In the midst of swirling rumors and back and forth arguments over who should be the next head football coach of the Montana Grizzlies, a petition started by a local woman working in conjunction with a local advocacy group has urged Montana athletic director Kent Haslam to reconsider the man reported to be the front-runner for the job.
Lisa Davey, a graduate student studying communications at Montana, has collected more than 250 signature on a petition hoping to stop Montana from bringing Bobby Hauck back to the post he held for seven wildly successful, but sometimes controversial seasons from 2002-2009. Posted to the website, Change.org, the petition, promoted by Rise Missoula, a group working to promote diversity, lists its goal as sending “a clear message to the University of Montana and the athletic program that women are more important than winning.”
In an interview with the Missoula Independent, which first reported on the petition Tuesday night, Davey expressed her concern over bringing back a coach, who in her mind, had encouraged a culture that jeopardized the well being of the football program, the university, the security of women in the community and eventually led to a book that documented two highly publicized rape cases involving former players.
RELATED: Q&A: Lisa Davey, creator of the online petition to not hire Bobby Hauck
At the center of Davey’s unease are the arrests of eight former players spanning the final three years of Hauck’s seven-year tenure. The arrests included charges of assault, kidnapping and robbery among other charges. Davey said she believed a lack of accountability was integral to the culture she says Hauck created and that it led to a “rape culture” in Missoula.
“If you look at the series of charges and then arrests that happened during his tenure as coach it escalated from getting in a fight over a girl at a bar to then partner abuse to biting a woman to just before he left, or as he was leaving, there were reports of rapes coming forward,” Davey told Skyline Sports on Wednesday afternoon. “Of course the most famous rape case was after he left, it was somebody he recruited and trained.”
Davey was referring to a rape trial in the winter of 2013 that led to a not guilty verdict of former Griz quarterback Jordan Johnson. Johnson arrived in Montana in 2010, a year after Hauck left the Griz to accept the head coaching position at UNLV. Johnson’s acquittal came nearly three months after former Griz running back Beau Donaldson, who played two seasons for Hauck, was found guilty of raping a friend in fall 2010.
Asked what other reports she cited, Davey didn’t have specifics, saying only that she learned of them from people in Missoula.
“I think for anyone who grew up in Missoula it was being talked about,” Davey said. “ … It was sort of common knowledge that there was rape culture present.”
Davey’s assertions of Hauck didn’t align with the environment described by a former UM employee with knowledge of how student conduct incidents were handled across campus. The former employee, who worked in the department while Hauck worked at Montana and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the former coach was more responsive to student conduct complaints levied against his players than previous coaches had been.
Former Montana head coach Bobby Hauck/ (Aaron Mayes / UNLV Photo Services)
There were times, the former employee said, when it seemed like some players had a sense of entitlement, both before and after Hauck’s tenure, but he wasn’t sure those concerns ever actually made it to Hauck or the athletic department. Changes in the way the entire University documents and tracks student conduct issues, as well as the student-athlete code of conduct have streamlined the process addressing conduct issues with student-athletes and have also created an environment where problems with an athlete on campus, big or small from either academic or student life, are much more likely to be reported to the athletic department.
Hauck also showed himself to be a disciplinarian in his response to the arrests of his former players. Of the eight players to be arrested in his final three seasons, Hauck removed seven from the team, and suspended the other, former offensive lineman JD Quinn, for a game after he was arrested for DUI.
During his four years as head coach of UNLV, none of Hauck’s players were cited in off-field incidents resulting in arrests. Still, this gave Davey little hope he would be able to exhibit the behavior she saw befit for Montana’s football coach.
“Assuming that Missoula is isolated,” she said, “then there is a synergy between the way Grizzly athletics functions in Missoula and the way he coaches that I don’t trust to create a team of good citizens.”
Following a report that appeared in the Missoulian on Tuesday and the Independent’s report of the petition, several former Griz players came out on Twitter in defense of their coach. Jordan Tripp, a Missoula native who played for Hauck for one season before going onto an NFL career, tweeted: “Bobby Hauck is one of the best coaches I had the opportunity to play for. Few of the many things he instills in his players and the culture of the team from the day they all set foot on UM campus is, character, accountability, work ethic, and attention to detail. Great respect.”
Former MSU quarterback DeNarius McGhee and former UM linebacker Jordan Tripp in 2013/ by Blake Hempstead
That was preceded by a tweet from Andrew Schmidt, a former Montana running back who played for Hauck for five seasons from 2004-08. Schmidt wrote: “Pretty much all of us lived in fear of f****ing up because Bobby would in turn bring his wrath down upon you. If you say he led a “culture of lawlessness” I know right off the bat you are uninformed and wrong.”
Former All-American safety Colt Anderson, a five-year player and three year starter for the Griz under Hauck, remembers his college head coach as a strict disciplinarian who had a zero tolerance policy for behavior that jeopardized team success.
“He was a tough love kind of guy but ultimately, you kind of feared him,” Anderson, a nine-year veteran now with the Buffalo Bills, told Colter Nuanez of Skyline Sports on Tuesday. “You feared showing up to a meeting five seconds late. There was no grey area with Coach Hauck. It was black or white and you did things wrong. When you were wrong, you paid the consequences. From showing up to class a minute late or showing up to meetings a minute late, missing an assignment for Coach Hauck — missing class was just as important or detrimental to missing an assignment in a game. Every little detail, he had his way. He wanted guys to be accountable, do things right and if you didn’t, you knew you were going to pay the price.”
Davey said she first got the idea for protesting the possibility of Hauck’s hiring after reading comments on a message board discussing the chance of his return. She first posted a statement on Facebook before being persuaded to create an online petition, a petition that as of the publication of this article had received 251 signatures.
“I hope the university doesn’t hire Bobby Hauck,” Davey said. “I hope the university really considers the impact of the message that they’re sending with the community. I think as the university is making cuts that are related to an out-of-control football team, you don’t hire somebody who had an out of control football team.”
Haslam declined to comment on the petition and its impact on his pending decision, but Davey said she had a conversation with Montana’s athletic director that was not “unproductive”.
“I think he is open to talking to us and listening, which is great,” Davey said. “I do worry that he has already made his choice.”
Montana has given no indication that Hauck will be hired, or is even a front-runner for the position. However, multiple sources who have been in contact with Hauck since his interview Monday with Haslam, Clayton Christian, the commissioner of higher education, and several other university employees, said the coach is in good spirits about his interview.
Colter Nuanez contributed to the reporting of this story. Photos attributed. All Rights Reserved.
