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.”
On Wednesday, Kyle Sample of Skyline Sports interviewed Lisa Davey to discuss the origin of her petition and her protest for why she thinks Bobby Hauck should not return as the head football coach at Montana. What follows is the transcript of that interview.
What was your motivation to create this petition?
I’m a Griz football fan and have missed almost no games; we have season tickets; I travel to games out of state. I grew up watching it and loving the sense of community especially at the home games, at the tailgates and building those connections. A lot of times too being a Griz fan bridges other divides that are growing in our world and country right now. I’ve always appreciated that about what Griz football brings to Missoula.
I was following some message boards and people were sharing that they thought Bobby Hauck might be interviewed. They were like, ‘Bring Hauck back.’ I thought there would be no way that the university would be that stupid. There is no way they would do that. Then I woke up and realized they had actually interviewed him and just had a sinking feeling in my stomach. Initially just made a Facebook post tagging the university and Griz football – they had to be kidding me. I didn’t want to go back to an era of having to excuse football players’ behavior in order to enjoy supporting the team.
When I posted that, I was surprised at the initial response. It was shared four times in the first 20 minutes. People in Missoula that have worked with me in other political, or other citizen advocate activities commented and one of them suggested that maybe we should do an online petition. Initially I said I don’t know if online petitions are a good motivator. We took that conversation offline briefly and decided it wasn’t appropriate to have people take time off work to show up at the university all on one big action. We knew action needed to be quick; that they would make a hiring decision with relative speed and they needed to know we were feeling upset about it. An online petition was a way for people to act quickly in the first 24 hours and to try to gauge kind of the emotions of the community.
You said in the Independent article that “the university is still dealing with impacts of Hauck’s tenure”. I was wondering if you could expand on that.
I think as it’s been reported in articles that there were a significant number of charges and arrests made during the time that Hauck was the coach here. More than there are per average. I’ve heard a lot of comments of “Ah, football players are going to get in trouble.” Regardless of whether you think that’s true or right, there were more than when Hauck was here. I think the general attitude of the program absolutely led to the university experiencing enrollment difficulties. Internally on campus the divide between academics and athletics continues to grow. Instead of bringing the community and the campus together, it’s pushing those further apart.
Is it your belief that Bobby Hauck created that atmosphere?
Yep it is.
I think potentially he did not create it single-handedly. But when you’re building a team, whether you’re building a football team or a team at work, you create the culture of the team. You teach them who they are and what they can do. I think that by the end of Hauck’s run the team really felt like they were undefeatable. I think that carried forward into how they treated other members of the community.
Do you think that created rape culture? I don’t know if those were your exact words, but reading the comments on the petition there have been some assertions that it created rape culture. Do you believe that was the case?
I certainly do and I’ll explain why a little bit. I am in no way accusing him personally of raping anyone – Twitter has been brutal today. But 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. Of course the most famous rape case was after he left, but it was somebody he recruited and trained.
The reports of rape, did you find those or where you told of them?
I believe just told of them. I think for anyone who grew up in Missoula it was being talked about. There is always a certain amount of people talking to each other and backing each other up before somebody is brave enough to come forward. I think especially giving that Pflugrad, who I would not rehire either, had to shut down initiation parties that Hauck had permitted. It was sort of common knowledge that there was rape culture present.
I noticed on the petition you added the book, the Missoula book and it says “Bobby Hauck’s Missoula”. Can you explain that?
I really think that’s the culminating point that we were at. I think a good metaphor for it is (former president Royce) Engstrom lost his job at the university because of management issues and campus culture issues and enrollment issues. Now Sheila Sterns is dealing with cleaning this up; she’s actually doing the layoffs and making tough decisions about how things have to go down. You can agree or disagree with the decisions she’s making, but fundamentally a lot of it goes back to Engstrom’s time on campus. I think that’s also true with what happened with Griz football. The coach left, but it was his long tenure and building the team and creating what would happen and it was going to take a couple years for those players to leave.
I’m not alone in feeling like the team was out of control. … The team was out of control when Hauck left. I think he left an out of control team to another coach. I don’t agree with how that coach handled it either, but I believe it happened when Hauck was coach.
You were quoted in the story saying, “He laid a significant foundation of, ‘If you do well, you get to be at the top of this community and you will have power and leeway.’” Is that a conclusion you reached after talking with people who were involved in the program or school administrators or school officials or anybody?
I think that’s just an observation with having been a fan during that period and interacting with people. I also came to that opinion after teaching students who following kind of the Department of Justice getting involved were incredibly proactive about decrying rape culture and decrying acting like they were above and really trying hard to be humble. I think that those were corrective measures put in place.
You said you were a fan and you go to a lot of Griz football games and you grew up in Missoula so I assume you’ve been doing that for awhile. When some of these arrests were being reported in such did you have a hard time reconciling your fandom with your social activism or your beliefs?
Absolutely.
How did you do that?
Well there was a period that I did not watch games and where I was uncomfortable being a fan. I probably backed off from the program a little bit.
There are defenders of Bobby Hauck who say that he was a disciplinarian with his players and he handled things internally. All of these players were removed from the team. What is your response to that?
I would say he definitely did not prevent it. I think you can be a disciplinarian and maybe an authoritarian and still not be able to control a team. I think about if you’re holding a handful of sand and you just grip it tighter and tighter and it just slips through your fingers – he obviously did not know how to manage the team’s behavior off the field.
What do you hope is accomplished with the petition?
Well, I hope the university doesn’t hire Bobby Hauck. 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.
I’ve had some productive dialogue with the athletic director and I think that is very beneficial. I think that also opens up avenues for the community beyond the GSA to ineract with the athletic department and provide impact.
You’ve had communication with Kent Halsam since this petition was posted?
Yes.
Do you think that was productive?
It hasn’t been unproductive. I think he is open to talking to us and listening, which is great. I do worry that he has already made his choice. But if he has made his choice I think we will push really hard to force Hauck, if he is hired, to have a good conversation and not just convince them that he knows how to handle the players, but to have a conversation with the community.
Does it give you any confidence that that could happen considering he didn’t have any off-field issues at UNLV or in his capacity as associate head coach at San Diego State?
He wasn’t the head coach at San Diego. That I think there could be enough other factors there. I think he knew that his career would be over if there were any issues. I think there, assuming that Missoula is isolated, 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.
Is it fair to say you’re skeptical?
Yes.
