When Bobby Hauck resigned from UNLV in 2014, the former Montana head coach didn’t apply for jobs, at least in the traditional sense. Despite a 15-49 record in five years with the Rebels, his resume from his first stint at Montana – seven Big Sky Conference championships in seven years, three trips to the national title game and just 17 losses – remained unimpeachable. That guaranteed him at least a look for every open job that interested him, at least at the FCS level.
Hauck first expressed interest in his old job at the University of Montana, which opened up after the 2014 season when Mick Delaney announced his retirement. Hauck submitted his resignation at UNLV two weeks later, reportedly to put his name in for the Grizzlies’ head coaching gig.
The Griz hired Bob Stitt instead. After a year as the special teams coordinator on Rocky Long’s staff at San Diego State, Hauck resurfaced again, being mentioned as a potential candidate for two FCS head coach openings in the winter of 2015-16.
One was at Montana State, where Rob Ash was fired after the 2015 season.
“Hauck’s name might be a shock to some Bobcat fans but one source said the former Montana head coach is certainly interested and another said a small group of MSU players have suggested his name to (former MSU athletic director Peter) Fields and the search committee,” Skyline Sports reported at the time.
The other was all the way across the country at James Madison. Former Montana athletic director Jim O’Day is friends with Jeff Bourne, who’s been the AD at JMU since 1999 and brought Hauck’s name to the search committee when the Dukes were looking to replace Everett Withers, who left to take the job at Texas State.
Bourne was also familiar with Hauck after James Madison beat Montana in the 2004 FCS national title game. And from when Hauck brought the Griz to Harrisonburg, Virginia to play JMU in the semifinals of the playoffs, a contest Montana won that serves as one of Hauck’s great head coaching triumphs.
According to reports at the time, Hauck was a finalist for the James Madison job before it was ultimately offered to The Citadel’s Mike Houston.
“The guy Houston beat out for the job was Bobby Hauck, who was also on campus Monday in Harrisonburg,” ABC Columbia reported in January 2016.
Nearly six years later, everything has clearly worked out for all parties involved. Houston won a national championship in his first year at James Madison and took the Dukes back to the national title game the next year before leaving after three seasons to take the head coaching job at East Carolina. JMU has continued its success without him, winning 32 games in three seasons under Curt Cignetti.
Hauck remained at San Diego State for two more seasons, helping Rashad Penny turn into one of the most prolific kick returners in college football history before returning to Montana before the 2018 season. In three years back with the Grizzlies, he’s taken them to the national quarterfinals twice.
As Hauck and the Grizzlies prepare to take on Cignetti and the Dukes in the quarterfinals on Friday, the story illustrates the unique rivalry between the teams – not so much on the field, where the clash will decide a trilogy that’s currently deadlocked at one win apiece, but as two of the very few truly elite programs in the FCS.
The very highest levels of the FCS is a very exclusive club. Due to North Dakota State’s domination of the 2010s, just 10 programs have won a national championship in the last 20 years. Both the Grizzlies (2001) and Dukes (2004, 2016) are on that list.
In part because NDSU didn’t join the FCS until 2004, Montana has the most wins in the subdivision since the turn of the millennium. James Madison is third.
Even though the teams have met on the field just twice, they’ve been competing against each other in a metaphysical but very real way, two of the few alpha predators in the country at this level. And over the last 10 years, JMU has certainly been superior to Montana, and everyone other than the Bison.
Regardless of where Montana goes from here, Friday will be the end of that era with JMU moving up to the FBS and the Sun Belt Conference after the 2021 season.
Friday’s game, all-encompassing as it’s supposed to be, actually has the lowest stakes of any previous meeting between the two.
The first was in the national championship game in 2004, which the Dukes won 31-21 to notch their first title.
The second was in the semifinals in 2008, which Montana won 35-27 before losing to JMU’s Colonial Athletic Association rival Richmond in the national championship.
That was emblematic of the 2000s, when Montana carried the flag for the Big Sky Conference and the CAA was the dominant power in the FCS.
The Griz fell off in the 2010s as the rest of the Big Sky surged. Five years after losing out on the JMU job, Hauck appears to have the Grizzlies back on track to join James Madison and the select few others at the top of the FCS. Friday will be their last chance to prove it against one of the other defining programs of the century.
