU, Northern Arizona and Weber State in league play but play all five teams that were not in the league the last time Hauck was at Montana. And the Griz are looking to snap its first pair of consecutive losses to the Bobcats since 2002 and 2003. Before that, MSU’s last two-game winning streak came with three straight wins between 1983 and 1985.
“I really have respect for the job he’s done previously at Montana,” MSU third-year head coach Jeff Choate said. “He’s going to bring back a little spice, I know, and that’s going to be a good thing. You don’t have to do a whole lot to make this the greatest rivalry West of the Mississippi better but I do think it’s interesting having someone at Montana that really values that rivalry.”
The uncertainty that followed Stitt’s voluminous debut in win over four-time defending national champion North Dakota State played a factor in Stitt’s contract non-renewal. But the priority of success in the rivalry game has played a heavy hand at both schools since MSU snapped “The Streak” against UM with a win in Washington-Grizzly Stadium in 2002.
Kramer and Hauck made for interesting lead foes but Kramer’s run ended abruptly in a cloud of controversy in the spring of 2007.
Ash won 70 games and led MSU to three straight Big Sky titles between 2010 and 2012. The Bobcats made the playoffs four times in five seasons, including for the last time in 2014. But a suddenly deficient defense and seven losses in nine matchups against the Griz caused for Ash’s firing less than 48 hours after UM’s 54-35 victory in Bozeman in Stitt’s first season.
The Bobcats ensured the Griz would miss the playoffs each of the last two seasons. Choate’s first two teams dominated UM physically and emotionally in a pair of one-score wins.
Enter Hauck, the newest but simultaneously most familiar characters in the landscape of the Big Sky and the fiercest rivalry in the Treasure State.
“I think it’s going to be great for the state of Montana, I really do,” Choate said. “Having two guys who really get this rivalry and value Montana student athletes in their programs…that’s what you are going to see, more competitive in-state recruiting battles and it’s all going to be centered around that third Saturday in November.
“I promise you this: It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
